Guest essay by Eric Worrall
Must be Christmas, time for the traditional MSM stories about climate change melting Santa’s home in the Arctic.
Climate change in Lapland: The impact of global warming in the land of Santa Claus
Environmental changes in the far north are having disastrous effects on the region’s indigenous people and tourism industry
Josh Gabbatiss Science Correspondent Saturday 23 December 2017 16:24 GMT
Lapland occupies a happy space in the popular imagination as a winter wonderland, occupied by reindeer, elves and Father Christmas.
The real life Lapland, however, is increasingly facing up to the grim reality of global warming.
Research has revealed the disproportionate impact of climate change in the Arctic, where temperatures are currently rising at double the rate of the global average.
The far north is bearing the brunt of global warming, and, as much of Lapland’s population relies on its polar climate for their livelihoods, the effects are starting to be felt.
…
The Irish Times is worried about the impact of melting snow on sled transport;
Global warming puts Santa’s delivery system at risk
John FitzGerald: Have Eircodes made Santa’s job easier? And other bah humbug observations
Fri, Dec 22, 2017, 06:00
It is proving extremely difficult in the aviation sector to find technological solutions to greenhouse gas emissions that influence climate change. As a result, flying may be the last sector staying with fossil fuels.
However, Christmas each year tests an alternative approach. The sleigh driven by Santa Claus is powered by nine reindeer. Like cows, reindeer are ruminants: when they digest grass and lichen, they emit methane gas. Unfortunately this is a very powerful greenhouse gas. On the face of it, this would appear to be a black mark against reindeer-powered sleighs.
However, we should also consider how much greenhouse gas is emitted per tonne of payload per kilometre travelled, and how that might compare with alternative modes of travel. Given that the sleigh is believed to traverse the entire globe over the course of just one night, the number of kilometres travelled is very high.
…
But maybe the best Christmas gift of all for today’s and tomorrow’s children could be effective action to tackle climate change through implementing the Paris Agreement. May all our North Pole Christmases be white.
Happy Christmas!
Not to be outdone, the Canadian Government thinks Santa will have to move to Antarctica because all the snow is melting.
Santa is moving to the South Pole
What?
Thanks to rising global temperatures, rapidly melting Arctic ice and growing human operations in the North, Santa Claus has signed an agreement with the International community to relocate his village next year to operate in an exclusive zone in the South Pole.
So What?
Santa’s relocation agreement marks the first time that the international community agrees on a common legal definition of climate change that includes refugees as corporations, as well as individuals. This deal is expected to lead to the deployment of a global climate change refugee visa system that in the near future could help to more easily relocate individuals and corporations facing the impacts of climate change.
…
Read more: http://www.horizons.gc.ca/en/content/santa-is-moving-to-the-south-pole
For once its not all misery. Grand Canyon News finds hope in Christmas, with a theory that believing in Santa may help kids develop the imagination to solve climate change.
Yes, Virginia, there really is a Santa Claus, and he’s calling you
GRAND CANYON — Think there’s almost a conspiracy out there to squelch your child’s belief in Santa Claus?
Technology can help you fight back.
For years the big guy in red has had to contend with aggressive pushback from the PC crowd who apparently wish he’d just pack up his sleigh and stay home in the North Pole. Department stores were pressured to nix their Santa stand-ins. Schools changed their calendars to say “winter holidays” instead of Christmas.
And let’s not even talk about the damage done to his image by Billy Bob Thornton’s “Bad Santa” movies.
Santa, being Santa, could keep right on ho-ho-hoing when lesser immortals would’ve sicked their elves on them.
But you?
Clearly, just quoting pro-Santa experts like Professor Jacqueline Woolley, chair of the Psychology Department at the University of Texas at Austin, wasn’t going to cut it.
“Believing in impossible beings such as Santa Claus may exercise children’s counterfactual reasoning skills,” she’s written. “The kind of thinking involved in imagining how nine reindeer could fly through the sky carrying a heavy sleigh may well be the same kind of thinking required for imagining a solution to global warming or a way to cure a disease.”
