I’m truly sorry about the title, but nothing else really describes the ridiculousness of the pronouncement by the White House aide John Podesta over these two satellite images in a maddeningly idiotic story from the Washington Post.
![snowpack13[1]](http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2014/05/snowpack131.jpg?quality=83)
![snowpack14[1]](http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2014/05/snowpack141.jpg?quality=83)
In a Feb. 24 Oval Office meeting, two of President Obama’s top climate advisers presented these sharply-contrasting images of California’s snowpack on Jan. 13, 2013 (left) and a year later (right), as a way to underscore how global warming is changing conditions on the ground in the United States.
The satellite images viewed by President Obama before a meeting with eight Western governors were stark, showing how snowpack in California’s mountains had shrunk by 86 percent in a single year.
“It was a ‘Houston, we have a problem’ moment,” recalled White House counselor John D. Podesta, one of two aides who briefed the president that February day. Obama mentioned the images several times as he warned the governors that political leaders had no choice but to cope with global warming’s impact.
After years of putting other policy priorities first — and dismaying many liberal allies in the process — Obama is now getting into the weeds on climate change and considers it one of the key components of his legacy, according to aides and advisers.
Story here: http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/for-president-obama-a-renewed-focus-on-climate/2014/05/04/6b81412c-d144-11e3-9e25-188ebe1fa93b_story.html
Gasp! 86% change in a single year. More proof positive that ‘global warming’ is accelerating. /sarc
So tell me, oh geniuses, what will you show the President after the looming El Niño kicks in later this year, and California has a wetter than normal year during the winter of 2014/15 and the snow pack goes up to something like 146% of normal? What then? Blame that on global warming and call it another “Houston we have a problem” moment when we get flooding in California like in 1997/1998 after that big EL Niño changed the weather pattern in a single year to drench the state?
The lack of snowpack in 2014 is all about ENSO and resulting jet stream patterns, something well known for years.
![209479main_elnino1_080128_HI[1]](http://wattsupwiththat.files.wordpress.com/2014/05/209479main_elnino1_080128_hi1.jpg?quality=83)
Pattern shifts related to ENSO make California winters highly variable. For example, compare the snowpack change from 1880 to 1881 in the graph below from the Sierra Snow Lab and note some of the other low years highlighted in yellow.
Snowfall and snowpack data from the CSSL archive dating from 1878 to1945, and from 1952 to1957, were measured and supplied by the Southern Pacific Transportation Company. Snowpack and snowfall measurements were taken at Summit Station from 1878 through 1927, and at Norden from 1927 on. From 1879 to 1897, and 1901, the maximum snowpack depth was estimated. Current CSSL methodology mandates that new snow is measured twice a day, at 0800 and 1600 Pacific Standard Time. The depth of the new snow is probed with a rule at the four corners of a snow board. [The snow board is piece of plastic-covered plywood, .25m2 in area.] The four depths are recorded and averaged, the board is then cleaned off and replaced on the snowpack surface.
[Ref: Randall S. Osterhuber, Climatic Summary of Donner Summit, California, Central Sierra Snow Laboratory, October 1993]
Will these geniuses in the White House say global warming reached back through time to 1881 to cause this? How about 1977, was that “global warming” too? But let’s indulge them, let’s say it is ALL caused by ‘global warming’. What will they do about it? Tax it? Issue a presidential order? Make emitting CO2 a crime?
Like Nature cares what they think or do. Idiots.
| “Some people are weatherwise, but most people are otherwise.” — Benjamin Franklin |
That’s odd. Alarmists said global warming causes more snow. So tell me which of the 2 images depicts “global warming’s impact”?
Karim D. Ghantous says: May 5, 2014 at 4:31 am
These are the same tactics used to sell Intelligent Design.
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The difference is that intelligent design will become no more than a curiosity; a footnote in history. On the other hand, CAGW can lead to the collapse of our Republic due do bankruptcy and the death of millions(?) due to energy poverty.
Regards,
Steamboat Jack (Jon Jewett’s evil twin)
Antarctica has just broken another record. It is truly unprecedented on the record. Where is the media?
http://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2014/05/04/antarctic-sea-ice-blows-away-records-in-april/
Der Speigel
http://notrickszone.com/2014/05/02/spiegel-on-antaractic-sea-ice-never-before-has-there-been-so-much-ice-at-this-time-of-year-since-meaurements-began/
One could argue that the purpose of orthodoxy is to appropriate assets for adherents from the unworthy. Given the absurd basis of Carbonism, appropriation seems to be its only justification. However, who is the dumbass, the appropriator or the appropriate?
