Explain This

Being originally from the Northwest and having a great deal of family living there I am drawn to articles about the area. With all the news spin about the great Mississippi flooding, the high water on another iconic river I know well has not been much in the news. The Columbian reports

Columbia River levels remain near flood stage 

What I found interesting in this article was that rather than being buried in the usual global warming hype the cause was clearly stated right near the top of a straight news report. (emphasis mine)

The Columbia River is experiencing its highest water runoff levels since 1997 because of high precipitation levels this year and late-melting snow, Barton said. The preserved snowpacks making their way into the Columbia River Basin are 180 percent as deep as normal

The key to this is not the "180 percent as deep as normal " snow pack though it should be, the alarmist community having now captured the narrative on excessive snow being a product of a warming atmosphere. The key which flies in the face of the narrative is the "late-melting snow".

It is one thing to claim that a warmer atmosphere will absorb more moisture which will fall as snow in colder months, it is quite another thing to try to claim that colder weather will last longer in a warming  world. This point is driven home by the next sentence of the article explaining why the mighty Columbia River is so high this year.

“The unique thing about this year’s conditions was it was wet and cold late into April and early May,” Barton said.

In a normal year, the water would have released into the river at a more gradual pace. However, this year the river was forced to accept a gulp of water.

So this year is unique as far as the Columbia is concerned, but not because of warmer weather or just increased moisture (snow) but rather because it stayed colder and wetter longer than normal. 

Hard to make a buck on global warming under a foot of snow

FROM-Philadelphia Inquirer

George Parry
is a former federal and state prosecutor practicing law in Philadelphia

Al Gore and his supporters promised us that, if only we used enough fossil fuels, man-made global warming would bring about an environmental disaster that would simultaneously roast and flood Earth.

In the 1990s, one of the leading global-warming scientists predicted that European and American children would soon grow up without ever seeing snow. Another top climate scientist firmly declared that the traditional white Christmas was a thing of the past.

We were told that the science was settled: As environmentally irresponsible and all-around-dreadful humans drove Earth's temperature upward, the polar ice caps would melt, the polar bears would drown, and the rising ocean levels would inundate the world's coastal areas, creating millions of eco-refugees.

Well, that was good enough for me.

Giddy at the looming prospect of being able to boil lobsters in my toilet while New Jersey disappeared underwater, I set about planning my new life as the Nucky Johnson of Chestnut Hill's Boardwalk Empire. After all, once they tired of their FEMA trailers and tent cities, those displaced Jersey refugees were going to need someplace to rebuild. Why not on my newly valuable property at the area's highest point?

But then, as the hopeful 1990s gave way to the dismal present, it became apparent that things weren't panning out. Take, for example, these pesky recurring deep-freeze winters, to say nothing of the last two months of Snowmageddon. And, may I add, not only is New Jersey still disappointingly high and dry, but the damn ocean hasn't risen a single inch. Plus, it turns out, polar bears can swim. A total bust.

Yes, once again, the working man (that would be me) gets the short end. And Gore seemed like such a reliable guy! It's enough to shake one's faith in our usually trustworthy political class, to say nothing of all those climate-science geeks. It's almost as if they had some kind of hidden agenda. . . .

Grief counselors say that there are stages to recovering from the shock of a great loss, such as learning that you have a fatal disease. First comes denial, followed by anger, and then acceptance.

Now that my dream of reaping huge profits from the promised global-warming disaster lies shattered, I struggle to deal with my disappointment and loss. I'm past the denial part, but, before I reach the acceptance stage, I must somehow relieve my anger. So, I have a new plan. It involves a video camera, a baseball bat, and a colony of baby seals.

I hope to sell the television rights to Fox News.

'Cool it' with all the research dollars

FROM-Washington Times

Solution to climate change is planning, not spending
By Robert Carter and Paul Driessen


Bjorn Lomborg is avidly courting publicity for his new film, "Cool It." He correctly observes that public discussion about global warming is largely between two entrenched camps of opinion. He's also right about our needing a "Plan B" climate policy that defuses the current rancorous and unproductive debate about "the man-made climate problem."

