Global Warming

[Soldier4Christ]

There is snow in the forecast for tonight as far south as Springfield, IL and maybe further south than that.

[Soldier4Christ]

 Blizzard pounds South Dakota
20-foot snowdrifts reported
Now moving eastward

   
With snow coming down at the rate of 3 inches per hour, an early winter blizzard has already dropped 45.7 inches of snow near Deadwood, in the northern Black Hills. Many areas have received 10 inches to 2 feet of snow, and 20-foot snowdrifts have been reported on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in the southwestern corner of the state. 

Officials closed a long stretch of Interstate 90 through South Dakota where dozens of vehicles were trapped, some for more than 24 hours. Search teams can't get to them because of zero visibility.

Top speed for some rescue crews was as little as a half-mile per hour, said Tom Dravland, state Public Safety secretary

"We got 4-foot drifts in some places," said Terry Sarlsland, street superintendent in Bowman, N.D

Officials warned that the storm will keep causing problems as it moves eastward today.

[Soldier4Christ]

 Antarctic Ice Sheet growing enough
to lower sea levels

Arctic Sea Ice Growing at Fastest Rate
in Recorded History

An abnormally cool Arctic is seeing dramatic changes to ice levels. The total amount of ice, which set a record low last year, grew in October at the fastest pace since record-keeping began in 1979, bringing ice back to levels from the 1980s.

Some researchers, not surprisingly, say the rapid increase is "no big deal". While admitting that the Arctic has certainly been colder in recent months, they say the long-term decrease is still ongoing and see nothing in the recent data to contradict predictions of global warming.

Others aren't so sure. Dr. Patrick Michaels, Professor of Environmental Science at the University of Virginia, says he sees some "very odd" things occurring in recent years. The Southern Hemisphere can't be explained by current theory, says Michaels. "The models predict a warming ocean around Antarctica, so why would we see more sea ice?" Large areas of the Southern Pacific are showing cooling trends, an occurrence not anticipated by any current climate model, Michaels adds.

On average, ice covers roughly 7% of the ocean surface of the planet. Sea ice is floating and therefore doesn't affect sea level like the ice anchored on bedrock in Antarctica or Greenland. However, research has indicated that the Antarctic continent -- which is on a long-term cooling trend -- has also been gaining ice in recent years.


           Did you catch that? “The Antarctic continent -- which  is on a
           long-term cooling trend – has also been gaining ice in recent
           years.” Where are the breathless headlines in the world's news-
           papers announcing this fact?

[Soldier4Christ]

Utah ski resort opens early as 46 inches
of snow piles up! --
'Second-earliest start in 38 years'

Tuesday's snowstorm kicked off a five-day accumulation that has reached about 46 inches of snow, allowing Snowbird Ski Resort to open Friday, the second-earliest start in the resort's 38-year history. The resort didn't open until Nov. 28 last year.

Snowbird is the only resort open so far, giving skiers and snowboarders a head start on the season. Most resorts typically open after Thanksgiving.

The Aerial Tram, as well as the Gadzoom and Mid-Gad lifts, were open on Friday and open terrain included Regulator Johnson from the top of Hidden Peak, as well as Big Emma and Bassackwards.

[HisDaughter]

They'll ignore it though unless it makes them money.  Amazing that greed can figure out a way to make money on the weather!

[Soldier4Christ]

Rain, snow halts North Dakota row crop harvest

Fargo, North Dakota - The Agriculture Department says rain and snow halted row crop harvest progress, and added that some farmers don't expect to get back into the field until next spring because of heavy snow and rain last week.

The agency says the corn harvest was 23 percent complete, compared with 88 percent last year and the long-term average of 81 percent.


2008 Temperatures Below Normal Most of USA. See map:

http://www.iceagenow.com/2008_Temps_Below_Normal.htm

[Soldier4Christ]

Flooding closes Mount Rainier National Park

Mount Rainier National Park has closed because of flooding. Heavy rain caused a creek to flow over Nisqually Road, the main road in the southwest corner of the park.

Park Superintendent Dave Uberuaga announced the closure this morning after Kautz Creek overflowed, covering the road with more than six inches of water and making travel unsafe.

The park is closed at the Nisqually entrance (roads on the east and northwest sides of the park already are closed for the winter season), meaning there is no access to the popular Paradise visitor area on the mountain's south side or the National Park Inn at Longmire. The park is anticipating continued heavy rain today with a snow level of 9,000 feet.

Mount Rainier National Park suffered extensive flood in November 2006, including at Kautz Creek. "We hope this current flooding will not damage the road and we will be able to reopen as soon as the rain tapers off and the water level drops," said Uberuaga.

A rain storm has filled Western Washington rivers again and the National Weather Service is warning of flooding.

East of the Cascades, forecasters say the storm Wednesday also will bring heavy rain and winds.