…
Read more: https://www.grandcanyonnews.com/news/2017/dec/19/yes-virginia-there-really-santa-claus-and-hes-call/
Despite these stories, this year’s effort to weave Santa into the Global Warming myth seems somehow more subdued than previous years. Perhaps heavy snowfall in the North is making it more difficult to believe in the climate ice melt fairy.
Merry Christmas from Australia.
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Silly season 🙂
Merry Christmas all 🤪
“The real life Lapland, however, is increasingly facing up to the grim reality of global warming.”
I would think that anyone who has to live in the “grim reality” of being in a frozen environment for most of the year would be very glad to see a bit of “disproportionate warming”.
It is typical of this kind of disingenuous zealotry BS that they totally ignore the hard reality of life that these people are living and pretend that are worried about seeing slightly less harsh conditions
My ageing mum lives in the UK and she would love to have to be ” facing up to the grim reality of global warming.”
It is a reflection of how detached from reality these idiots are that they can write something like that without realising how absurd and laughable it actually sounds.
… imagining that human induced climate change is a real problem.
The real life in Lapland is that reindeer is considered cash. To the extent that they call the people of south rude when they innocently ask how many reindeer a local has.
Why cash? Because reindeer meat in freaking expensive due to high demand and impossibility to establish farms in the south. In the north, all forest and duoddar is feeding reindeer. They come and stampede everything. In the south, you can’t do that.
Silly season 🤪
Merry Christmas all ☃️
HoHoHo
Who’s to say that Santa wont change his gender and pimp out his reindeer at a new animal brothel in Germany, affectionately called the North Pole.
Merry Christmas Eric, thank you for your tireless work against the forces of darkness…
Sorry……………. double post.
It’s OK – can’t say Merry Christmas enough. And a very Merry Christmas to you and yours, and a happy, rational 2018.
from “warnings” about a scorching xmas for aus we now have??? err a bit nippy out at 8c down the southeast.
Merry Xmas to all;-0
Yes, I woke to 17F temperatures, and now I have to decide whether or not to take in the stray calico who has been sponging off of me for two weeks. She’s ear-tipped, so someone else may be feeding her, too, but being out in this extraordinarily HOT winter weather (may go down to -1F tomorrow night) is not something I would wish on a street hobo living on lower Wacker Drive in Chicago.
Well, even the hobos are going to have to “face up to the grim reality of global warming”. It’s likely to have a negative effect on their begging revenues. I’m sure they are praying for less “carbon” emissions, just like the laplanders.
Christmas cheer to those down-under, from up-over.
I wouldn’t want any elves to be sick on me, either…
Well, in Kautokeino in the Norwegian part of Lapland the temperature is 23 centigrades below zero this afternoon…
Disaster! It should be 24 below! We should spend trillions of our children’s money to fix it!
Oh, the “grim reality of global warming” !
Inari in Finland is also screaming hot today. Those poor bastards are frying. If only we could levy more tax on CO2 and make things right!
Poor reindeer. We’ll soon need to revert to horse meat. The law limits the number of reindeer in Finland to 203,700. In addition to those, more than 70,000 reindeer are put to pot every year. Using a linear approximation, reindeer in extirpated in the next three years. One reindeer is about 20kg and €20/kg. (Though I’d use dimensional unit e/kg.) That is, €400 per reindeer trunk and the whole market is more than 20Me. But I really rather take a wurst with some horse in. The reindeer is too dear.
s/in extirpated in/will be extirpated in/g
The propaganda campaign continues. Meanwhile, I was shocked to find that Thomas the Tank Engine promotes fascism and misogyny. I didn’t see any mention that he also promotes burning coal, but you can add that to reasons to keep the kids from watching.
The Fat Controller looks remarkably like Kim Jong Un. Perhaps Thomas should go nuclear.
