Thursday, February 11, 2010

Snow and "Global Warming"


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Massive snowfall always leads to three things. Nationwide cancellation of air travel, spontaneous snow ball fighting, and inevitably, the drudging up of the old question: "whatever happened to global warming?"

Climate change deniers love snow. It's like Christmas in February. Because it gives them a chance to take the "global warming" misnomer literally, and put the onus on scientists to explain the fluffy white flakes out of existence. Luckily for scientists, such an onus is unnecessary. Because despite what the wingnuts may believe, increased snowfall is exactly what is to be expected if climate change is really taking effect... At least for a while.

Because aside from the fact that no single weather event can be blamed solely on climate change, extreme weather on either end of the spectrum is only going to get more frequent as our planet warms. This is because warmer global temperatures overall result in higher ocean temperatures. Hotter oceans lead to increased evaporation. And more evaporation leads to higher levels of moisture in the air, which lead to—you guessed it—increased precipitation.

And until the planet has heated to the point that it never drops below zero degrees Celsius—at which point snow will become a distant memory—these events can all be expected to cause extremely heavy snowfall in the winter.

The scientists are explaining all of this, of course. And patiently too, I might add. But that won't stop them from having to do it again the next time it snows in New York. Which will probably be in about five minutes.

- Brit Trogen


1 comment:

  1. I love the use of the word 'denier' here. You guys are hilarious!! There is no denial by the so called 'sceptical' crowd. The use of the word 'denier' is an intentional mis-representation by the warmologists and those who actually don't know what they're talking about.

    I am an environmental scientist and earth scientist with past experience in consulting to the public and private sector on climate change policy and carbon financial models and greenhouse inventories. Even today, I still am working on climate change adapation and carbon inventory development for my employer, and still got my head immersed in the observational science.

    Us educated scientific sceptics aren't 'denying' anything - climate has always changed, and yes we've had a warm 30 years (its not unusual at all, particularly if you look at the temp record over the past 1000 years), and yes environmental changes are occurring, but it has nothing to do with CO2. Yes, human activity on a regional scale does influence climate (land clearance, major hydrological changes (eg. Aral Sea), pollution (the Asian Haze) and desertification (dust particulates etc.), but CO2 is just about inconsquential. At best it might have a 0.1c influence. And we plan to re-work and risk the global economy on this?!

    I was a former 'believer' too, almost a borderline 'activist' - the guise of CO2 as a primary driver of climate kept me dutifully employed, kept me busy, kept me feeling important and based on data at the time (mid-late 1990s) I could see the hypotheses fitting the observations. But as the claims became more sensationalist, and as the disparity between predictions and actuality widened, I started to question the validity of the theory. Needless to say, Ive swung 180 degrees and am a staunch critic of the CO2>climate link hypotheses. In fact, I can confidently discount it outright based on observational science. Data obtained over the past decade, in particular the past 3-4 years has shown me with almost no doubt that CO2 (especially the anthropogenic component) is not a driver of global climate.

    I can point you to dozens of observational scientific facts that destroy the theory outright, but three key evidential facts coming to light in recent years prove the theory debunked.

    1. For the CO2 theory to be correct, we need to see tropospheric warming in equatorial regions of approx. a 0.3c temp rise. Satellite observations show an actually -0.05c decrease!
    2. For the CO2 theory to be correct, out going long-wave radiation (OLR), needs to decrease as CO2 rises. The opposite (NOAA data vs. Manua Loa CO2 records) is actually occurring!
    3. For the CO2 theory to be correct, a positive feedback from water vapour needs to be evident. Very recent observational data from the NASA Aqua satellites confirm otherwise. Negative feedback is occurring.

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