Bitter cold records broken in Alaska – all time coldest record nearly broken, but Murphy's Law intervenes

John F. Hultquist says: January 30, 2012 at 8:09 pm
Makes me wonder, though, about the difficulty of marketing electric and hybrid-electric autos in certain areas. Do places that have generally low temperatures with occasional -40 days get exemptions for the CAFE standards?
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A quarter of the energy to run Fairbanks cars is already electrical.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/10/02/electric-cars-in-alaska/

> Alaska and Canada have been suffering through some of the coldest temperatures on record during the last week…
True, yet crap. Anthony, if you check a map you’ll notice that Canada is a pretty large country.
Here in Southern Ontario we have had the mildest winter in memory. We got 3 cm of snow today, more than we’ve had — in total — all winter. On the second-last day of January!
But wait! Weather isn’t climate!
Unless…it’s really cold. Then it’s climate! If it’s really mild then it’s just weather, which isn’t climate.
“Reality is that which, once you stop believing in it, doesn’t go away.” — P. Dick

Old Nanook says:
Unless temperatures in places like Fairbanks, Fort Yukon or Tok are reaching the minus 60 category I would be suspicious of claims of temperatures of minus 70 or lower in the region. I would fully expect the Jim River report to NOT be accurate.
… well, the Fort Yukon co-op station checked in with a -66 yesterday, Jan. 30. So we may have some other coop station sending in a -70 at the end of the month (not all coop stations report daily). There’s still the outside chance of some lucky station getting to -80. But probably not Jim River, which was also “only” -66 yesterday (did someone go out there and change the battery?).

Is it still possible to buy accurate equipment capable of streaming temperature measurements in Fahrenheit?
For calculation purposes you would have to convert these reading into Celsius prior to further use.

Extreme temperatures in any one location in any one year really do prove nothing either for or against the AGW hypothesis. I have posted elsewhere about the need to analyse at least 100 years of data before you start to be able to take out the effect of shorter ENSO and 60 year cycles and get down to the underlying ~1000 year cyclic trend.
I’m no warmist, but I am the first to confirm that the underlying long-term trend is still increasing due entirely to natural causes at a rate of about 0.05 degree C per decade, but such rate is decreasing and should be down to zero (ie a maximum temperature) within the next 150 to 250 years, after which about 500 years of cooling is expected. The trend is indeed expected to keep rising even beyond the year 2100 when it could well be 0.4 degrees above the current level. (See my other posts about the above 0.05C/decade calculation.)
Folks, the world is still warming. It only defeats our cause to try to prove it isn’t, because the 60 year cycle will turn back upwards after about 2028, so it’s best to be honest and tell them that’s what we expect. Let’s archive that prediction, as indeed I have a few months ago on my initial site http://earth-climate.com .
If you want to rubbish AGW you can do so using physics, on the basis that …
(1) Their assumptions relating to that -18C figure are not based on established physics, so all their sensitivity calculations are totally wrong, even if backradiation did warm anything. (See my posts on other threads for more detail, or my site http://climate-change-theory.com .)
(2) Backradiation actually does not exist to anywhere near the extent they suggest and they are not measuring it. (Their instruments measure frequency and convert it to temperature. Any further conversation to radiative flux is invalid.) They can show no warming from it (for example, show it warming a metal plate or melting frost) and that would be the only way to prove it had any effect such as what they say it has on the Earth’s surface. After all, they claim its intensity is about a quarter as much as the Sun at noon. It ought to melt frost in the course of 8 hours or so, but it doesn’t. The reason is, as Prof Claes Johnson proves, its frequency is below the cut-off frequency for which any warming could occur. And anything that does come down as LW radiation is probably just coming from a few “hot spots” in the atmosphere that were not necessarily warmed by carbon dioxide and its colleagues.
In summary, I would rather see this WUWT site place less emphasis on articles and news like this, and more emphasis on the physics of the situation. The warmists can’t argue that their physics is right about that -18C figure because they would just expose their ignorance if they still tried to support it. The Earth’s surface is far from insulated and so it is far from being a blackbody and really only radiates less than about 25 W/m^2. You cannot convert whatever it radiates to a “temperature” using the Stefan-Boltzmann Law, because so much other energy escapes by diffusion, conduction, convection, evaporation and chemical processes, leaving a lot less to radiate. What does still radiate carries no indication of ambient temperature and would in fact gives very cold values if stuck into that equation.

If the battery failed, why did the unit continue to report pressure ?

Climate change means ‘extremes’ at both ends of the spectrum (extreme cold, extreme heat), because the hydrological cycle is disrupted (globally). Record lows then become expected, and the same for record highs. These readings are actually proof that climate change is in fact occurring, quite rapidly now. Those that doubt this are basically idiots, ill-informed and opinionated without evidence or proof to back up their claims. In addition to Alaska, extremes are occurring in many other places of the world, including torrential rains (India, Pakistan, Australia, Vietnam) all part of the hydrological cycle. Other extremes are also occurring too, killer tornadoes in Indonesia, and Mozambique with killer storms. Bulgaria just experienced deadly blizzards, China massive snowfalls. There are climate extremes now occurring non-stop around the world.

This is why they should be using the wired version! Interesting that they don’t have a old style backup.

So much for man made global warming? Even if there were global warming would you tree huggers explain to me how raising my power bill, raising my taxes and electing left wing Loon Democrats is going to lower the earth’s temperature? So Minus -80 degrees in Alaska is still
to Warm for ya?
Perhaps if Congress & Obama were not burning through $3 Trillion bucks in 3 years it might lower the Earths temperature, it would at least lower the tax payers & voters temperature!
VOTE THE BUM’S OUT NOV 2012!

[ John says:
January 31, 2012 at 3:51 am
Climate change means ‘extremes’ at both ends of the spectrum (extreme cold, extreme heat), because the hydrological cycle is disrupted (globally). Record lows then become expected, and the same for record highs. These readings are actually proof that climate change is in fact occurring, quite rapidly now. ]
Why don’t you help us all out here and put a date on an earthly period when “climate change” didn’t occur. Then suggest a period in the past when record lows or record highs didn’t occur. Then determine a period on earth since life began when those record lows or highs caused mass extinction. Then determine if the highs ever did, or if the ice ages were the only time.