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 |
No need for apologies, I beleive title very was appropriate.
Look if you like your snow pack, under the White House guidelines for managing climate change you will get to keep your snow pack.
Barbara Skolaut says:
May 5, 2014 at 1:04 pm
“No reason it can’t be both, Jim.”
And neither should be acceptable to anyone.
RE: I’ll have to go over there to Nevada, to see all those rivers, that bring that Nevada snow melt, back nto California.
=========================
Only the Carson and Truckee drain east, plus a few creeks. This is not even worth debating.
My God, and these people have influence over your president? Who can order war and nuclear weapons. Don’t vote for them again. Or complain to the White house. I can’t I don’t live in your country.
Re: James @ur momisugly 48 & george e smith:
James, while your point regarding the destination of the meltwater from the Sierra Nevada is correct, you still seem to miss George’s point. He does not dispute that the Sierra snowpack will got to California, but instead points out that the vast area of snow shown in one photo lies east of the Sierra Nevada. Any snow out in the Nevada deserts will either evaporate or wind up in a salt lake. (except for the small amount in the Colorado River drainage.) Of the snow west of the Sierra’s divide, a large portion would have melted off just as quickly, only the High Sierra holds snow all winter.
What kind of dumbass presents a single year change as evidence of a trend? Such a small dataset is so beyond useless when discussing climate due to the inherent variability of weather that it’s outright dishonest to even discuss it.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/02/05/cryosat-shows-arctic-sea-ice-volume-up-50-from-last-year/
JohnC says:
May 7, 2014 at 12:08 am
=====================
The discussion is on Sierra snow pack, not Ruby snow pack, White snow pack, etc.
Is anyone able to get through to Believer Barack to tell him there’s twice as much snow on the North Cascades Highway this spring?
http://blogs.seattletimes.com/northwesttraveler/2014/05/07/north-cascades-highway-set-to-reopen-at-noon-thursday
Always have wanted to hear someone say “Houston we have the solution.”
It is easy to call to call the President, any President an idiot. After all, who would want that job?
Weather is famously difficult to predict. A wet year for California you say? Let us hope. You know that too, may be wrong. In 1859 a solar flare of such magnitude occurred that the scale of measurement had to be altered, it was forty times more powerful than previously thought 40X. The new scale has a Z because of one observed event. I just throw that out there to show factors effecting our weather, our temperate climate are unpredictable.
What are you guys doing? Hanging about theorizing, criticizing, backbiting, smug in your own cleverness. I don’t hear any solutions. It appears Houston isn’t the only one with a dumbass problem. They’re everywhere.
@Robert A Dorrough
It is easy to call to call the President, any President an idiot. After all, who would want that job?
Apparently more people want it than have gotten it. By a factor of at least 2-1, and probably 3 or 4-1
Robert a bit harsh, but I can understand. I think by solutions you might aim at altering climate change a la Mann, Gore, the IPCC etc., to stop global warming.(That doesn’t exist either) It is certainly not green energy, or cutting down CO2 emissions that they reckon are causing climate change from purely human activity. Low atmospheric Pollution is another thing, that can be reduced. I do agree that alternative graphs and data offered for appraisal seem to me sometimes a bit pointless, without a conclusion. This global warming and causes is not scientifically correct, but it has become political rather than scientifically based.
I have always thought how can anyone take these scare tactics for real science, when evidence is there to prove the opposite, and why all the fuss about something that is not happening. If anything were to happen that hasn’t in the last 10,000 years considering archaeological and geological research, (excepting we had one MIA during the 14th and mid 19th Century in UK and Europe) would be an impending mini ice age or leading into another glacial episode that will last for thousands of years, change our landscapes and areas of habitation and will effect Northern Hemisphere the most populated hemisphere, more than in the Southern Hemisphere. It won’t be a shortage of fuel, it will be a shortage of food and alteration of warmer summer and spring temperatures that will effect agriculture.
So if any scientist or layman/woman states the planet is warming, are they avoiding the real future crisis that can face humankind? If they have lied about this warming, beside personal financial benefit, there must be a hidden agenda. If I ‘a’ mere BA majoring in archaeology and paleoanthropology could see what Gore was on about and got a Nobel Prize and Academy Award, for something just short of a fraud. Then more scientists must agree his predictions are not even valid, let alone correct. We can’t change weather patterns, solar flares, our orbit, volcanic eruption or ocean tidal patterns.
