The Death of the Global Warming Myth

[Ryan Ruck]

Snow Closes Roads In Israel, Is A Source Of Wonder In Cairo

December 13, 2013



Snow coated domes and minarets Friday as a record Mideast storm compounded the suffering of Syrian refugees, sent the Israeli army scrambling to dig out stranded motorists and gave Egyptians a rare glimpse of snow in their capital.

Nearly three feet of snow closed roads in and out of Jerusalem, which is set in high hills, and thousands in and around the city were left without power. Israeli soldiers and police rescued hundreds trapped in their cars by snow and ice. In the West Bank, the branches of olive trees groaned under the weight of snow.

In Cairo, where local news reports said the last recorded snowfall was more than 100 years ago, children in outlying districts capered in white-covered streets, and adults marveled at the sight, tweeting pictures of snow-dusted parks and squares. In other parts of the city, rain and hail rocketed down.

On social media, some joked that the snowfall was the mystical work of Gen. Abdel Fattah Sisi, the military strongman who is the focus of something of a cult of personality among his followers. Sisi led the coup five months ago against the highly unpopular but democratically elected Islamist president, Mohamed Morsi.

Storm-driven waves lashed Egypt’s Mediterranean coast, and fishermen in the ancient port city of Alexandria were warned by authorities against putting out to sea. In the Sinai Peninsula, snow fell on Mt. Sinai and St. Catherine’s monastery at its foot. Sleet washed the dusty fronds of desert palm trees.

The inclement weather worsened the situation for tens of thousands of Syrian refugees in Lebanon, where many live in makeshift camps, abandoned buildings and other temporary sites lacking heat and protection from the elements.

In Lebanon’s Bekaa Valley, many refugees were digging out snow from their provisional shelters amid subfreezing conditions. The situation is likely worse for multitudes of displaced people inside rebel-held and contested areas of Syria, where clashes and blockades by both sides in the country's civil war have severely hampered delivery of aid.

In Israel, where the storm was described as the heaviest December snowfall since 1953, thick clouds temporarily closed Ben-Gurion International Airport, causing the diversion of two international flights to Cyprus. Jerusalem’s mayor, Nir Barkat, likened the storm to a snow tsunami.

[Ryan Ruck]

Sun's Current Solar Activity Cycle Is Weakest in a Century

December 11, 2013

The sun's current space-weather cycle is the most anemic in 100 years, scientists say.

Our star is now at "solar maximum," the peak phase of its 11-year activity cycle. But this solar max is weak, and the overall current cycle, known as Solar Cycle 24, conjures up comparisons to the famously feeble Solar Cycle 14 in the early 1900s, researchers said.

"None of us alive have ever seen such a weak cycle. So we will learn something," Leif Svalgaard of Stanford University told reporters here today (Dec. 11) at the annual meeting of the American Geophysical Union.

The learning has already begun. For example, scientists think they know why the solar storms that have erupted during Solar Cycle 24 have caused relatively few problems here on Earth.

The sun often blasts huge clouds of superheated particles into space, in explosions known as coronal mass ejections (CMEs). Powerful CMEs that hit Earth squarely can trigger geomagnetic storms, which in turn can disrupt radio communications, GPS signals and power grids.

But such effects have rarely been seen during Solar Cycle 24, even though the total number of CMEs hasn't dropped off much, if at all. The explanation, researchers said, lies in the reduced pressure currently present in the heliosphere, the enormous bubble of charged particles and magnetic fields that the sun puffs out around itself.

This lower pressure has allowed CMEs to expand greatly as they cruise through space, said Nat Gopalswamy of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. Indeed, Solar Cycle 24 CMEs are, on average, 38 percent bigger than those measured during the last cycle — a difference with real consequences for folks here on Earth.

"When the CMEs expand more, the magnetic field inside the CMEs has lower strength," Gopalswamy said. "So when you have lower-strength magnetic fields, then they cause milder geomagnetic storms."

[American Patriot]

The good news: there has been a dramatic increase in Arctic sea ice. The bad: it's still half the 1980s' level

Even worse, the rebound is probably only a temporary respite

The volume of the sea ice floating in the Arctic Ocean increased by about 50 per cent in October compared to the same period of 2012, which was one of the lowest on record, scientists said.

Europe's CryoSat satellite, which is designed to monitor sea-ice thickness, measured about 9,000 cubic kilometres of sea ice in October 2013, a notable increase compare to the 6,000 cu km seen in October last year.

