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New Record High Temperature At South Pole
New submitter Titus Andronicus writes "The South Pole experienced its highest-ever recorded temperature of -12.3C (+9.9F) on December 25, 2011, according to preliminary reporting from the Antarctic Meteorological Research Center at the University of Wisconsin."
Just like snow on Copenhagen is weather, not climate, right?
I find that the definition of "ever" is lacking, how long has this been measured ?
Soon we can turn Antarctica into a useful human settle-able land with farming and cities. Maybe Al Gore Warming isn't so bad.
Paying taxes to buy civilization is like paying a hooker to buy love.
Where are those global warming naysayers now, huh?
see http://amrc.ssec.wisc.edu/blog/2011/12/29/update-on-record-high-temperatures-at-south-pole-and-aws-sites/
"Here is an update on the South Pole and nearby Nico and Henry Automatic Weather Stations (AWS) record high temperatures recorded on 25 December 2011:
-- The prior record high temperature at South Pole was recorded on 27 December 1978, not on 12 December 1978, as misquoted in some sources.
-- Preliminary assessment of the record high at Nico AWS was -8.2C or 17.2F on 25 December 2011. This breaks the previous known record of -13.9C or 7F recorded on 4 January 2010.
-- Preliminary assessment of the record high at Henry AWS was -8.9C or 16F on 25 December 2011. This break the previous known record of -14.5C or 5.9F on 5 January 2010."
I'm convinced that "global warming" is a perception, not a reality.
If you put a thermometer in the center of Chicago in 1880 when there were 200,000 people there and monitored it until there were 5,000,000 people, what do YOU think the changes will be?
Meanwhile, in Antarctica.......
http://news.slashdot.org/story/11/12/29/1425232/sun-storms-may-affect-radios-cell-phones-today
Time to play some disc golf.
Free unix account: freeshell.org
previous temp high was in Dec 1978, detail records have been kept since mid 1950's.
approximate annual average temperature records through ice cores date back about 800,000 years.
I can say that, aside from the pleasure of moving air (not necessarily cool air), having a fan on my face was fairly integral to being able to sleep. I've since beat the habit, but still... not sure where it comes from as I did not grow up with air conditioning. *shrug*
This is indeed weather, it's come close to that before (in the "global cooling" period of the 1970s) Dec 27, 1978 the high was -13.6 C +7.5 F.
It is the record high, but the average high in December is only -15.7F. Keep in mind that they get nearly 24 hour sunlight for all of November, December and January. Can't deny it's getting warmer, but this isn't doomsday material just yet.
First, it's mid summer there. Second, there is no mention of the previous record so we have nothing to compare this "record" to. I have a friend who works there every year and his comments, from camp, last month was that they were battling storms and cold and hadn't been able to get too much work done. Finally, we have only been keeping track of temperatures there since 1956 so it's hardly worth getting into a tizzy over 60 years worth of record data.
I heard that the climate change deniers are planning on setting off a huge explosive charge from the left overs of the Iraq war under an undesclosed inactive volcano in an undesclosed third world non-white, non-Christian country to try and get some good ash in the air to cool things down, keep their argument alive, start another war, and get the Millitary Industrial pipeline flowing again across America, because it looks like their other pipeline is getting stalled.
No problem, just send Al Gore there to speak and it'll get cold again.
If all the ice melts, we'll be able to dig up the fossilized palm trees.
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Greenland Closing In On All-Time Record Cold
http://www.real-science.com/greenland-closing-time-record-cold
Oh My God ! We all gonna die !
A First World country wherein thousands of people die simply because it was hot outside? What's wrong with this picture?
Perhaps you should ask the people in the Chicago? The difference is that a lot of Europe rarely (or at least it used to be rarely) gets hot enough to require air conditioning in contrast to parts of the US that trace their population growth to the invention of air conditioning due to the stifling heat (at least that's what Atlanta claimed in some of it tourist literature several years ago).
I would hazard a guess the the main reason for this is that the US is at a lower latitude that much of Europe and lacks the moderating influence of the ocean (no Mediterranean, Rockies block air from Pacific), but I am by no means an expert in such matters. Whatever the cause the US does seem to be, on average, hotter than much of Europe in the summer and colder in the winter. Europe does get hot but not for the prolonged months that the US seems to suffer. This means that not only is air conditioning a lot less common but heat waves occur far less frequently and are typically less severe so, when bad ones do happen, there are far more vulnerable people around because their population has not been reduced by frequent heat waves and there is little/no air conditioning available to help.....of course this does not explain the deaths in Chicago but I'll let you figure out why they happened.
A heater converts energy from one form to another. i.e. electricity to heat.
A cooler is a heat pump - it moves "heat" from one point to another, hotter, point.
It is easier to get a high efficiency from a heater because most forms of inefficiency in a system turn out to be “waste” heat – i.e. what you want. Moving heat from one point to another is different. It’s though to get a highly efficient method of moving heat – unless you have demons.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maxwell's_demon
It is true that is "should" be more efficient to heat than to cool, however the numbers don't add up when it comes to cost. I pay much more in the winter months to heat with gas, than I do in the summer to cool with electricity. Munch on that.
You know they account for that right? no? shut up.
Well, there's the typical cultist response from a Warmist - "You pointed out something that is embarrassing to my faith so Shut Up"!
Please do let us all know how you would "account" for that sensor being right neat a heat exhaust. I mean, you are saying they also have that sensor wired to the AC units to know exactly when they are on? Really?