Hate to get too much on my soapbox here…aw, what the heck, I’m already doing it. So, after that note of levity, may I say that John Podesta, John Holdren, and Barack Obama, will end up having provided society with not one damn thing, not one invention, creation, or profound source of insight, to be bequeathed to future generations.
But, then, in a society of individual freedom one generally is most favored to profit by what they provided to it. Queen Elizabeth did. James Madison did, Alexander Graham Bell did. Enrico Fermi did. Ayn Hirsi Ali has. JP, JH, and BO, on the other hand, apparently must profit by being advantageously networked, and by showing fancy, misleading pictures like the one above.
When Jack Swigert called out to Houston about a problem, someone answered.
If you call the current White House, no one is home.
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“The satellite images viewed by President Obama before a meeting with eight Western governors were stark, showing how snowpack in California’s mountains had shrunk by 86 percent in a single year.”
The idea of creating ecological “regions” in place of, or over, the current 50 states was covered here on WUWT recently. This has been done once already in the Regional GHG Initiative by the eastern states under Romney.
Here is a video of Kitty Werthmann, who shares her experience of Germany’s take-over of Austria in 1938. Yes it was by election. One of the first actions taken by the fa–ists was to turn the seven states of Austria into four regions:
5 minute mark: “So we got a new government…And H—– said, ‘Austria has seven states. We are going to merge the seven states into four states. That would save a lot of money. That way we only would have four governors, and that would save a lot of money.”
(She also discusses gun registries, gun seizures, nationalization of schools, and of churches through “building maintenance funds,” Sunday state programs for youth, nationalized healthcare, and other changes to Austria.)
Dude, get with the program. You should know by now that ALL “bad” weather (snowpack variations, as well as tornadoes) is due to Catastrophic Anthropogenic Climate Anomalies (or CACA, for short). As The Honorable and Brilliant Al Gore has determined, and explained to us in detail, all CACA is produced by humans releasing CO2 as a result of selfishly bettering their lives through the use of fossil fuels. Of course, the corollary to this is that all “good” weather is the result of natural climate processes.
We don’t need no stinking research projects: “GOOD” weather is always due to Gaia beneficently sheltering Her subjects; “BAD” weather is always due to human-produced CACA.
Anthony,
You will like this. It’s from the 1970s. Weathermen sceptical of the climate scientists who proclaimed a looming big chill – from the New York Times.
H/t Steven Goddard
https://stevengoddard.wordpress.com/2014/05/05/1974-meteorologists-said-climatologists-arent-real-scientists/
http://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1977/02/02/75262596.html
Meanwhile, today and tomorrow will have additional snow in the Sierras. About six inches over two days.
This is a picture taken after a storm in a year that was skewed towards early snow compared to a picture not taken after a storm in a year that was skewed towards late season snow.
That picture was obviously taken right after a storm, because it shows and all of the Nevada desert under snow. So I don’t know how you get an accurate measure of the snow pack from that, since 90% of the snow in that picture is going to melt in a day. That timing is clearly for the scare effect. Snow pack in the sierras would be the snow on just the tops of the the thin strip of mountains intersecting lake tahoe which run northnorthwest – southsoutheast, and not that whole picture.
I live and ski in lake Tahoe. I was here trying to ski during both of those pictures. We had one nice storm in Dec 2013 that dumped 50% of our annual snowfall by Christmas. Contrast that with this year, which waited until late January to get going. We get our snow in big dumps at different times of the year and commonly have 6 week “droughts”. Around here, you could compare and contrast any November-February and you will get a large difference. That’s normal around here. I think that massive year in 2011 was a slow starter too. Someone should find a picture for that same period from that year.
Another factor that is going to affect snow pack this year was the # of wet snow/rain events we had. The mountains out here are low and warm in the range of 8-9 thousand feet only. We call our snow Sierra Cement. This year, we lost 10-20% of possible yearly snowfall because we got rain from storms that were 1-2 degrees too warm. In years past, we might have gotten luckier and it could have been a few degrees colder. You have to time the moisture from the pacific with the cool air from the north for the best chances for snow. We don’t make cold air here in the sierras, we import it.
