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A Warming Planet Can Mean More Snow
Ponca City, We love you writes "NPR reports that with snow blanketing much of the country, the topic of global warming has become the butt of jokes; but for scientists who study the climate, there's no contradiction between a warming world and lots of snow. 'The fact that the oceans are warmer now than they were, say, 30 years ago means there's about on average 4 percent more water vapor lurking around over the oceans than there was... in the 1970s,' says Kevin Trenberth, a prominent climate scientist. 'So one of the consequences of a warming ocean near a coastline like the East Coast and Washington, DC, for instance, is that you can get dumped on with more snow partly as a consequence of global warming.' Increased snowfall also fits a pattern suggested by many climate models, in which rising temperatures increase the amount of atmospheric moisture, bringing more rain in warmer conditions and more snow in freezing temperatures."
As anybody living in Canada knows, it doesn't snow on cold winter days. It snows on the warmer winter days. I've never witness snow at les than minus 7 or 10 Celcius. Most of the time, it's not far from the freezing point that you get your really heavy snowfalls. So, I do tend to agree, that lots of snow in no way contradicts global warming.
As for proving or disproving Global warming, a better indicator than any of the temperature measurements is the measurement of the thickness of the icecaps in the arctic. Those massive sheets of ice are not subject to localized short term variations of climate, but reflect the integration of many year's worth of effects. By all accounts the maximum thickness of the arctic ice sheets is decreasing rapidly.
I like my dinosaurs feathery, and my pterosaurs hairy (or is it pycnofibery?)
Well, when we have long-term evidence (not short-term anecdotal evidence) that climates aren't changing (15 years is nothing) and a model that explains why all the stuff we're pumping into the atmosphere isn't having an effect, we'll reconsider our theory. in the meantime we are at a crossroads of speculation. You say, "who knows what'll happen, we don't know how complex systems like this work", I say, "doesn't that worry you? shouldn't we then minimize our impact until we better understand". The very fact that there are conflicting opinions screams to me that we don't know what we're doing, and should tread lightly.
A counter question, what evidence do you need to start believing in global warming? Evidence has come and gone, there are valid points on both ends, but I'm sure you've been a staunch global warming denier the whole time. If you position any more reasoned? Lets say for a moment that neither of us really know what is going to happen, since we don't. Isn't it better to be careful. If global warming supporters are wrong, do big deal, we wasted money adopting green technology we need to support ourselves sooner or later anyway. If global warming critics are wrong are chances are that the consequences are very dire. Are you so sure from you 15 years of data that the climate won't ever budge that you are willing to risk civilization as we know it? Even if the chance or global warming is only 10%, or even 1% it seems like a good idea to be on the safe side.
Besides, the article is common sense. If it is snowing hard, how did all that water get into the atmosphere? It was so cold that the water appeared in the sky? No, that means that oceans must be abnormally warm, therefor hastening the water cycle. Or it means that it was a random local fluke that no meaningful data can be extrapolated from. Anyone who uses local temperatures and conditions to either support or deny global warming is an idiot.
Yet - so many predictions made by AGW that did not come to be - but are just silently discarded and substituted with even more fearful headlines of events soon to come. Because it's always worse than we thought.
It seems to me that the only thing that will conclusively falsify AGW at this stage is if the climate were to do absolutely nothing and act in a completely boring fashion for a clear run of several decades. Which paleoclimate records show the climate is anything but this. So as long as there is variability - as there always has been variability - the AGW bogey man will be invoked to explain it.
What to believe anymore? As a layperson - I've personally reached the point where I simply cannot trust what anyone says. I've tried to make sense of the issue myself with what little scientific and statistical background I have and what little I can understand from the literature I am not particularly impressed with the quality of evidence supporting the AGW hypothesis.
And all the recorded historical data proves these to be facts, right?
Yes.
http://www.giss.nasa.gov/research/news/20100121/
Sorry, I mis-remembered: 2009 is the second warmest year on-record. 2000-2009 is still the warmest decade.