Scientists said that the rebound probably marks a temporary respite for the polar region, which has seen dramatic and long-term changes in recent decades due to regional warming that has melted Arctic ice on both land and sea.

The extent of the surface area covered by sea ice - measured by a different satellite - also saw an increase on the previous year, however it was still the sixth lowest since satellite records began in 1979. The seven lowest recorded sea-ice extents have all occurred in the last seven years.

Sea ice naturally increases from about mid-September to March and then recedes again during the warmer summer months. However, measurements from satellites and nuclear-powered submarines all show a significant long-term average decline in both sea ice volume and surface area extent over the past four decades.

Although last October saw a significant return of the sea ice compared to the previous October, it was still less than half the estimated volume of the same time period in the early 1980s, said Professor Andrew Shepherd from University College London.

"The 9,000 cubic kilometres we measured in October is still very much smaller than the 20,000 cubic kilometres we estimate for the same time in the early 1980s. So today's minimum still ranks among the lowest for the past 30 years," Professor Shepherd said.

"The October figure is still a significant result and it's not to be underestimated, but it's not an unexpected result. We do see year-to-year variations in the sea ice due to changes in weather patterns," he said.

The European Space Agency's Cryosat satellite, which has been operating for four years, found that 90 per cent of the rebound was due to sea ice that had survived the summer melt season, the so-called "multiyear" ice. Just 10 per cent was first-year ice that had newly formed.

It found that the multiyear ice, which is generally thicker than single-year ice, is now on average about 20 per cent or around 30 centimetres thicker than the previous year, said Rachel Tilling the UK's Centre for Polar Observation and Modelling, who led the study.

"One of the things we'd noticed in our data was that the volume of ice year-to-year was not varying anything like as much as the ice extent - at least in 2010, 2011 and 2012. We didn't expect the greater ice extent left at the end of this summer's melt to be reflected in the volume. But it has been, and the reason is related to the amount of multiyear ice in the Arctic," Dr Tilling said.

An Arctic "report card" for 2013, presented to the American Geophysical Union last week, found that the long-term trends in the polar region continued to show that it is warming rapidly and as a result has experienced dramatic changes, such as decreased snow cover, melting permafrost and diminishing ice both on land and sea.

"The Arctic Report Card presents strong evidence of widespread, sustained changes that are driving the Arctic environmental system into a new state and we can expect to see continued widespread and continued changes in the Arctic," said Martin Jeffries, of the University of Alaska, Fairbanks.

David Kennedy, deputy undersecretary for operations as the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, said: "The Arctic caught a bit of break in 2013 from the recent string of record-breaking warmth and ice melts of the last decade. But the relatively cool year in some parts of the Arctic does little to offset the long-term trend of the last 30 years: the Arctic is warming rapidly."

[American Patriot]

Message In A Bottle Found In Arctic 54 Years Later, Hidden Note Alludes To ‘Unthinkable’ Future Glacial Melt

By Philip Ross
on December 21 2013 6:59 PM










The Arctic Flickr/ Patrick Kelley, U.S. Coast Guard




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Two researchers in a remote area of the Canadian Arctic stumbled upon a mysterious message in a bottle. The note, stuffed inside a bottle and tucked between some rocks nearly 500 miles from the nearest human settlement, was dated July 10, 1959.
According to the Halifax Chronicle Herald, researchers from Laval University in Quebec City were exploring an area near the edge of a glacier on Ward Hunt Island, Canada’s closest point to the North Pole, when they discovered the message in a bottle. The note inside, penciled on lined white paper, included instructions for whomever discovered the message. It also included the names and addresses of the people who left it there.
The names were Paul Walker and Albert Crary, both of whom were well known in the polar geological research world.
“I recognized the two names instantly,” biologist Warwick F. Vincent, director of the Center for Northern Studies at Laval University in Quebec City, told the Los Angeles Times. “Walker is a famous name in our parts up there because the highest point on Ward Hunt Island is called Walker Hill. ... we’ve been camping next to Walker Hill now for over 10 years.”
At the time the note was left, Walker was a 25-year-old geologist from Ohio. Crary was a colleague of his who lived in Boston.
So what exactly did the message, discovered in a 250-milliliter plastic sample bottle, request of its acquirer? According to reports, the note simply asked its finder to measure the distance between a nearby rock formation and the edge of a nearby ice shelf.
“Anyone venturing this way is requested to re-measure the distance and send the information” to Walker’s Ohio address, the note read. “Thank you very much.”
Unfortunately, Walker would never receive that information. According to the Los Angeles Times, shortly after he wrote the note, Walker suffered a massive stroke and had to be airlifted out of the Arctic by a bush pilot. The stroke left Walker paralyzed and, after spending several weeks at his parents' home in Pasadena, Calif., the famed geologist died.
Crary went on to lead a mission to the South Pole in 1961. The U.S. Arctic Program's Science and Engineering Center at McMurdo Bay, Antarctica, bears his name.
Vincent and his fellow scientists, who were collecting microbes in the valley where the note was found, did as the researchers before them had requested, and measured the distance from the rocks to the ice shelf. Using GPS equipment, they found that since the message in a bottle was written, the ice shelf had retreated some 200 feet.
Vincent told the Halifax Chronicle Herald it was remarkable that Walker thought to leave the note where he did. “Because in the ’50s, it was unthinkable that this would melt,” he said.
“We were reading some of his last words,” Vincent told the Los Angeles Times. “He didn’t know at that stage whether the glacier was advancing or retreating. But he wanted a reference point that would allow future researchers in the area to provide him with important data.”