The flood warnings include the Skagit River reaching some residential areas around Mount Vernon and the Snohomish River overtopping levees near Snohomish. In most cases Western Washington flooding covers pastures and low-lying roads.

Other rivers with warnings include the Satsop, Nooksack, Stillaguamish, Skykomish, Tolt, Snoqualmie, Cedar, Carbon, Puyallup and Deschutes.

After earlier rain this month, most soils in Western Washington are saturated and the National Weather Service says there's a risk of landslides.

[Soldier4Christ]

Blogger Again Finds Error in NASA Climate Data


GISS’s October Data. The large reddish-brown area in Russia is actually September readings.  Amateur team finds NASA error similar to one they discovered a year ago.NASA’S Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) is one of the world’s primary sources for climate data. GISS issues regular updates on world temperatures based on their analysis of temperature readings from thousands of monitoring stations over the globe. GISS� most recent data release originally reported last October as being extraordinarily warm-- a full 0.78C above normal. This would have made it the warmest October on record; a huge increase over the previous month’s data.

Those results set off alarm bells with Steve McIntyre and his gang of Baker Street irregulars at Climateaudit.org. They noted that NASA’s data didn’t agree at all with the satellite temperature record, which showed October to be very mild, continuing the same trend of slight cooling that has persisted since 1998. So they dug a little deeper. McKintyre, the same man who found errors last year in GISS’s US temperature record, quickly noted that most of the temperature increase was coming from Russia. A chart of world temperatures showed that in October, most of Russia, the largest nation on Earth, was not only registering hot, but literally off the scale.

Yet anecdotal reports were suggesting that October was actually slightly colder than normal. Could there be another error in GISS’s data? An alert reader on McKintyre’s blog revealed that there was a very large problem. Looking at the actual readings from individual stations in Russia showed a curious anomaly. The locations had all been assigned the exact temperatures from a month earlier-- the much warmer month of September. Russia cools very rapidly in the fall months, so recycling the data from the earlier month had led to a massive temperature increase. A few locations in Ireland were also found to be using September data. Steve McKintyre informed GISS of the error by email.

According to McKintyre, there was no response, but within “about an hour”, GISS pulled down the erroneous data, citing a “mishap” and pointing the finger of blame upstream to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Adminstration (NOAA). NOAA’s Deputy Director of Communications, Scott Smullens, tells DailyTech that NOAA is responsible only for temperature readings in the US, not those in other nations.The error not only affected October data, but due to the complex algorithm GISS uses to convert actual temperature readings into their output results, altered the previously published values for several other months as well. The values for August 2008, for instance, changed by 0.11C and the global anomaly as far back as 2005 increased by a hundredth of a degree.

GISS is run by Dr. James Hansen, a strident global warming advocate who has accused oil companies of “crimes against humanity”.  Hansen recently made headlines when he travelled to London to testify on behalf of a group of environmentalists who had damaged a coal plant in protest against global warming. Hansen also serves as science advisor to Al Gore. Dr. Hansen could not be reached for comment.

Another government employee that needs to be charged with “crimes against humanity” right along with Gore and many other environmentalists.

[Soldier4Christ]

Record snowfall in Europe and North America -
ski resorts open early

A series of snowstorms since early November in North America and late October in Europe has enabled several ski resorts to open ahead of schedule.

The Italian resort of Bormio opened a month early after heavy snowfalls at the end of October and start of November delivered 50 inches to the resort's upper slopes.

Hintertux, in Austria, already boasting 60 inches of snow, expects a further 30 inches over the next few days. Obergurgl, which expects 25 inches of snow midweek, is set to open on Friday.

In Switzerland, Zermatt already has more than two metres of snow on its upper slopes, while Saas Fee has 75 inches. Both resorts expect a further 20 inches this week.

More heavy snow is forecast for many resorts across Austria, Switzerland and Italy this week.

Geilo, in Norway, has also opened three weeks early with a 25-inch base.

The Scottish resorts of Cairngorm and The Lecht have seen some early flurries and were briefly open at the start of November.   

The U.S. resort of Snowbird, in Utah, opened last Friday - the second earliest start in the resort's 38-year history - after 35 inches of snow over the weekend. Parts of America's west coast has received significant snowfalls recently and it looks like mid-winter rather than autumn in many resorts,' said a spokesman for the Ski Club of Great Britain.

Other resorts to open early include Mammoth, in California, which opened 10 days early. Skiers who headed to its slopes last weekend were rewarded with 15ins of fresh powder.

Mount Norquay, in Canada - part of Banff's Big Three ski area, along with Lake Louise and Sunshine Village - opened almost three weeks early.   

[Soldier4Christ]

British newspaper publishes prediction
of coming ice age

“Scientists now say global warming is not the problem. We are actually heading for the next Ice Age, they claim. British and Canadian experts warned the big freeze could bury the east of Britain in 6,000ft of ice.