Yes, I think Santa will shave his beard, put on a red dress and open an animal brothel in Germany as Madam Claus.
You forgot the sex reassignment surgery.
It’s already complete but he has not “come out” yet. There a healthy pair of tits hidden under all that padded clothing.
Santa Nicola. Though the elven version would be just Madam Yule.
Oh, unbeknownst to me, there is Mrs. Claus in the wiktionary….
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Mrs._Claus
Looking at the current snow depth map for the NH. lt looks like large parts of Lapland are currently enjoying above average snow depths. So it looks like Santa and the tourists will be getting a white Christmas after all.
Never let facts obscure a story
The way this all works is you pick an area almost no one ever visits (the Arctic) that has almost no weather stations, then you make up any story you like.
Between two and three feet just now which is fairly average:
https://www.smhi.se/vadret/vadret-i-sverige/snodjup
The climate at Lapland (covering the northen parts of Norway, Sweden, Finnland and NW corner of Russia, eq. North Fennoscandia), like the rest of Scandinavia are depending on the direction of the Gulf Stream. Without the present direction, we would have the same cold climate as the rest of the Taiga belt.
Rather extension called https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Atlantic_Current
First of all, Merry Christmas to one and all. Happy Hanukkah, if it’s still going on. I forgot to ask my Jewish sister (she’s a convert) when it starts and stops this year, but Happy Hannukah, anyway. And happy Yuletide to any Pagans out in the fringes, or Saturnalia if you follow Roman customs.
Second, if the scare mongering doesn’t stop, the people who do it are going to get the same reaction as the kid who hollered “WOLF!” to get attention. At some point, the attention-grabbing and glory-hounding becomes ridiculous. Their credibility is eroding, bit by bit. My Christmas wish for them is that they have a harsh wake-up call.
We celebrated the solstice.
If you ignore Xmas long enough, it goes away of is own accord.
Baa Humbug to all (:-))
But how long does one have to ignore it? I’ve tried for decades. Still mad at the Grinch for giving the presents back…..Baa Humbag, agreed.
Sheep go baa.….
: > )
Juan: Weren’t there sheep involved somewhere in this whole Christmas thing?
“Juan: Weren’t there sheep involved somewhere in this whole Christmas thing?”
Well I’m currently marinating a large leg of lamb for roasting tomorrow, so the data would indicate that at least one is this year.
Totally agree. A merry Bah Humbug to you too.
Are going to? They already have cried 11000 X too much! 🎅
Merry Christmas to all from Nova Scotia Canada.
As a government geologist I retired after 35 years so may now comment on the site without fear. Decided to go lobster fishing for a change.
Merry Christmas – a geologist from Nova Scotia?
What can you tell us about the Canso Causeway that connects Nova Scotia to Cape Breton? An engineering marvel, environmental scourge, or some of each?
“The causeway is 1,385 metres long, and fills the Canso Strait to a depth of 65 metres (213 ft) making it the deepest causeway in the world. Its crown is 40 m (130 ft) wide and its base is 244 m (800 ft) wide, and its construction required just over 10 million tons of rock for its construction.”
Yup, very deep, lots of stone but they didn’t have to haul it far. Simply blew the side of the mountain and rolled it down into the hole. Big stone but it still moves and has to be refilled along the sides. Also it wasn’t placed, just kept dumping until it showed up above the water so lots of voids. The lobsters just love it. However the scar on the mountain isn’t very pretty… wouldn’t be allowed today. It is now the site of a deep water quarry shipping multi-millions of tonnes of aggregate south along the eastern seaboard of the US, into the Gulf area and also into the Caribbean. They quarry behind the face and conveyor it to the face where it is dumped down over the face, screened at the base into stockpiles and then conveyorred into the ships that pull up to the base of the mountain, also ice free.
A second deep water quarry is planned south along the shoreline. If I remember correctly it will process a medium to fine grained granite. Can’t remember the name but I think it is one of the big Florida area companies.
