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The coldest winter in America in 20 years: Al Gore's stupidest global warming quotes

Michael Snyder
Investmentwatchblog.com
Sun, 05 Jan 2014 00:01 UTC
Snowed in truck
© unknown
America could actually use some global warming right about now. It is being projected that low temperatures across the Midwest could be 30 to 50 degrees below average on Monday morning. On Sunday, fans that attempted to tailgate before the playoff game between the 49ers and the Packers at Lambeau Field in Green Bay, Wisconsin were discovering that their beers were actually turning to ice before they could drink them. That is cold. But things are going to get really chilly when nightfall arrives. In fact, it is being projected that much of the nation will experience wind chill temperatures of more than 40 degrees below zero, and wind chill temperatures of more than 50 degrees below zero are expected in parts of North Dakota and Minnesota.

The weather is expected to be so cold that the governor of Minnesota has actually decided to close public schools statewide on Monday. The last time that happened was back in 1997. The reason why the governor of Minnesota did this is because when temperatures get this low they can literally be life threatening. When wind chill temperatures get down to about 50 below zero, if your skin is exposed you can literally develop frostbite in about five minutes. This is being called the coldest day in America in 20 years, and these cold temperatures have many Americans wondering what ever happened to all of that "global warming" that Al Gore and other "climate scientists" have been warning us about for so many years.

If the planet really is getting significantly warmer, our winters should not be like this. Back in the year 2000, one prominent "climate scientist" boldly declared that future generations of children "just aren't going to know what snow is."

Oh really?
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Books

Rescue efforts for trapped Antarctic voyage disrupt serious science

Andrew Revkin
The New York Times
Tue, 31 Dec 2013 13:18 UTC
Image
© Andrew Peacock/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
An image from one of the passengers of the Akademik Shokalskiy shows the Russian research ship icebound off Antarctica.
Early this morning, I received an e-mail message from one of many polar scientists whose important and costly field research in Antarctica has been seriously disrupted by the diversion of icebreakers to try to evacuate the journalists, tourists, crew and scientists on an unessential "expedition" aboard a chartered Russian ship.

You can read the note - from Joe McConnell, an American ice-sheet researcher I met in 2004 in Greenland - after a summary of the situation.

Of course the evacuation of the trapped ship, which will require helicopters given the impassible nature of the thick sea ice in the area, is vital. But when you consider the cost and risk attending the operation, and the impact on other science, this raises questions about the advisability of this voyage in the first place.

If you follow the discussion around #SpiritOfMawson - the Twitter hashtag for the project - you'll also note how this misadventure has energized climate change contrarians, offering a distraction from serious research on the impact of climate change on Antarctica.

The Spirit of Mawson expedition - a mashup of adventure travel, media event and science - was billed this way by organizers:
The Australasian Antarctic Expedition will truly meld science and adventure, repeating century old measurements to discover and communicate the changes taking place in this remote and pristine environment.
On the website, the planners included a long justification of the trip on the basis of the science that would be undertaken. The prime goal was a fresh assessment of ice, ocean and ecological conditions on the stretch of Antarctic coast south of Australia and New Zealand a century after an arduous expedition led by Sir Douglas Mawson did the same. In 2012, Smithsonian ran a great piece on that effort, "The Most Terrible Polar Exploration Ever: Douglas Mawson's Antarctic Journey."
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Cloud Lightning

Flood-hit UK must prepare for more extreme weather, says climate adviser

Rowena Mason and Sam Jones
The Guardian
Sun, 05 Jan 2014 20:26 UTC
Sir David King says government needs to increase spending on flood defences, as storms continue to cause disruption

UK Storm
© Peter Morrison/AP
Britain needs to face up to a radical change in weather conditions that could be the result of global warming, and spend much more on flood defences, Sir David King, the government's special envoy on climate change, has said.

Amid the worst floods for decades, King said the UK must do more to manage the problem, potentially doubling spending to £1bn a year by 2020, as extreme weather events are likely to become more frequent.

The former chief scientific adviser spoke out as the UK braced itself for further disruption from wind and storms, with 84 flood warnings in England and Wales, and a further 220 areas on alert.

The storms and floods have claimed three lives, including that of a man thought to have drowned after his mobility scooter fell into the river Thames at Osney in Oxford on Saturday night. A teenager remains missing in Devon.