“Most of Scotland, Northern Ireland and England could be covered in 3,000ft-thick ice fields. The expanses could reach 6,000ft from Aberdeen to Kent -towering above Ben Nevis, Britain’s tallest mountain. And what's more, the experts blame the global change on falling - rather than climbing - levels of greenhouse gases.

              Falling levels of greenhouse gasses! That’s interesting. I thought
              there was supposed to be a consensus.

“Lead author Thomas Crowley from the University of Edinburgh and Canadian colleague William Hyde say that currently vilified greenhouse gases - such as carbon dioxide- could actually be the key to averting the chill. The warning, published in the authoritative journal Nature, is based on records of tiny marine fossils and the earth’s shifting orbit.

“The Earth has seen dramatic climate fluctuations – veering between cold and warm extremes - over the past three million years, the researchers say.

“And changes in the Earth’s orbit and slowly falling levels of carbon dioxide are the cause.
When actually CO2 levels are still increasing.

               Wait. Changes in the Earth’s orbit? Do they mean that this might be
               connected to a natural cycle?

“The team says we are approaching a turning point, in the next 10,000 to 100,000 years, which will lead to the new ice sheets smothering much of Europe, Asia and South America.

              I think they're off on their timing by 10,000 to 100,000 years, but what's
              a few years among friends.

“The theory, which is based on computer models, suggests ice sheets will also slash sea levels by up to 300m, so Russia and Alaska will be connected by land.

“The North Sea will become part of a huge glacier stretching from Holland and Scandinavia to the Russian Far East.”

               Except for the timing, this is what I’ve been saying all along.
               Kudos to the scientists for daring to publish this.
               Kudos to Nature for daring to publish this.
               Kudos to the Daily Mail for daring to publish this.

[Soldier4Christ]

I-90 From Rapid City To WY Border Closed

Authorities on Friday closed Interstate 90 from Rapid City to the Wyoming state line.

Wind gusts to 50 mph have been reported in the Rapid City area, blowing snow and creating near-zero visibility.
A portion of state Highway 34; U.S. Highway 14A through the northern Black Hills; and U.S. Highway 85 from Wyoming to I-90 were placed under no-travel advisories.

Authorities say the region has wet, slippery driving conditions.

Temperatures were in the upper 20s to lower 30s around noon.

[Soldier4Christ]

Global warming gaffe discredits Al Gore ally
Error brings out NASA confession that temperature stats aren't quality controlled

A surreal scientific blunder last week raised a huge question mark about the temperature records that underpin the worldwide alarm over global warming. On Monday, Nasa's Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS), which is run by Al Gore's chief scientific ally, Dr James Hansen, and is one of four bodies responsible for monitoring global temperatures, announced that last month was the hottest October on record.

This was startling. Across the world there were reports of unseasonal snow and plummeting temperatures last month, from the American Great Plains to China, and from the Alps to New Zealand. China's official news agency reported that Tibet had suffered its "worst snowstorm ever". In the US, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration registered 63 local snowfall records and 115 lowest-ever temperatures for the month, and ranked it as only the 70th-warmest October in 114 years.

So what explained the anomaly? GISS's computerised temperature maps seemed to show readings across a large part of Russia had been up to 10 degrees higher than normal. But when expert readers of the two leading warming-sceptic blogs, Watts Up With That and Climate Audit, began detailed analysis of the GISS data they made an astonishing discovery. The reason for the freak figures was that scores of temperature records from Russia and elsewhere were not based on October readings at all. Figures from the previous month had simply been carried over and repeated two months running.

The error was so glaring that when it was reported on the two blogs - run by the US meteorologist Anthony Watts and Steve McIntyre, the Canadian computer analyst who won fame for his expert debunking of the notorious "hockey stick" graph - GISS began hastily revising its figures. This only made the confusion worse because, to compensate for the lowered temperatures in Russia, GISS claimed to have discovered a new "hotspot" in the Arctic - in a month when satellite images were showing Arctic sea-ice recovering so fast from its summer melt that three weeks ago it was 30 per cent more extensive than at the same time last year.

A GISS spokesman lamely explained that the reason for the error in the Russian figures was that they were obtained from another body, and that GISS did not have resources to exercise proper quality control over the data it was supplied with. This is an astonishing admission: the figures published by Dr Hansen's institute are not only one of the four data sets that the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) relies on to promote its case for global warming, but they are the most widely quoted, since they consistently show higher temperatures than the others.

If there is one scientist more responsible than any other for the alarm over global warming it is Dr Hansen, who set the whole scare in train back in 1988 with his testimony to a US Senate committee chaired by Al Gore. Again and again, Dr Hansen has been to the fore in making extreme claims over the dangers of climate change. (He was recently in the news here for supporting the Greenpeace activists acquitted of criminally damaging a coal-fired power station in Kent, on the grounds that the harm done to the planet by a new power station would far outweigh any damage they had done themselves.)