But their skeptical objections in print,other than books, are going unheard by the MMS and some politicians. If governments have spent collectively trillions of dollars on the say so of biased scientists and organizations, that by avoiding disasterous climate change a la the alarmists, how are they going to explain this to taxpayers when proven very wrong.
Science is on a back foot, and political agendas are being met. At least our new PM, The Hon. Tony Abbott, is starting off by trying to repeal the carbon tax and mining tax (that has produced no funds).but with new Senators in our upper house after July 1st, the Greens and Labor will not hold the balance of power. And getting rid of the Climate commission (headed by Tim Flannery) and clean energy commission whose funds have been stopped.
Any honest climate scientist will state global warming is happening and has been happening since the end of the last ice age, some 17,000+ years ago. We are in an interglacial and it is improbable that any human activity, intentional or otherwise, will be able to prevent the next ice age from occurring.
Global warming, which you have denied exists, comes in two flavors: Naturally occurring and AGW (anthropogenic global warming.) Acceleration of temperature change in the troposphere could be a natural phenomena vis a vis the snowball effect or perhaps it is something organic life contributes to the environment. AGW on the there hand, places responsibility, or blame if you will, on human activity. You haven’t chosen a flavor so, none for you.
One wonders if you will concede atmospheric nuclear weapons testing has had some effect on the environment. I mean, besides you having small traces of cesium, beryllium, strontium and polonium in your body.
Politics aside, I don’t care about politics or economics for that matter, illusionary but somewhat comforting that at least someone has power and the situation is under control. I care about truth. The truth doesn’t care what you believe, it remains unaffected by your perception.
The solution I was referring to was a solution to human stupidity and false beliefs.
Apparently, nothing personal, I’m not going to find it here. Good luck! Keep up the…whatever you’re doing.
To Robert A. Dorrough:
The central issue on GW is not whether it is happening or not. The evidence available from Hadley CRUT is that it has increased by about one degree over the last century and a half, even though that amount is not much, not alarming and not even harmful to human habitat. The central issue is whether or not human activity is to blame in any way for this rise. The evidence for this has to come from examining the pattern of increase over this time period, since there are increases, flat periods, and even downturns in the record. If we compare the last 50 years with the previous fifty, what do we find? We find n o difference either in pattern or amount of increase, none whatsoever, Compare the two graphs side by side and there is nothing to choose between them. If carbon is the guilty player in all this, the second period should have been higher and the curve steeper. Neither was the case, falsifying the theory. When we shift to the wobbly term “Climate change” using the same simple process of comparing two 50-year periods, there is likewise no statistically significant difference regarding storms, floods, droughts, tornadoes, hurricanes, or hurricane intensity. The only difference we will find might be in terms of property losses, easily explained as increased development in vulnerable areas such as desserts and shorelines. These are simple data sets, easily demonstrable and fully open to straightforward statistical analysis, yet Obama is apparently blissfully unaware of them. It drives me crazy!
I sympathize. Politicians are strange parasitic animals tending to latch upon popular opinions, general misconceptions and even superstitions, promoting them as their own thereby benefiting. Conventional wisdom is nothing more than convention, popular opinion is generally wrong and common sense is actually uncommon.
A genius learns from the mistakes of others, the wise from their own and idiots never learn.
There are many genii trying to tell us what to do, very few wise people who know what to do and the majority are idiots who will cling to their misconceptions, even in the face of incontrovertible evidence. It has always been thus. Try not to let it get to you.
The idea of climate change may prove to be a useful misconception for humanity as a whole. It may yet advance critical thinking, scientific understanding, transportation technology, energy efficacy and environmental awareness among unforeseen others. This isn’t the end of the world, it’s still in the beginning phase. We may have as much as 8,000 years before the onset of the next ice age and a billion years before the sun’s intensity drives us from the planet. In the meantime, politicians will continue to take advantage of the ignorance of the masses. Don’t let that change your focus.
Robert, I don’t know how to take your comment. You state the planet has been warming since 17,000 years ago. Might have but we usually state about 12,000 to 8,000 years ago. Sea bridges were swamped between Britain and Continental Europe, the Bering Straights and Bass straights and the bridge between the Torres Straight islands and New Guinea. Well, honest scientists, as you call them have disputed that the planet is still warming, sea levels are not rising and extreme weather events due to human activities and CO2 is untrue. And it is not been unusually warmer than average for the last 17 years, and certainly acknowledge that the Northern Hemisphere suffered a mini ice age from the 14th Century until possibly mid 19th century, well before the industrial revolution in UK and Europe. It has warmed up obviously but expect it to decline rather than increase as it has done in the past. If it doesn’t well we will live a bit longer as a species, as a full glacial period will not be nice. The causation factors and what forces the weather and climate is not human activities, pollution yes.