Strong winds, persistent rain and tidal surges are predicted for the UK for at least another two days, mostly in the south and Wales, as emergency services attempt to cope with the trail of devastation already caused by the severe weather.
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Igloo

'Life-threatening' cold bites US Midwest, heads east

Brendan O'Brien and Kim Palmer
Reuters
Sun, 05 Jan 2014 20:47 UTC
South Bronx
© Reuters/Mike Segar
A woman and her son make their way up a snow covered sidewalk in the South Bronx section of New York City, January 3, 2014.

As the Midwestern United States shivered through the region's lowest temperatures in two decades and forecasters warned that life-threatening cold was heading eastward, officials in Chicago and other districts said schools would be closed on Monday.

Icy conditions snarled travel across the Midwest and thousands of flights were canceled or delayed, days after the Northeast was hammered by the first winter storm of the season.

"The coldest temperatures in almost two decades will spread into the northern and central U.S. today behind an arctic cold front," the National Weather Service said on Sunday. "Combined with gusty winds, these temperatures will result in life-threatening wind chill values as low as 60 degrees below zero (Fahrenheit/minus 51 degrees Celsius)."

In weather that cold, frostbite can set in on uncovered skin in a matter of minutes, experts warned. Minnesota Governor Mark Dayton ordered all public schools in the state closed on Monday to protect children from dangerously cold weather. Chicago public schools followed suit - reversing an earlier decision - saying in a statement on its website that it would be dangerous for children to commute to school amid sub-zero temperatures and high winds.

The NWS said the widespread chill was a result of a relatively infrequent alignment of weather conditions, allowing the Arctic polar vortex to be displaced unusually far south.

"The weather pattern across North America right now is set up to be very favorable for the southward transport of Arctic air," said Bob Oravec, a National Weather Service meteorologist.

"It's not going to be long-lived," he added. "By the end of the week the temperatures definitely start to moderate across the whole of the country."
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Bizarro Earth

Stranded pilot whales die in New Zealand


Agence France-Presse
Sun, 05 Jan 2014 17:30 UTC
Pilot Whales
© US Coast Guard/AFP/File, Petty Officer 3rd Class Mark Barney
In this image released by the US Coast Guard, a pod of pilot whales swims off the coast of Everglades National Park in Florida on December 5, 2013.
Wellington - A pod of 39 pilot whales died after stranding themselves at a remote beach on New Zealand's South Island, conservation officials said Monday.

The whales, which are notorious for beaching themselves, were being monitored after they were spotted close to the shore of Golden Bay on Sunday but rangers were powerless to stop them stranding, the Department of Conservation said.

Golden Bay conservation services manager John Mason said 12 of the whales died naturally and rangers euthanized the rest after assessing they were too far up the beach to be refloated.

"We carefully weighed up the likelihood of being able to refloat them and get them safely back out to sea," he said.

"But our staff, who have extensive experience in dealing with mass whale strandings in Golden Bay, determined that due to various factors it was unlikely they could be rescued."

Mass pilot whale strandings are common in New Zealand, with scientists unclear about why the marine mammals swim ashore in large groups.
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Snowflake

Latest storm likely to make the 2010s the snowiest decade in the East Coast in the NOAA record

Marc Morano
Climate Depot
Sat, 04 Jan 2014 11:20 UTC
Image
© Lagforce Productions
Snow in Boston
Via Meteorologist Joe D'Aleo

http://icecap.us/index.php/go/joes-blog/latest_storm_likely_to_make_2010s_snowiest_decade_in_noaa_nesis_data_base/

Latest storm likely to make the 2010s the snowiest decade in the east in the NOAA record
By Joseph D'Aleo, CCM (Certified Consulting Meteorologist)

It was quite a storm. I have never seen Logan Airport report heavy snow with an air temperature of 1F (not wind chill) before. The ended up with 15.1 inches. Boxford had 23.8 inches.

Even as more cold and snow invades the central, near the east coast, the post storm blues have set in with the inevitability of an inside runner following rapidly on its heels. But snow loving friends, we have lived through quite a decade and the millennium so far has been a boon to snow lovers despite the continuing claims that snows are becoming rare and hurting winter sports as erroneously reported last week in Boston Magazine.