Mr. Lomborg's first camp is inhabited by warming alarmists, supported by the majesty of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Most major institutions in Western society have joined their funereal fugue (and funding pipeline) in supportive chorus.

In the other camp, empiricists (including a majority of independent scientists) argue implacably that we still await actual, factual evidence that our planet is still warming at all - let alone dangerously, let alone because of human carbon dioxide emissions.

Reality, of course, is a lot more nuanced, and it is simply incorrect to say, as Mr. Lomborg does, that most independent scientists argue that "global warming was a fabrication."

Video-The Big Lie Man - Made Global Warming

FROM-Carbon Sense Coalition

New Game Lets Computer Geeks Save the World from Global Warming

FROM-The Blaze

read article here

The Catlin Arctic Fraud (2)

More than two weeks before the scheduled end of the insurance company sponsored Catlin Arctic Survey the trio of explorers are resting comfortably in Resolute, a small hamlet in the Nunavut province in northern Canada. In an attempt to call attention to global warming and to secure a climate accord in Copenhagen this December, arctic explorer Pen Hadow teamed up with Ann Daniels and Martin Hartley to embark on a 100 day mission to measure how fast the arctic sea-ice was melting by hiking to the North Pole.

During the early stages of their trek across the arctic sea-ice they endured biting cold temperatures of lower than -50°F, rendering state-of-the-art ice measuring equipment, such as the SPRITE, useless as the wiring became brittle and snapped like dry twigs. The extreme cold also caused members of the team to suffer bouts of hypothermia and frostbite, which compounded the fact that it was too cold to fly in supplies.

As the sun climbed higher in the arctic sky through April and temperatures warmed, though still remaining below zero, massive blizzards would sweep across the landscape. Once again the team would be forced to hunker down and ration food supplies as it became too dangerous to fly in resupplies to the team due to zero visibility in heavy snow.

Despite all the set backs, all the fights for survival, all the climbs over pressure ridges and the one and only swim across a lead, this expedition has some how become new poster child of global warming. Environmental groups have claimed the Survey to be one of the greatest pioneering efforts to call attention to climate change in the Arctic, but why?

The team failed not only to make it to the North Pole, their intended destination, but failed to reach the halfway point. Temperatures encountered on the mission ran below normal during most of the time, the extreme cold was punctuated only by intense blizzards.

“It’s mostly first year ice”, the team exclaimed, seemingly mystified by the lack of multi-year ice. Truth be told, satellite data beforehand showed their route as consisting of mostly first year ice so what’s so astonishing? Considering they couldn’t make it to the field of multi-year ice which lie in wait past the halfway point to the pole it comes as no surprise that they hardly found any. Traveling across what were once leads later frozen would help to ensure that caveat as well.

Discussed previously was this teams’ questionable supporters, radical environmental groups with political agendas; their sentiment for this mission, “to secure a solution" in Copenhagen; and their funding sponsor, Catlin, an insurance company in the market to profit from global warming. Now that they’re off the ice and the ‘data’ has been collected one still must consider their motives and question the statements coming from this group.

For example, upon reaching Resolute the expedition leader, and most vocal member regarding climate change, Pen Hadow, said that the teams’ decision to end their mission was due to “an earlier than expected start to the summer melt season”. One must wonder how Pen didn’t come to the same conclusion in 2003 during his solo mission to the North Pole when sea-ice extent was over a quarter million square kilometers less than the same date this year.

This misinformation will undoubtedly spur on more dire predictions of how soon it will be until ice in the Arctic completely melts away. The latest coming within hours of the team being plucked from the ice, "By 2013, we will see a much smaller area in summertime than now; and certainly by about 2020, I can imagine that only one area will remain in summer." Or so says Peter Wadhams, head of the polar ocean physics group at the University of Cambridge.

Meanwhile, readers can continue to watch the latest ice extent data in the “2009 Arctic sea-ice watch” located on this page. Currently, this date in 2009 places highest in extent over the time period covered over the previous 7 years, as seen below.