You may or may not realize that you have painted yourself into a corner with rather broad strokes. My first instinct is to leave you there shouting “dumbass, dumbass” at others. Honest scientists dispute, of course they do, wouldn’t be scientists if they didn’t….that the planet is still warming….It has warmed up obviously but expect…..the future is even more difficult to predict than the weather. The last sentence is somewhat vague. Do you mean that pollution is one of the causation factors effecting the weather and climate or that human activities such as pollution have no effect on the environment? It is clear to me that you will cling to your misconceptions in the face of overwhelming evidence. I respectfully disagree. You may return to your shouting.
You two are using lots of words for something I cannot see on a thermometer!
There are little pictures within the big picture and the light allows us to see the same coin from many angles. Don’t forget to kiss your kids goodnight while these are the best years in the life of mankind.
I didn’t use the phrase ‘dumbass’, it’s not an Australian expression, and I have not been shouting either. I don’t think we will convince you black isn’t white, you are fixated with the so called ‘overwhelming evidence’, that has failed to overwhelm many whose knowledge of climate and weather patterns etc., and CO2 the poisonous gas that we humans are making too much off and changing the climate, is far more scientifically based and factual than your lot. Have fun. But you won’t get much support on this blog.
On second thoughts, folks, Robert is one of those trusting people who would have faith in anyone in authority, as he sees them, without questioning them. Believing anyone in authority or is published is honest. One of the things I was warned about starting university, and other post scholars may agree, ‘Don’t believe everything you read in books, read widely to get a variety of perceptions and opinions and do your own independent research too.’ Anyway good night folks, I am off to bed.
You must have googled me to know so much. Are personal attacks part of your debate strategy or is that just for your sycophants? You can find me on Facebook or Google+. Do you know what you get when you search “bush bunny?” Try it see what you get. You may want to change your alias. I’m not judging, you may well be an anonymous homosexual male who enjoys outdoor sex. I don’t really care. Your position that the climate hasn’t changed, isn’t changing and won’t change seems a little outside reality that’s all. I agree that CO2 isn’t the biggest problem, even if this week we broke the historical all-time high of 400ppm. Oh, I am the authority. I try to be honest and I am open to questions. Good night bushbunny, have fun with your mates.
Andyj, what are you trying to convey. LOL
Robert, I see that you are going total ad hominem on poor bush bunny, but never mind. You have not answered my challenge. Can you cite any statistic that illustrates the presumed fact that there is a human footprint on any climate phenomenon, excepting only the soot particles from unfiltered coal and petroleum burning? How about my 100 year test? What’s the matter with it? Regarding your 400 ppm citation, it happens to be based on the exclusive work of two “scientists,” the father and son team of the Keelings, tested at one grossly unrepresentative spot on the earth’s surface (14,000 feet up on the Island of Hawaii, notable among other things for an ever increasing bustle of CO2-generating human activity. CO2 was measured in 1940 as above 400 ppm, but it was a different researcher using a different method. It was oh so convenient for Keeling Sr to throw out everybody else’s methods and claim his own as truly representative of the entire globe. Even then it is a puzzling fact that Keeling’s “curve” is not much of a curve, deviating hardly at all from linear. How come? and how come the alarmists don’t have the slightest interest in getting a wirkld-wide sampling of actual levels, expensive, perhaps, but panicky western governments are pouring billions into countermeasures for something that may not even be a problem.
Ok, “ronhave” or whoever you are. You and poor bush bunny have differences of opinion and are not presenting a unified argument. That said, I’ll accept your challenge. First, why would you insist on an exemption for soot particles from unfiltered coal and petroleum burning if your datum and belief in it were infallible?
As for your 100 year test, not sure what you’re talking about. A sampling of weather from someplace where the first 50 years is the same as the second 50 years as if that might have anything to do with the next 50 years. That test?
Do you have the name of that mysterious different researcher, any idea what the different method he/she used, I understand it was technology from 1940 but it is impossible to respond to such a generality.