We here are using NOAA's own NESIS scale - which we used to call the Kocin/Uccellini storms.
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Boat

Fresh Antarctic drama as Xue Long is trapped but Aurora Australis leaves


The Guardian
Fri, 03 Jan 2014 18:56 UTC
Image
© Jessica Fitzpatrick/AFP/Getty Images
The Chinese Antarctic vessel Xue Long seen from the bridge of the Aurora Australis earlier in the week.
The Chinese icebreaker that helped rescue passengers from the Russian ship Akademik Shokalskiy is itself pinned by the ice

The Chinese ship that freed dozens of people from a Russian vessel stricken in the Antarctic has itself become trapped by ice.

The Xue Long on Friday night informed the Australian Maritime Safety Authority (Amsa) that the ship had become beset by thick ice, but said the ship and crew were not in danger and had food supplies to last several weeks.

The Chinese ship's helicopter was used in a seven-hour operation to transfer 52 people from the ice-stricken Akademik Shokalskiy to the Australian ship Aurora Australis on Thursday.

Comment: What a complete farce!

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Ice Cube

Antarctic ice shelf melt 'lowest EVER recorded, global warming is NOT eroding it'

Lewis Page
The Register
Fri, 03 Jan 2014 00:00 UTC
Image
© NASA/Kent Shiffer
Pine Island Glacier Ice Shelf
Human CO2 just not a big deal at Pine Island Glacier

Scientists at the British Antarctic Survey say that the melting of the Pine Island Glacier ice shelf in Antarctica has suddenly slowed right down in the last few years, confirming earlier research which suggested that the shelf's melt does not result from human-driven global warming.

The Pine Island Glacier in West Antarctica and its associated sea ice shelf is closely watched: this is because unlike most of the sea ice around the austral continent, its melt rate has seemed to be accelerating quickly since scientists first began seriously studying it in the 1990s.

Many researchers had suggested that this was due to human-driven global warming, which appeared to be taking place rapidly at that time (though it has since gone on hold for 15 years or so, a circumstance which science is still assimilating).

However back in 2009 the British Antarctic Survey sent its Autosub robot probe under the shelf (famously powered by some 5,000 ordinary alkaline D-cell batteries on each trip beneath the ice, getting through no less than four tonnes of them during the research). The Autosub survey revealed that a previously unknown marine ridge lay below the shelf, over which the icepack had for millennia been forced to grind its way en route to the ocean. However in relatively recent times the ice had finally so ground down the ridge that the sea could flow in between shelf and ridge, freeing the ice to move much faster and warming it too.
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Attention

Yet another volcano erupts! Thousands of villagers evacuated in Indonesia after Sinabung volcano, dormant for more than 400 years, erupts spectacularly

Jennifer Smith
Diaily Mail, UK
Sun, 05 Jan 2014 09:25 UTC
Thousands of residents have been forced to leave their homes after Mount Sinabung erupted

The volcano had been dormant for over four centuries before erupting in 2010 and then again in September

The crater erupted more than 50 times on Saturday night and forced remaining residents to scramble from homes

Image

Thousands of panicked villagers have been forced to flee their homes after Mount Sinabung erupted more than 50 times in a single night
Panicked residents of a mountainside village in western Indonesia were forced to scramble from their homes when a nearby volcano erupted late on Saturday night.

Women and children were packed into vans and driven away from Mount Sinabung as it spurted gas and lava just after midnight in Northern Sumatra province.

Natural disaster authorities said more than 50 eruptions occurred, with rocks and debris landing three miles away from the mountain, though no casualties have been reported.

The volcano was still spitting gas and lava as high as 13,00 feet this morning.

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Snowflake Cold

Experts warn of frostbite, dead batteries in cold

Amy Forliti
wral.com
Sat, 04 Jan 2014 08:51 UTC
Image
There's cold. And then there's subzero, frostbite cold.

Record-breaking frigid temperatures will blanket the Midwest beginning Sunday, part of a "polar vortex," that one meteorologist says will send piles of North Pole air down into the U.S.

These below-zero temperatures can be dangerous, and officials in several states are warning residents to take precautions. Here's a look at some of the problems that arise when temperatures plummet and how to stay safe if you venture outdoors.

FROSTBITE

At temperatures of 15 to 30 below, exposed skin can get frostbitten in minutes and hypothermia can quickly set in.

"People need to protect themselves against the intense cold," said Dr. Brian Mahoney, medical director of emergency services at Hennepin County Medical Center in Minneapolis. "They have to wear a hat, they have to have face protection."

Mahoney said mittens are better than gloves, layers of dry clothing are best, and anyone who gets wet needs to get inside.

"You can't be wearing high-heel shoes with your toes in nylons," he added. "That's a great way to get frostbite."
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