Philip Finck (I know this response is days later)
Thank you for the informative reply, I remember learning a little about it when we drove across it. “Wouldn’t be allowed today”, is what I was thinking. Dumping rock to fill a 200 ft deep tidal channel seems like a daunting task, and “lobsters love it” is a nice reminder.
‘Double the rate of the global average’ – so, around .025 C per decade?
Sorry, meant .1 C per decade.
The key point is the scary “Double the rate of global average”… and not being very clear that that 50%(!) is .025C of which in the context of The Arctic is still very much below freezing for this time of year! But as has been stated previously, it’s all about the spin.
Anyway, Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to one and all. Wishing you all a prosperous and safe 2018!
AussieBear.
There is actually temperature data back to 1802 from Tornio/Haparanda and the temperature has gone up about 2 degrees, so about 0.1 degrees/decade. The rise mostly happened in two steps 1800-1820 (much milder winters) and 1920-1940 (warmer summers).
No need to be concerned.
In 1600 Vatican convicts scholar and philosopher, mathematician and cosmological theorist Giordano Bruno to death, in order to burn him alive few days later at Campo de’ Fiori in Rome. Bruno is known for his cosmological theories, which conceptually extended the then new Copernican model. He proposed that the stars were just distant suns surrounded by their own planets.
This brutality didn’t please the heavenly powers to be, hence they decided that forever more the science wins over dogma.
So what’s this got to do with Christmas?
As all of us know that Saint Nicholas, long associated with Christmas, also the patron saint of ships and sailors and round world navigators, ensured that Santa and his reindeers of Lapland have accurate and up to date information for the sextant (measure the angle between an sun and the horizon) and compass (instrument containing a magnetic needle which shows the direction of magnetic north) both used for the purposes of his navigation around the globe at Christmas Eve.
http://www.vukcevic.talktalk.net/Lapland.gif
The above diagram shows data how the Earth’s geomagnetic field (GMF) is affected by solar activity. Note that there is one solar magnetic cycle of 22 years delay in the GMF’s tracking of the solar activity as expressed by the sunspot group number (SGN).
This information is essential for Santa’s compass navigation.
Merry Christmas to all.
Those magnetic compasses are a great idea, but the North magnetic pole moves. About two years ago, our local airport repainted the runways from 1-19 to 2-20. (The runway number is the runway magnetic direction to the nearest 5 degrees.) Yes, our area is subject to seismic movement, but we haven’t had a really big quake in a long while [knocking wood], so I think it’s the pole movement. Or the FAA got it wrong to start with, and corrected the error. But an awful lot of charts needed reprinting.
Absolutely.
Santa Claus plans his Christmas journey months in advance, but by time he departs the magnetic pole has moved so he needs to correct compass bearings and for that purpose he uses the recent solar activity data.
However, in his free time he turns up here at WUWT and many science conferences teaching solar science to the misguided and badly informed.
Merry Christmas doc and thank you for all good work.
Vukcevic at !0:AM
Is Dr. Svalgaard’s presentation upcoming or is it something from the past?
juanslayton
K6IGF
hi
the above poster was published on 13 March 2017 on the Stanford’s website
https://w6yx.stanford.edu/index.php?start=4
so presumably it is something from earlier this year.
Missed it, bummer!
But is it all real? A little girl put the question to a newspaper.
Dear Editor,
I am 8 years old. Some of my little friends say there is no Santa Claus. Papa says, “If you see it in The Sun, it’s so.”
Please tell me the truth, is there a Santa Claus?
Virginia O’Hanlon
115 West Ninety-Fifth Street
{The Answer}
Virginia, your little friends are wrong.
They have been affected by the skepticism of a skeptical age. They do not believe except what they see. They think that nothing can be which is not comprehensible by their little minds. All minds, Virginia, whether they be men’s or children’s, are little.
In this great universe of ours, man is a mere insect, an ant, in his intellect as compared with the boundless world about him, as measured by the intelligence capable of grasping the whole of truth and knowledge.
Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus. He exists as certainly as love and generosity and devotion exist, and you know that they abound and give to your life its highest beauty and joy.
Alas! How dreary would be the world if there were no Santa Claus! It would be as dreary as if there were no Virginias.
There would be no childlike faith then, no poetry, no romance to make tolerable this existence. We should have no enjoyment, except in sense and sight. The external light with which childhood fills the world would be extinguished.
Not believe in Santa Claus! You might as well not believe in fairies. You might get your papa to hire men to watch in all the chimneys on Christmas eve to catch Santa Claus, but even if you did not see Santa Claus coming down, what would that prove? Nobody sees Santa Claus, but that is no sign that there is no Santa Claus.
The most real things in the world are those that neither children nor men can see. Did you ever see fairies dancing on the lawn? Of course not, but that’s no proof that they are not there.
Nobody can conceive or imagine all the wonders there are unseen and unseeable in the world. You tear apart the baby’s rattle and see what makes the noise inside, but there is a veil covering the unseen world which not the strongest man, nor even the united strength of all the strongest men that ever lived could tear apart.
Only faith, poetry, love, romance, can push aside that curtain and view and picture the supernal beauty and glory beyond. Is it all real? Ah, Virginia, in all this world there is nothing else real and abiding.
No Santa Claus! Thank God he lives and lives forever. A thousand years from now, Virginia, nay ten times ten thousand years from now, he will continue to make glad the heart of childhood.
Merry Christmas, all.
Dear Virginia. Of course Santa does exist. If he didn’t he would not come with presents for you, would he? Would you want that?
“Santa” doesn’t bring presents—the Salvation Army, the Marine Corps and a ton of other fully advertised ad nauseum on TV for a month bring presents. Add to that the reality that no matter how bad a kid is, he gets presents, I am amazed this myth still lives. (Signed, the Grinch)
Still remember the Christmas that Santa brought me a sock full of coal (some good PA anthracite) probably about 52-53. Been pretty much a bah hum bugger ever since.
jvcstone @ur momisugly 1:37 pm
Anyone ought to be thrilled to get a nice chunk of Rainbow Anthracite/Peacock Coal.
Wouldn’t it be a marvelous Christmas present to all if our media could start to write with this eloquence and care?
But they do!
(This is going to sound harsh.) They write and speak to deceive the innocent and gullible into believing and voting for what and who they want.
They try to manipulate the masses (mobs?) as if they were kids.
That editor way back then was being kind to a child.
What they do now is not being kind to anyone.
My daughter called last night from Ft. Collins, CO to inform me that a gift from Amazon arrived despite the blizzard conditions on going—-no doubt there will be a White Christmas there. My great grand children will have fresh powder if they are able to make it to the ski slope.
Merry Christmas to all and God Bless you all.
This article made “The List”
Slimate Clience Nonsense; “The List” Continued
https://co2islife.wordpress.com/2017/11/26/slimate-clience-nonsense-the-list-continued/
Merry Christmas. There was frost this morning in suburban Austin TX, but it is entirely ordinary weather for this time of year.
Ok, with the Canadian government officially announcing this year that Santa has had to move his operations to the S. Pole because of human caused climate change it is time to once again dispel this notion with the facts. Like the claim of catastrophic human caused climate change this is just bunk.
An examination of the facts reveals this:
Santa has an Army of Elves that serve his needs.
He has transportation that rivals anything known to man that is so fast and nimble that it can circle the globe in 24 hours making billions of stops. It has stealth and STOL and all weather capability unmatched by anything we mere mortals have ever developed or seen.
Santa has an unrivaled intel network and remote sensing capability that is the envy of the intel and military organizations of every nation on this planet. He has to in order to know who has been naughty and nice.
He is the absolute master of clandestine operations, having the ability to ingress and egress leaving only his calling cards of presents and empty milk glasses and cookie plates to mark his passing and he can do this at even the most secure locations we mortals can devise.