The monitoring station on Mona Loa is part of ERSL and NOAA, I assure you it is not the exclusive work of only two scientists in parenthesis. And yes, the monitoring is being carried out wirkld-wide. And no, it’s not costing billions. Unless your calculations are in Zimbabwe dollars.
Robert, you really seem to be an ad hominem predator, whoever else you are. I happen to be Ronald G. Havelock, Ph.D., former professor of information science at American University and former Program Director and Research Professor at the University of Michigan’s Institute for Social Research. At the Institute we were proud to be empirical and we knew all about statistics
I once taught the subject at Boston University but that was a long time ago. I also devoted more than a chapter of my recent book, “Acceleration: The Forces Driving Human Progress” to the very subject of what science really is and how its emergence has accelerated progress. Thus I am painfully aware that the term “environmental scientist” is an oxymoron, connoting advocacy of one-sided green positions having nothing to do with science, and including, in many cases, deliberate faking and inappropriate merging of data sets to make it appear that there is some kind of emergency where none exists and where supporting data is either weak (as in the case of CO2 increasing) or absent (in the case of there being any unconfounded correlation between CO2 levels and any climatic phenomenon saving plant growth, a good thing) As for the 100 year test, it is simple statistics; that’s all, and I guess you just don’t get it.
Your right, I didn’t get it. Would you please be so kind as to provide a link or restate your 100 year test that I may answer you challenge.
That is the second time you have accused me of ad hominem attacks. Unjustly methinks. I would never answer a logical knowledge-based argument with a personal insult.
Now that I know who you are, where you have been and what you have published I should be able to provide you with a peer reviewed opinion. You do understand that you are out-numbered, surrounded and that this is your Alamo. Very well, I accept your challenge.
Robert I don’t know anything about you, nor have I Googled you, nor attacked you. Your suggestion I could be a homosexual male is rather weird. I think Anthony we have another argumentative troll who is negative attention seeking and picking on me again. Just to ruin this thread.
Seriously? Google bushbunny and click on the first result. As I said before , you may want to change you alias.
[Cut it out. Bushbunny is a recognized, frequent contributor here. Regardless of the meaning you want to assume, further distraction is off-topic. Mod]
Actually Robert, although not shown my gravatar usually has a pic of a Australian pretty (well I think so) long haired lady waving an Akubra hat in a salute. I live in what people call the Australian bush, where we have a lot of rabbits, or bush bunnies. Actually where I live is a regional NSW town, not exactly in the bush, but surrounded by many deciduous trees and two cathedrals, and a very nice university. And besides education we are the centre of fine wool and beef cattle, and other crops, except wheat or cereals, so buzz off back to quagmire where you can happily spit insults to women as no one hears you.
The bush bunny INSULT as you called to everyone’s attention and advised to change my gravatar (screen name) because of it was not just overtly sexist I was gravely suspicious of your intentions and overall mentality. It was unnecessary to the topic of this thread, I note you are not involved in other threads.
The 100 year test. Do it yourself.
http://processtrends.com/images/RClimate_SST_A_latest.png
I am clumsy with posting connections. I could copy the graph onto my computer, but not then on to this list. Look up Climate charts and graphs and go to “Monthly Global SST Anomaly Trends (1/1880- Feb, 2014)”, then slice the graph at 1964 and 1914. Then compare the two graphs. Can you tell which is which? If not, then what is the new CO2 contribution to global warming over the last 50 years outside of natural forces? The answer is clear: nothing measurable.
I suggest that any skeptics (pardon me “deniers”) provide this graphic test to their friends and neighbors who want to laugh them down as crackpots.
But, oh, I forgot, it is not global warming any more, but “climate change.” OK, apply the same test. Last 50 versus previous 50. There are records for all of these. Which climate thing do you want to take: hurricanes? tornadoes? floods? Good luck!
I thank you, sir. I understand that we all have our shortcomings. “To err is human” as they say, usually misattributed to Shakespeare, you can challenge anyone to try to find it there. Poor Richard’s might be a better place to look for the quote.
I would request more time as this is not my general focus. Be assured I shall answer your skepticism with reasoned criticism. One can only hope your position is the correct one and everyone else is wrong. A scientific debate cannot be allowed to devolve into a semantical argument. Having political or philosophical differences will not change cold hard data. Again you’ll be hearing from me soon not geological or astrological time soon, but soon.