[American Patriot]

Why the hell have I NOT been getting PAID for this???? Come ON! Where's MY MONEY!


Study Reveals Source of ‘Dark Money’ in Climate Change Denial Studies

By Julie S | Dec 23, 2013 09:57 AM EST

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A new study revealed that “dark money” or concealed funding has been increasing on studies denying climate change. (Photo : Reuters)

A new study revealed that “dark money” or concealed funding has been increasing on studies denying climate change.
Robert J. Brulle, lead author of the study and an environmental sociologist from the Drexel University, is bound to make a controversy as he discovered that most of the sources of funding of several studies related to climate change denial were hidden.
The researchers mentioned two large companies that might have been involved in providing “dark money.” These were Koch Industries and ExxonMobil which have been strongly against the report that industrial companies were great contributors of global warming. Both of them have withdrawn their fundings on earlier studies but researchers were able to trace their involvement. They noticed that when these two companies retracted their participation in their sponsored studies, non-profit organizations such as Donors Trust and Donors Capital Fund had significant increases in their funds.
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This might sound like mere coincidence but Brulle’s team provided more evidences. He listed 118 climate change denial organizations in the U.S and attempted to trace their source of fundings with the help of the Internal Revenue Service (IRS).
They found that 91 organizations have received a total of $558 million from 2003 to 2010. However, they clarified that these amount were not all spent on climate change studies. However, 75 percent of their funds were “dark money.”
“The climate change countermovement has had a real political and ecological impact on the failure of the world to act on the issue of global warming," said Brulle. "Like a play on Broadway, the countermovement has stars in the spotlight -- often prominent contrarian scientists or conservative politicians -- but behind the stars is an organizational structure of directors, script writers and producers, in the form of conservative foundations. If you want to understand what's driving this movement, you have to look at what's going on behind the scenes."
Other organizations involved were Searle Freedom Trust, the John William Pope Foundation, the Howard Charitable Foundation and the Sarah Scaife Foundation.
The study was published in the December 22 issue of Climatic Change.

[American Patriot]

Y'all remember the ship that got trapped in the ice down in Antarctica? Around the week prior to Christmas?

Well, I never SAW in the news, ONCE why there were there. I kept seeing reports of "tourists" on the ship, etc.

Well, it appears there is a humorous... even idiotic side to this. Something the media KEEPS LEAVING OUT.

http://www.foxnews.com/on-air/the-fi...-stranded-ship

Gutfeld: Media skip inconvenient detail about stranded ship

January 03, 2014 / Written By Greg Gutfeld / Fox News

I have a two-part story to tell.

So, while less ice proves global warming, more ice does too? What a great business! - Greg Gutfeld

Part one: a ship on its way to Antarctica to study disappearing ice due to global warming got trapped in the ice.


Part two: ha-ha, ha-ha.


According to The Huffington Post, the ship needed three ice breakers to rescue it and they all failed. So, it sat there like Al Gore wedged in a manhole.
Thankfully, all were rescued but The Huff Po, like others, neglected to say that the scientists were there to study global warming.
Instead, you got this stuff.