Is that with or without the data from the Siberian weather stations? Seems that all the cold spots have been omitted in some of the recent data sets. Is your source one of them?
Here is what I got from the article:
To conduct its analysis, GISS uses publicly available data from three sources: weather data from more than a thousand meteorological stations around the world; satellite observations of sea surface temperature; and Antarctic research station measurements. These three data sets are loaded into a computer program, which is available for public download from the GISS website. The program calculates trends in temperature anomalies — not absolute temperatures — but changes relative to the average temperature for the same month during the period of 1951-1980.
So... how can they claim that it's the warmest record in history when the control data set only includes data from 1951-1980? Why does Antarctica, which takes up only a small fraction of the earth's surface make up 1/3 of the report? Why not the arctic? And again, is this from the dataset where monitoring stations were mysteriously moved when they shouldn't have been, not moved when they should have been (like when a parking lot is build where the monitor stands), or omitted altogether, like was the case in Siberia.
In other words, the raw has been tampered with.
There is no "I disagree" mod for a reason. Flamebait, Troll, and Overrated are not substitutes.
You exclude the possibility that the model for AGW is flawed and that the climate is changing for other reasons. As folks here are fond of pointing out, correlation is not causation.
The article fails to mention how long scientists have seen no contradiction between harsh winters and AGW. Is this something that has been predicted from the start, or is it a new development? If it is a new development, was it studied as its own phenomenon before modifying the AGW model to fit the data? That is, if this was not originally predicted, can we be reasonably sure that the AGW model isn't being shoehorned to fit contradicting data? The reasoning outlined in the summary makes sense, I would just like to know if it is ad hoc or not.
Your brain is not a computer.
Climategate U-turn as scientist at centre of row admits: There has been no global warming since 1995
At least now we know why they were illegally denying FOI requests for their data.
UN climate body admits 'mistake' on Himalayan glaciers
How many more "mistakes", falsifications, and fabrications need to be exposed before this scam goes buh-bye?
So: 1. Phil Jones did not say there had been no global warming since 1995. He said that it (barely) wasn't statistically significant since the time period was too short for the statistics (ie, not enough data). Oddly enough, had they asked about 1994 or any year prior to 1995 the answer would have been yes. So the question was pretty much a set up. 2. It appears that they did fully reply to the FOI request, giving Mr. Keenan all the data he asked for. The data was also published on their website, so it's not like anybody couldn't find it. 3. The IPCC document is something like 2400 pages and so far there has only been one error found. I'd be surprised if there aren't more. I mean, look at your response: you only had about 4 sentences and two of them were incorrect. :)
A detailed study was done of “the relationships of the storm frequencies to seasonal temperature and precipitation conditions” for the years “1901–2000 using data from 1222 stations across the United States.” The 2006 study, Temporal and Spatial Characteristics of Snowstorms in the Contiguous United States [PDF] (Chagnon et al., 2006) found we get more snow storms in warmer years:
Results for the November–December period showed that most of the United States had experienced 61%– 80% of the storms in warmer-than-normal years. Assessment of the January–February temperature conditions again showed that most of the United States had 71%–80% of their snowstorms in warmer-than-normal years. In the March–April season 61%–80% of all snowstorms in the central and southern United States had occurred in warmer-than-normal years. Thus, these comparative results reveal that a future with wetter and warmer winters, which is one outcome expected (National Assessment Synthesis Team 2001), will bring more snowstorms than in 1901–2000. Agee (1991) found that long-term warming trends in the United States were associated with increasing cyclonic activity in North America, further indicating that a warmer future climate will generate more winter storms.
I honestly don't care who believes and who doesn't believe. The more important fact is that peer-reviewed papers consistently come to the conclusion that AGW is happening. I have yet to see a peer-reviewed paper that comes to the conclusion that AGW is not happening. If there were evidence that AGW were not happening, I would think someone would think it important enough to write up a paper about it. Do they all just write blogs and make YouTube videos and never think to write a paper?
What a fool believes, he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.