Go ahead, show us how smart you are and that you have "corrected" for all variables.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
What were the previous records for the warmest temperature in Antarctica and when they were reported?
when the AGW deniers trot out how good it will be for growing plants in high latitudes. Not only do high latitudes have essential zero soil, they are also nearly perpetually dark for about half the year. Its not as if most plants can do without sunlight during periods when growth and metabolism are dramatically shut down. Perhaps an agronomist can show me wrong, but I am unaware of a single agriculturally important species that could survive in near total darkness for 5-6 months out of the year.
They are about the only organization that have equal stakes. Global warming happens - weather gets worse, they lose money.
Unneeded cutbacks happen - investments do poorly, they lose money.
Will they insure against global warming?
What rates do they charge?
The U.S. Antarctic Program’s Antarctic Sun has a writeup about this.
Yes, this is a major problem. Far too few Americans have much training in biology. With respect to the AWG issue, while many are aware that there have been tremendous changes in the earth's climate throughout its history, few seem to be aware of the time frames over which such changes have occurred. Yes Antarctica was largely devoid of ice in the Miocene and it subsequently became extensively covered in ice in the Pleistocene. However, these changes took place over millions of years. With the exception of the asteroid strike at the end of the Cretaceous, the degree of temperature change now being experienced far exceeds the rates previously seen. Reasonable estimates of change that can be expected as the earth warms over the next 300 years indicate that about 65% of all plant communities will shift to an entirely different one, with northern forests largely disappearing. If one even for a brief moment thinks about what the implications of this is for human agriculture, humans are in for a very difficult future if even the most conservative of the current climate models are anywhere near accurate. The temperature changes may seem small on average, but organisms and ecosystems are remarkably sensitive to even slight changes. For example, a pH drop of only 0.4 pH would force extinction of virtually all higher life forms in the oceans.
An airconditioner does create heat as a consquence of how it works, because after all work is being done to drive fans, compressors etc which results in waste heat. A good way to userstand how it works is to think of a very simple machine using the same cycle such as an old kerosene fridge:
For those fridges the working fluid was typically ammonia but it operates the same was as current working fluids, just with a different boiling point. Let's start the cycle with the compressor - in a kerosene fridge that's just a big tank of water that has tubes with the working fluid (coolant) running through it. The coolant comes in hot and in gas form, but it cools down then condenses into a liquid as it runs through the water. It needs a lot of surface area to lose that heat so there are a lot of loops of tube in the water. Next is the confusing bit. You need both some way to get below ambient temperature and to provide some force to keep the coolant flowing fast enough to get enough heat out of the fridge. To do that you actually put heat in the system - in this case a flame fed by a supply of kerosene, then you make the coolant expand as if flows as a gas into a larger tube and those tubes go into the compartment where you want to keep things cold. The heat is all still there but in the expanded gas it is spread over a much larger volume so the tubes holding it are colder than the tubes before the expansion. Heat flows from cold to hot so the heat is drawn out of the contents of the compartment and is taken away by the moving gas. The coolant then leaves the compartment, often had a lot of loops so that it can lose some heat to ambient air ouside, then goes back to the compressor.
Modern airconditioning and refridgeration systems operate the same way but with different details: such as using a different coolant, a compressor a bit more complicated than a tank of water and electrical heating.
Anyway, that's the specifics, but the general result is if you have force a process to work in some way then energy is required and heat is produced. That is more formally known as the first law of thermodynamics if you want to look it up.
In other news on the same day, a record low temperature was recorded at Oakland airport
That whole weather versus climate argument works both ways.
Next article please.
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
You are making a very simple logical and scientific error. The position being advocated is that AGW is true because the preponderance of scientific evidence strongly suggests that the probability that is is false is quite small. In fact, it is becoming vanishingly small as more and more observations are made. There reaches a point, in ABSENCE OF EVIDENCE TO THE CONTRARY, that any reasonable person can take it for granted that it is true in every meaningful sense of the word.
Its pretty much the same reason that you don't stay in bed in the morning thinking that, well I won't have to get up today because the sun is simply not going to appear on the horizon in the east today, since there is always an infinitely small probability that it won't. Normally, if someone used that kind of thinking as an excuse for not showing up for work, you would get yourself fired and FOR GOOD REASON.
However, you don't have to take my word for it. I suggest an experiment. Next summer, when temperatures reach new record highs run outside with your parka on yelling that everyone is an idiot for not believing you that its getting colder outside. Let us know what they say about your new career as a logician and scientist. I predict that you won't have to wait too long for the next opportunity.
I'm an AGW doubter and a GW skeptic, but here I sit in Pittsburgh at the end of December and I have a wet, green yard outside of my house. I can't help but question if the world is truly warmer and if it is, then I have to ask why.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
The comment you replied to and claimed you could not understand!
No.
That series was the main vector that conveyed the long discredited global cooling idea to the public. Considering that a report conveying consensus on global warming had landed on President Johnson's desk some years before the global cooling idea had about as much credibility as Bigfoot.
English. That's correct, in English some things are named in capitals.
I thought that you understood perfectly but just wanted to point out a mistake in a persons writing style order to feel smug. There's a lot of such petty bullshit creeping into this place and it really pisses me off.
"An air conditioner is a heat pump, it moves heat from one place to the other, doesn't create it."
Fine. Take a typical window mounted air conditioner and put it on the floor in a sealed room. Now run it for a few hours *without* heating up the room. When you can accomplish that trick, get back to us. In the meantime, we'll continue to laugh in your general direction.
That sounds like a Mitch Hedberg line.