(BEGIN VIDEO CLIPS)



GIO BENITEZ, ABC NEWS: Before their ship got stuck in the ice in the middle of a blizzard, the explorers were on a tour of historic sites in Antarctica. Now, it's simply a rescue mission.


SARA JAMES, NBC NEWS: As the Australian maritime experts ponder what next, the crew of the ship say they have enough food and provisions, so scientists keep busy with research and passengers keep the world up to date.


(END VIDEO CLIP)



So why no mention of the mission? Because it doesn't fit their story.


But no worries, the stuck ship still proves global warming. Expedition leader Chris Turney says they were trapped in old ice from an iceberg that broke off ages again.
So, while less ice proves global warming, more ice does too? What a great business!


Look, some say Antarctic ice is disappearing, but others say it's grown to a new record two years in a row, with satellite data from 1992-2008 showing a net gain.


So, who's right? I'm no scientist, although I tell people that in bars. But I know not to trust those who make money off panic, be it environmental or otherwise. The same people who scream global cooling, now scream warming, and shout heathen when you point to new cooling data.


The missing polar bears are now back, so let's bring up vanishing ice which is no longer vanishing.


So, unlike that vessel stuck in the ice, I'm thinking this climate change ship has sailed. And you can't blame it on weather, but on a strident ideology that has put real science on ice for decades to come.

• Greg's Monologue

[Malsua]

Yeah, it was a global warming booze cruise.

[American Patriot]

lol

[American Patriot]

So the planet "breathes".

Like I've said for years and years. This article doesn't come right out and say it, but if you are smart, and you think about how things work (the world in particular, the climate, the seasons) you will grasp this easily.


Antarctica A ‘Key Driver’ Of Global Climate, South Pole Temperatures Affect ‘Rest Of The Planet’


By Philip Ross
on January 06 2014 3:07 PM

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  Adelie penguins stand atop ice in East Antarctica. Reuters
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  Antarctica ice coverage expands and shrinks every year as South Pole temperatures shift between the winter and summer months. Reuters
• 
  
  
  Adelie penguins stand atop ice in East Antarctica. Reuters
• 
  
  
  Antarctica ice coverage expands and shrinks every year as South Pole temperatures shift between the winter and summer months. Reuters

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Following a series of weekend winter storms across the northern U.S., below-freezing temperatures have gripped large swaths of the county and thrown many Americans into hardcore survival mode. In New York City, temperatures are expected to plummet 49 degrees Fahrenheit in just 12 hours’ time.

In Minnesota, schools were closed for the first time in 17 years as winter temperatures sank to as low as minus 30 degrees Fahrenheit. "A person not properly dressed could die easily in those conditions," said Scott Trueett, a meteorologist for the National Weather Service.

It’s turning out to be a painfully cold winter, colder in many cities than it has been in decades, and many are wondering why. Where are these extreme temperatures coming from? And what’s to be expected? While extreme weather in the U.S. is in large part due to a “polar vortex” creeping down over the Northern hemisphere from the North Pole, Scientists say weather patterns around the globe are largely the result of climate change in Antarctica.

"Antarctica is one of the key drivers of the global climate system," Tony Press, head of the Antarctic Climate & Ecosystems Co-operative Research Centre in Hobart, Australia, told The Sydney Morning Herald. "Changes in Antarctica will affect not only the Antarctic region but Australia and the rest of the planet."

Every year, Antarctica’s ice shrinks in the summer and expands in the winter. According to the Sydney Morning Herald, the change in Antarctic ice coverage swells from about 3 million square kilometers at the end of every summer to nearly 19 million square kilometers at the end of every winter. It’s a landmass in constant flux.

But every year, a little bit less of the ice refreezes during the winter. Studies have found Antarctica has lost about 100 billion tons of ice a year since 1993, which has partly contributed to global sea levels rising .14 inches a year since the early 1990s. Some regions of West Antarctic have seen a 7 percent drop in sea-ice extent each decade.
On the other hand, Antarctic ice coverage has increased 1 percent per decade, which seems to contradict the notion that global warming – average overall surface temperatures have risen roughly 1.5 degrees Fahrenheit over the last 100 years – is causing the ice to melt. But scientists warn not to confuse weather patterns with worldwide climate change.

“Regionally, climate change can vary markedly across the Earth so to detect human influences on the climate system climate scientists must consider the Earth as a whole,” John Turner, who leads the Climate Variability and Modeling project at the British Antarctic Survey, wrote in an article for The Guardian. "What is clear is that the impact of climate change on ice at both poles is complex."