Yet last week's latest episode is far from the first time Dr Hansen's methodology has been called in question. In 2007 he was forced by Mr Watts and Mr McIntyre to revise his published figures for US surface temperatures, to show that the hottest decade of the 20th century was not the 1990s, as he had claimed, but the 1930s.

Another of his close allies is Dr Rajendra Pachauri, chairman of the IPCC, who recently startled a university audience in Australia by claiming that global temperatures have recently been rising "very much faster" than ever, in front of a graph showing them rising sharply in the past decade. In fact, as many of his audience were aware, they have not been rising in recent years and since 2007 have dropped.

Dr Pachauri, a former railway engineer with no qualifications in climate science, may believe what Dr Hansen tells him. But whether, on the basis of such evidence, it is wise for the world's governments to embark on some of the most costly economic measures ever proposed, to remedy a problem which may actually not exist, is a question which should give us all pause for thought.

[HisDaughter]

Global warming gaffe discredits Al Gore ally
Error brings out NASA confession that temperature stats aren't quality controlled

A surreal scientific blunder last week raised a huge question mark about the temperature records that underpin the worldwide alarm over global warming. On Monday, Nasa's Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS), which is run by Al Gore's chief scientific ally, Dr James Hansen, and is one of four bodies responsible for monitoring global temperatures, announced that last month was the hottest October on record.

This was startling. Across the world there were reports of unseasonal snow and plummeting temperatures last month, from the American Great Plains to China, and from the Alps to New Zealand. China's official news agency reported that Tibet had suffered its "worst snowstorm ever". In the US, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration registered 63 local snowfall records and 115 lowest-ever temperatures for the month, and ranked it as only the 70th-warmest October in 114 years.

So what explained the anomaly? GISS's computerised temperature maps seemed to show readings across a large part of Russia had been up to 10 degrees higher than normal. But when expert readers of the two leading warming-sceptic blogs, Watts Up With That and Climate Audit, began detailed analysis of the GISS data they made an astonishing discovery. The reason for the freak figures was that scores of temperature records from Russia and elsewhere were not based on October readings at all. Figures from the previous month had simply been carried over and repeated two months running.

The error was so glaring that when it was reported on the two blogs - run by the US meteorologist Anthony Watts and Steve McIntyre, the Canadian computer analyst who won fame for his expert debunking of the notorious "hockey stick" graph - GISS began hastily revising its figures. This only made the confusion worse because, to compensate for the lowered temperatures in Russia, GISS claimed to have discovered a new "hotspot" in the Arctic - in a month when satellite images were showing Arctic sea-ice recovering so fast from its summer melt that three weeks ago it was 30 per cent more extensive than at the same time last year.

A GISS spokesman lamely explained that the reason for the error in the Russian figures was that they were obtained from another body, and that GISS did not have resources to exercise proper quality control over the data it was supplied with. This is an astonishing admission: the figures published by Dr Hansen's institute are not only one of the four data sets that the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) relies on to promote its case for global warming, but they are the most widely quoted, since they consistently show higher temperatures than the others.

If there is one scientist more responsible than any other for the alarm over global warming it is Dr Hansen, who set the whole scare in train back in 1988 with his testimony to a US Senate committee chaired by Al Gore. Again and again, Dr Hansen has been to the fore in making extreme claims over the dangers of climate change. (He was recently in the news here for supporting the Greenpeace activists acquitted of criminally damaging a coal-fired power station in Kent, on the grounds that the harm done to the planet by a new power station would far outweigh any damage they had done themselves.)

Yet last week's latest episode is far from the first time Dr Hansen's methodology has been called in question. In 2007 he was forced by Mr Watts and Mr McIntyre to revise his published figures for US surface temperatures, to show that the hottest decade of the 20th century was not the 1990s, as he had claimed, but the 1930s.

Another of his close allies is Dr Rajendra Pachauri, chairman of the IPCC, who recently startled a university audience in Australia by claiming that global temperatures have recently been rising "very much faster" than ever, in front of a graph showing them rising sharply in the past decade. In fact, as many of his audience were aware, they have not been rising in recent years and since 2007 have dropped.

Dr Pachauri, a former railway engineer with no qualifications in climate science, may believe what Dr Hansen tells him. But whether, on the basis of such evidence, it is wise for the world's governments to embark on some of the most costly economic measures ever proposed, to remedy a problem which may actually not exist, is a question which should give us all pause for thought.

This is actually funny and should be in "Laughter" section!  It's like "Dumb and Dumber" or it just gets dumb and dumber.

[HisDaughter]

I just couldn't help myself....

[Soldier4Christ]

Those images are quite funny and yet very fitting. It may not be in the laughter section but at least it's in the Entertainment area.