In short Santa has capabilities not even attributed to extraterrestrials that many believe are visiting us and monitoring us.
And still we have these fools that claim such a being is going to be bothered by the weather?
Oh! And BTW. Merry Christmas to you all. Even those that don’t believe.
RAH,
Re: “…In short Santa has capabilities not even attributed to extraterrestrials that many believe are visiting us and monitoring us….”
Santa IS an ET!
I got this straight from Big Foot… well, actually, his sister (whom I married).
RAH – “Santa has had to move his operations. Child, are you in trouble! The correct statement is “Santa has had to move their operations•.
Note that I had to change a previously commonly used expression, because “B*y” is now a prohibited word.
Have a happy Dec 25, everyone, while you still can. Happiness hasn’t been prohibited yet, but they are workong on it.
Well Santa is moving operations, that much is true, but it’s not because of the weather. It’s the Canadian tax hikes.
Speaking only for myself, I loath hot weather, but I could somehow tolerate a few degrees more warmth in Winter. It is currently 27F (-3C) in Northwest VT which will be the high for the day probably. We have 8 inches of snow on the ground and 4 to 8 more due tonight and tomorrow. Then it gets cold. NWS says the HIGH Thursday will be 1F (-17C).
I suspect that Caribou probably feel much the same way.
Question for Don (and everyone else)
What is the difference between Caribou and Reindeer?
Caribou can’t fly.
And for John FitzGerald
There aren’t 9 reindeer, only two.
Rudolph and Olive.
(Olive, the other reindeer ….)
Sorry.
Merry Christmas anyway.
Reindeer are domesticated.
Somebody should have told de Havilland Canada that Caribou can’t fly…
Steve,
Reindeer are both wild and tame. If it’s in Eurasia, it’s a reindeer; if in North America, it’s a caribou. Same species, Rangifer tarandus .
The Taymyr herd of migrating tundra reindeer (R. t. sibiricus) in Siberia is the largest wild reindeer herd in the world (including caribou herds), with numbers varying between 400,000 and a million.
Dear Mods.
Why is my inoffensive, factual comment on reindeer in moderation, and why did I need to post it three times for it even to get that far?
As a last resort one could just feed the reindeer to the starving polar bears.
A story about a bloke who is not, flying deer that do not and the north pole where they are not. And the MSM think we take them serious? What about the 300000 or more tourists who are purportedly flying in to see the fairy tale, what about all those airmiles? Why doesn’t the Independent draw the logical conclusion from their own delusions and identify those visitors as the root of the problem?
Er, it’s Christmas Eve, not 1st April.
A Merry Christmas to all (rational people)
“Not to be outdone, the Canadian Government thinks Santa will have to move to Antarctica because all the snow is melting.”
And it is worse that that….
Here in Canada it seems that belief in Santa and the Easter Bunny is mandatory. Young foster children were abruptly removed because foster parents did not actively promote the existence of Santa Claus or the Easter Bunny.
https://www.pressreader.com/canada/edmonton-sun/20171221/281479276777985
“. . . did not actively promote . . . ” Retail sales?
The article says the kids should be allowed to believe in magic as long as possible. That explains Canada’s belief in global warming, doesn’t it?
Greetings and Merry Christmas from Sodankylä, which is located in central Finnish Lapland. As I’m writing this, the outside temperature is -27 Celsius. We have about 50 cm thick layer of snow. This November and December have been quite normal according to my experiece of about 60 years here in Lapland.
Finnish Meteorological Institute (FMI) has its longest serving weather station in Sodankylä. I downloaded the monthly average temperatures, put them into excel and calculated the mean monthly temperature of central Lapland. And guess what the linear regression trends show? There has been a warming trend of -0,001
degrees Celsius per year between 1922 and 2016. I think it might point to a slight cooling. The warmest winter was in 2006/2007 (DJF) with a mean temperature of -7,4 C. The second warmest was in 1924 (-7,5 C).
It was a Festivus for the rest of us.
The traditional airing of grievances will now commence.