He added: “In the Antarctic the increase in annual mean sea ice extent is only just over 1 percent per decade, making it impossible at present to separate natural variability from any human influence.”

Scientists believe some of the additional sea ice in Antarctica, especially in the eastern regions, might be the result of melting land-based ice sheets, causing surrounding ocean temperatures to cool down. This fresh water then freezes and becomes sea ice.

A 2013 study in the Journal of Climate found that converging winds around the South Pole could also explain a majority of the increase in ice extent around the Antarctic. “The polar vortex that swirls around the South Pole is not just stronger than it was when satellite records began in the 1970s, it has more convergence, meaning it shoves the sea ice together to cause ridging,” the study’s authors explained. “Stronger winds also drive ice faster, which leads to still more deformation and ridging. This creates thicker, longer-lasting ice, while exposing surrounding water and thin ice to the blistering cold winds that cause more ice growth.”

Future research into Antarctic sea ice melt will focus on the thickness of the ice around the edges of Antarctica and the effect of ice melt on global sea levels.

[vector7]

Global Warming A Back Door To Socialism - And Now Even The UN Admits It

Power: As evidence discredits global warming, resistance to such facts by green elites reveals their real aim is bringing socialism in through the back door. But don't take our word for it. Listen to the climate change boss at the U.N.

Christiana Figueres, with the lumpy title of executive secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), came right out and said it: Democracy is a poor political system for fighting global warming. The really good model is communist China.

China is "doing it right," she told Bloomberg News Tuesday. "They actually want to breathe air they don't have to look at," she said with a straight face.

Maybe that's because for her information, China had breathed air it can see for decades under its command economy. Hot Air's Ed Morrissey points out that on the same day Figueres was praising China's top-down political system and denigrating democracies, China's capital, Beijing, was engulfed in a massive smog cloud that prompted authorities to order children, the sick and the elderly to stay inside.
Communist China has had one pollution crisis after another for decades. It's also the home to black rivers, polluted groundwater, destroyed lakes and some of the world's worst food standards — all fruits of a command economy where the public has no right to complain about anything because government knows best.
Morrissey notes that the same smog blighting China now was a problem five years ago, during the 2008 Olympics. Some sign of "doing it right."
The only thing clear here is the real motive of global warm-mongers. They're less interested in cleaning up the Earth than in controlling human beings in the name of "the common good" — just as the Bolsheviks once did, first in Russia, and then in China, where the tyranny continues to this day.
Global warming alarmists "want to change us, they want to change our behavior, our way of life, our values and preferences," according to a man who knows a thing or two about communist regimes, former Czech President Vaclav Klaus. In a speech to Australia's Institute of Public Affairs in 2011, he stressed:
"They want to restrict our freedom because they themselves believe they know what is good for us. They are not interested in climate. They misuse the climate in their goal to restrict our freedom. Therefore, what is in danger is freedom, not the climate."
Klaus, who fought communists all his life, admitted he may be "oversensitive." But "I am afraid that some of the people who spend their lives in a free society don't appreciate sufficiently all the issues connected with freedom. So my oversensitivity is like an alarm clock warning about the potential development, which I am really afraid of."
He pointed out that as global warming falls apart as a theory, its proponents grow more strident because their claim to power grows ever more tenuous.
"I feel threatened now, not by global warming — I don't see any — (but) by the global-warming doctrine, which I consider a new dangerous attempt to control and mastermind my life and our lives, in the name of controlling the climate or temperature."
"They don't care about resources or poverty or pollution. They hate us, the humans. They consider us dangerous and sinful creatures who must be controlled by them. I used to live in a similar world called communism. And I know it led to the worst environmental damage the world has ever experienced."
But that's of no concern to Ms. Figueres, princeling daughter of a former Costa Rican president who's lived a life of privilege since birth and is now badmouthing democracy and praising communist systems.
She condemned as "very detrimental" Congress' refusal to pass the U.N.'s climate change agenda even as evidence reveals global warming as a hoax and the U.N. agenda as a threat to America's economic well-being.
In the world she inhabits, the people's interests don't matter — neither in the United States nor in pollution-choked China. All that matters is control, her control. In modern times, the only ecosystem in which such people can effectively exist is a communist one.

http://news.investors.com/ibd-editor...-it.htm?p=full

[Ryan Ruck]

Breaking: New Climate Data Rigging Scandal Rocks US Government

January 19, 2014

A newly-uncovered and monumental calculating error in official US government climate data shows beyond doubt that climate scientists unjustifiably added on a whopping one degree of phantom warming to the official "raw" temperature record. Skeptics believe the discovery may trigger the biggest of all “climate con” scandals in Congress and sound the death knell on American climate policy.