We have a name for what brings us snow out here: the Pineapple Express. Unless we get a strong jet stream from Hawaii, we don’t get any moisture. When we do get one, we can get 10+ feet of snow in a week, otherwise, we have a drought.
So yeah, from the feet on the ground. La-Nina and El-Nino are in charge around here.
Of course, what they should be emphasizing was just how cold it was in Jan 2013 over snow covered Nevada which looked like the Arctic when I flew over it on 14 Jan 2013. At Winnemucca NV in the heart of that snow-covered landscape they experienced their coldest January in the past 64 years (since 1949) with a mean temperature of 14.7 F which was -15.4 degrees F below normal.
1 day of snow is catastrophic climate change. The snow melting next day is man made global warming. heads i win tails you lose.
This is less dumb ass and more intentional fraud.
The president has people, including highly paid scientists working for him that have the job of using creative ways to manipulate/present information to support his agenda.
Do we really think anybody on his team would suggest “Mr. President, I think we should be more honest with the people and tell them about how increasing carbon dioxide is boosting vegetative heath, plant growth and world food production for all animals on this planet”
They would be out of a job.
The objective is to present things like Super Storm Sandy as unprecedented and tie it to increasing “carbon pollution”. Same with the drought of 2012(after a record stretch of 24 growing seasons without a severe widespread drought in this same area).
It started morphing into the land of absurdity when Northern Hemispheric snow increased several years back and the connection was established with global warming.
I can’t imagine a way to top Dr. John Holdren’s claim in January that we will see more extreme cold because of global warming.
Another way to think of this is that going so blatantly overboard connecting any anomalous weather pattern to climate change(from desperation because CAGW is not happening as predicted) has reached the point, like in the “Boy that cried wolf” story, where the village people are losing trust in the messenger.
There will always be a core group with such a strong confirmation bias, that they will interpret everything one way, with the same fervor and faith that somebody belonging to a cult or religion has.
It’s also likely that the blogosphere and places like this, are winning a battle to bring authentic science to the world vs the one which governments are using which is to manipulate science to obtain control of the people.
In order to stay in the game, there is no choice but to ramp up the propoganda to maintain the brainwash.
I find it hard to believe that they could be winning any new followers, since not being under the confirmation bias spell means you can see the lunacy of some of their arguments………thus, the main objective, realistically is more of a, “not losing those that have faith” vs “trying to convert new blind faith followers”.
But then…………..being realistic and projecting CAGW agenda don’t have a lot in common, so maybe their expectations of the results of the propogand are also exaggerated.
Unfortunately it won’t matter what you show them. They have their beliefs, their narrative and their experts. And a vested interest in all the tax money and power this could bring them.
Tough to find satellite images of 2014 Colorado snowpack. Wonder why.
Some of the earliest weather records in Nevada come from the rural town of Winnemucca. During the period 1877-1889 the annual mean temperature was 49.2 F. Now 125 years later the annual mean temperature is a slightly cooler 48.7 F as measured over the past five years (2009-2013) at Winnemucca. Houston, I don’t see a problem!
Obama is an emperor without clothes. Time to kick this sorry ass out of the White House.
I wonder if this was just a dumb mistake or was the White House intentionally trying to mislead people.
America is sliding very fast towards fascism: http://libertyblitzkrieg.com/2014/05/02/comedian-rob-schneider-america-is-sliding-very-fast-towards-fascism/
Calling Obama. Podesta, and Holdren dumbasses is a disservice to dumbasses everywhere. Dumbasses are mostly ignorant, but “ignorant” can be fixed with education. Obama and his gang are stupid. Stupid can’t be fixed.
Propaganda advisers.
An all time best “global warming” cartoon:
http://legalinsurrection.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/See-GW-590-LI.jpg
Bob Clark
In the meanwhile amusement is spreading globally.
http://comicincorrect.wpengine.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/See-GW-590-LI.jpg
Well the trouble is that most of that California snow pack, is actually Nevada Snow pack, so it ends up going East when it melts.
So we in California have gotten used to being a natural desert State, except around Palm Springs, where we are now the Golf Course State, and we have plenty of water from Northern California to water the Golf courses, which are valuable habitat, for the endangered Southern California five toed gopher.
So don’t worry about that first picture; most of that excessive snow pack, is actually Harry Reid’s problem.