Independent data analyst, Steven Goddard, today (January 19, 2014) released his telling study of the officially adjusted and “homogenized” US temperature records relied upon by NASA, NOAA, USHCN and scientists around the world to “prove” our climate has been warming dangerously.

Goddard reports, “I spent the evening comparing graphs…and hit the NOAA motherlode.” His diligent research exposed the real reason why there is a startling disparity between the “raw” thermometer readings, as reported by measuring stations, and the “adjusted” temperatures, those that appear in official charts and government reports. In effect, the adjustments to the “raw” thermometer measurements made by the climate scientists “turns a 90 year cooling trend into a warming trend,” says the astonished Goddard.

Goddard’s plain-as-day evidence not only proves the officially-claimed one-degree increase in temperatures is entirely fictitious, it also discredits the reliability of any assertion by such agencies to possess a reliable and robust temperature record.

Goddard continues: "I discovered a huge error in their adjustments between V1 and V2. This is their current US graph. Note that there is a discontinuity at 1998, which doesn’t look right. Globally, temperatures plummeted in 1999, but they didn’t in the US graph."



Climate at a Glance | Time Series

It doesn’t look right, because they made a gigantic error (possibly intentional) going from USHCN V1 to V2. In V1 they adjusted recent temperatures upwards (thin line below) and made no adjustment to older temperatures.



GHCN Global Gridded Data

"But when they switched to V2, they started adjusting older temperatures downwards, and left post-2000 temperatures more or less intact, " says Goddard. This created a huge jump (greater than one degree) downwards for all years prior to 2000. You can see what they did in the animation below.

Blue line is thermometer data. Thin red line is V1 adjusted. Thick red line is V2 adjusted. They created more than 1 degree warming by reversing polarity of the adjustment in the pre-2000 years. This created a double downwards adjustment for the pre-1998 years, relative to the post 1998 years.

NOAA made a big deal about 2012 blowing away all temperature records, but the temperature they reported is the result of a huge error. This affects all NOAA and NASA US temperature graphs, and is part of the cause of this famous shift.



According to USHCN 1 docs, the total adjustment is supposed to be about 0.5F, and upwards.



ts.ushcn_anom25_diffs_urb-raw_pg.gif (650×502)

But in USHCN2, the adjustments are much larger, and downwards. The USHCN2 adjustments are supposed to be approximately the same adjustments as USHCN1.

Here is an animation of the complete set of USHCN adjustments, which turn a 90 year cooling trend into a warming trend.



Visualizing How USHCN Hides The Decline In US Temperatures | Real Science

But does this evidence prove an intentional fraud? Goddard certainly thinks it possible and only a full examination of all the files will show that, one way or the other. Goddard wants backing from others to compel the Administration to come clean on this massive story, using Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) rules. The ramifications are that hundreds of bilions of tax dollars have been misallocated to "solve" a non-problem, all due to willful malfeasance and/or incompetence in data handling.

Judging by recent history, the bureaucrats should be worried. Just last month (December, 2013), John Beale, the senior EPA policy advisor, was convicted and jailed for defrauding taxpayers out of $1 million in salaries and expenses. Does a culture of corruption extend throughout departments associated with climate policy? The public will certainly demand their right to know whether they have been deliberately and systemically lied to.

[Ryan Ruck]

Over Two-Thirds Of The Contiguous USA Covered With Snow

February 7, 2014

Readers may recall our story from Dec 15th, 2013: Over half the USA covered in snow, the most in 11 years

Now, it’s even more. See the map and the 3D image:



Area Covered By Snow: 67.4%
Area Covered Last Month: 48.1%

The map is from NOAA’s National Operational Hydrologic Remote Sensing Center

The 3D image is from this KMZ file and Google Earth:



h/t to Joe Bastardi of WeatherBell

UPDATE: Values of snow cover for this date show this is the highest in a decade.

February 7, 2014
Area Covered By Snow: 67.4%
February 7, 2013
Area Covered By Snow: 34.8%
February 7, 2012
Area Covered By Snow: 25.5%
February 7, 2011
Area Covered By Snow: 48.9%
February 7, 2010
Area Covered By Snow: 60.8%
February 7, 2009
Area Covered By Snow: 33.2%
February 7, 2008
Area Covered By Snow: 51.1%
February 7, 2007
Area Covered By Snow: 38.9%
February 7, 2006
Area Covered By Snow: 26.6%
February 7, 2005
Area Covered By Snow: 26.4%
February 7, 2004
Area Covered By Snow: 53.4%

[Ryan Ruck]

Great Lakes Ice Cover Spreading Rapidly; See Which Lake Set A New Record

February 6, 2014



Ice continued to build this past week on the Great Lakes due to the cold air and temperatures staying below freezing, and Lake Superior's new record shows it.

The lake is 92 percent frozen, toppling a 20-year-old record of 91 percent set on Feb. 5, 1994. That statistic helped total Great Lakes ice cover soar, and we can expect to see more form in coming days.

The air temperatures this past week averaged around five degrees below normal for the Great Lakes area. This amount of deviation from normal means it was a fairly cold week.

As of February 5, 2014, the entire Great Lakes system is now reportedly covered 77 percent with ice, according to the Great Lakes Environmental Research Laboratory. Last week at this time the ice cover was 66 percent. The 77 percent ice cover now still lags behind 1994, when the entire Great Lakes system had an average ice cover of 84 percent on February 5. This data is according to Jia Wang, physical oceanographer at the Great Lakes Environmental Research Center in Ann Arbor, MI.

Let's look at each individual lake.

Lake Superior

Lake Superior is almost frozen over as of yesterday February 5, 2014. Lake Superior is 92 percent covered with ice now. The ice has increased rapidly in the past week, from 76 percent ice cover on January 30, 2014. The high resolution satellite picture from February 3, 2014 shows all of the ice cover on Lake Superior. The current ice cover on Lake Superior is the highest amount ever for February 5. In 1994, Lake Superior was reportedly 91 percent covered in ice.

Lake Michigan

Lake Michigan is now 51 percent covered with ice, as opposed to 42 percent at this time last week. Coyotes were seen walking on the ice just offshore of Chicago this week. This makes us wonder if the lakes freeze over totally, will animals from Canada be able to cross over Lake Huron or Lake Superior, and enter Michigan. It is thought that this is how the last wolverine spotted in Michigan made it into Michigan. Lake Michigan has been covered with more ice on this date in the past. In 1977 and 1996, Lake Michigan was up to 74 percent ice covered.

Lake Huron

Ice cover on Lake Huron rocketed up an additional 14 percent this week, climbing to a total ice cover of 86 percent. If the ice continues to build at that rate in this next week, Lake Huron could be almost frozen over, or frozen over by the end of next week. People ice fishing are reporting 24 inches of ice on Saginaw Bay near Bay City. Lake Huron has been as much at 95 percent covered in ice on this date back in 1981 and 1994.

Lake Erie

Lake Erie is the shallowest of the Great Lakes, with an average depth of 62 feet and a maximum depth of 210 feet. It also has the least volume of any Great Lake, with 116 cubic miles of water. So it should come as no surprise that Lake Erie currently has the highest percentage of ice cover. Lake Erie is 96 percent covered with ice. Last week at this time Lake Erie had 94 percent ice cover. Erie was entirely ice covered on February 5, 1996.

Lake Ontario

Lake Ontario is an interesting lake. It is the smallest Great Lake when it comes to surface area, but actually holds more than three times the amount of water when compared to Lake Erie. The average depth of Lake Ontario is 283 feet, making it the second deepest Great Lake behind Lake Superior. The deepest spot in Lake Ontario is 802 feet. The ice cover on Lake Ontario is the lowest of any of the Great Lakes, with only 32 percent covered in ice. Last week at this time, Lake Ontario had 27 percent ice cover. Lake Ontario has been covered with as much as 79 percent ice up to this point in the winter in 1994.

Will ice continue to grow?

The ice cover should continue to grow at a rapid rate based on temperatures expected in the next few weeks. You may not want to hear this, but I don't see several days in a row cracking the freezing mark until at least February 21. There could be a few hours above freezing late next week, but that won't slow the ice growth. Also, the weather pattern is going to be fairly quiet in the next two weeks. This means lower wind speeds around the Great Lakes, which should help accelerate ice cover growth.

It is going to be close, but we may be living in a historic winter with regards to amount of Great Lakes ice.

We will see some fascinating ice sculptures if we get a big wind that breaks the ice, and piles it up.

We will also be fascinated when the ice has melted, and we see spring.

[American Patriot]

Ice Age.

[Ryan Ruck]

Ice Expert Predicts Lake Superior Will Completely Freeze Over This Winter

February 11, 2014

Lake Superior hasn’t completely frozen over in two decades.

But an expert on Great Lakes ice says there’s a “very high likelihood” that the three-quadrillion-gallon lake will soon be totally covered with ice thanks to this winter’s record-breaking cold.

The ice cover on the largest freshwater lake in the world hit a 20-year record of 91 percent on Feb. 5, 1994.

Jay Austin, associate professor at the Large Lakes Observatory in Duluth, Minn., told CNSNews.com that he expects that record will be broken this winter when the most northern of the Great Lakes becomes totally shrouded in ice.

The thickness of the ice on Lake Superior “varies tremendously,” from a very thin sheet in some areas near the coast to several feet thick in other spots, Austin says. The National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) reports that the mean thickness of the lake ice is 26 cm, or a little over 10 inches.

Austin attributes the large amount of ice on the lake to the “extraordinary cold winter we’ve had,” pointing out that Duluth recently experienced an all-time record of 23 straight days of below-zero temperatures.

The previous record of 22 days was set in 1936 and tied in 1963, according to the National Weather Service.

Austin, who studies the effect of lake ice, predicts that it will have a “very strong influence” on the regional climate this summer, with the “air conditioning [lake] effect” more pronounced than usual.

“Typically, the lake will start warming up in late June, but it will be August before we see that this year,” Austin told CNSNews.com.

As of February 10th, ice covered 80.4 percent of all the Great Lakes, compared to 38.4 percent last winter, according to NOAA. That’s considerably higher than the lake’s long-term average of 51.4 percent under ice.

The record for maximum ice coverage of 94.7 percent was set in 1979. The lowest ice accumulation occurred in 2002, when just 9.5 percent of the surface of the Great Lakes was frozen solid.

By the way, anyone else think we should move this thread over to the Science forum? Seems there's a lot more science in this thread than conspiracy theory.

[Ryan Ruck]

LOL at Drudge's UN "climate change" report headline...

[American Patriot]

UN: NO ONE WILL BE SPARED

[American Patriot]

Don't know if that will stay when the page changes.

[American Patriot]

Why did this thread get moved to Science? For some reason I remember it being in Skeptics Corner????

[American Patriot]

OMG we're ALL GONNA DIE!

'Wild climate ride only just beginning'

Wednesday, April 02, 2014

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YOKOHAMA, Japan - Global warming is driving humanity toward a whole new level of many risks, a UN scientific panel reports, warning that the wild climate ride has only just begun.
Twenty-first century disasters such as killer heat waves in Europe, wildfires in the United States, droughts in Australia, and deadly flooding in Mozambique, Thailand and Pakistan highlight how vulnerable humanity is to extreme weather, says a new report released early Monday by a Nobel Prize-winning group of scientists.
"We're all sitting ducks," said Princeton University Professor Michael Oppenheimer, one of the main authors of the 32-volume report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
More than 100 governments unanimously approved the scientist-written 49-page summary, which is aimed at world political leaders.
"Changes are occurring rapidly, and they are sort of building up that risk," said the overall lead author of the report, Chris Field of the Carnegie Institution for Science in Stanford.
Climate change will worsen problems that society already has, such as poverty, sickness, violence and refugees, according to the report. And, on the other end, it will act as a brake slowing down the benefits of a modernising society, such as regular economic growth and more efficient crop production.
The report, the fifth on warming's impacts, includes risks to the ecosystems, including a thawing Arctic, but it is far more oriented to what it means to people than past versions.
"I can't think of a better word for what it means to society than the word 'risk'," said Virginia Burkett of the US Geological Survey.
Part of the report talks about what can be done: reducing carbon pollution and adapting to and preparing for changing climates with smarter development.
Meanwhile, top official at the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies Maarten van Aalst has said that freaky storms like 2013's Typhoon Haiyan, 2012's Superstorm Sandy and 2008's ultra-deadly Cyclone Nargis may not have been caused by warming, but their fatal storm surges were augmented by climate change's ever-rising seas.