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Cold winter doesn't buck global warming trend

Tim Neville
SwissInfo
Tue, 24 Feb 2009 04:27 UTC
Temperatures sink to record lows while snow depths are twice the normal level - is Switzerland's seemingly abnormal winter another indicator of climate change?

Switzerland record snow
© unknown
And the snow just keeps on falling (Keystone)

Bern University climatologist Heinz Wanner tells swissinfo that although the current winter season may appear colder and snowier than usual the larger historical picture shows it isn't as severe as it seems.

The head of the Climatology and Meteorology Research Group (Klimet), Wanner has for three decades been studying the climate to reconstruct conditions as they were up to 10,000 years ago. He's also working to understand the influence humans have had on weather patterns.

Wanner explains that the deep cold and record snow has to do largely with changes in the air pressure thousands of kilometres away between the Azores and Iceland. Conditions there influence Europe's wind patterns, which this year have sent storm after storm barreling across Switzerland.

It's a natural cycle, he says, but that doesn't mean humans aren't influencing those events.

Comment: SwissInfo seems to be trying to ask some difficult questions, but in the end they are just another mouthpiece for the self-referencing global political juggernaut that is "Global Warming".

The link to the original article has a couple of interesting related stories. Both related stories are also purely pro-global-warming-alarmist in nature, just as this story itself is.

Story box reproduced below:

The one encouraging thing to notice with this story if you visit the original link is the comments that it received which are reproduced below:
David, United Kingdom
A classic example of climate scientist caught up in the politics of global warming. Read between the lines, he essentially acknowledges that climate variability is cyclic, but has to insert the obligatory "man is responsible" rubbish to ensure that the grant money keeps rolling in.
Manfred , Germany
Nature does obviously not care about the consensus of the IPCC politicians. Temperatures are not higher than 20 years ago, when the hysteria began. (Link) And Mr. Wanner is wrong in another issue: water scarcity would improve with warming, the IPCC report about this comes close to a lie: (Link) By the way, african deserts are in spectecular retreat: (Link)
retroproxy, United States
The climate is cooling and has been for about 10 years. The sun has entered a period of low sunspot activity. The Pacific Decadal Oscillation has switched to its cool phase meaning cooler La Nina events will be the norm. The North Atlantic Decadal Oscillation is switching to its cool phase. That's why it's colder and snowier now. Previously the climate was a bit warmer because the sun was in a period of high sunspot activity and because the PDO was in its warm phase meaning warmer El Nino events were the norm. Mankind's paltry CO2 emissions aren't altering the climate. It's against the laws of nature for "greenhouse" gases to heat the atmosphere. It can't happen. Experiments by R.W. Wood and Neils Bohr in the early 20th Century proved that CO2 cannot by nature trap infrared radiation and heat the atmosphere. This is well-documented. Anthropogenic climate change is one of the biggest lies ever told by governments and radical environmentalists. Numerous scientists believe the Earth is entering a prolonged cooling period or possibly a mini ice age event that would have terrible consequences for humans. Looking at both the 100,000 and 11,500 year pattern of glaciation and short-term interglacial periods, we are due for glaciation. The 0.038 percent concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere, a fraction due to human activity, is a drop in the bucket. Don't believe the lie of anthropogenic climate change/global warming.


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Newspaper

The Year of the Man-made Global Warming Skeptic

James William Smith
Global Warming Blog
Mon, 23 Feb 2009 07:09 UTC
In 2008, scientists from all over the world are jumping off the man-made global warming bandwagon. This is due to the fact that environmental study after study concludes that the behavior of man is not the cause of significant global warming.

In a recently released Geological Society of America abstract, Dr. Don Easterbrook, Professor of Geology at Western Washington University, presented data showing that the global warming cycle from 1977 to 1998 is now over and that we have entered into a new global cooling period that should last for the next three decades.

He also suggests that since the IPCC climate models are now so far off from what is actually happening that their projections for both this decade and century must be considered highly unreliable.
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Evil Rays

Space Weather Prediction Center moves the solar cycle goalpost again

Mike Ronanye
Watts Up With That
Wed, 25 Feb 2009 06:31 UTC
SWPC has just made a change in their solar cycle predictions in the middle of the month without any pre-announcement. Both Sunspot and F10.7cm predictions were altered significantly.
sunspot prediction
© NOAA / SWPC

Comment: Two things of note regarding this short blog article.

One: The solar cycle continues to baffle the scientists and their models.

Two: It is easier to keep shifting one's expectations than to admit that the expectations may be off.

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Snowman

Snowiest Winter Ever Recorded in North Dakota

Harold Ambler
Talking About The Weather
Thu, 26 Feb 2009 03:42 UTC
North Dakota Snow Feb 2009
© Crosby Journal
A snowmobiler negotiates the streets of Crosby, North Dakota.

Snow, wind, and cold have assaulted North Dakota yet again in the past 24 hours. In Bismarck Friday morning the temperature was 12 below zero with a new inch or two of snow expected following Thursday's more significant storm.

Snow in the southern part of the state was bad enough Thursday that snowplow operators were pulling off the road, blinded by the whiteout conditions. A foot of snow was common in the heaviest band.

The National Weather Service predicts a high temperature of 3 degrees Fahrenheit Friday in Bismarck, as well as additional snow. As of Thursday, three-quarters of the state's roads were still snow-covered, in whole or in part, from the storm that just ended the day before.

More than once during the winter, the Department of Transportation has issued a no-travel advisory, most recently on February 10.
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Nuke

Obama's Excellent Atomic Omission

Harvey Wasserman
CounterPunch
Thu, 26 Feb 2009 09:14 UTC
Two lethal words went thankfully unspoken in President Obama's address to the nation this week---atomic energy.

Unfortunately, two others---"clean coal"---were included.

An increasingly desperate reactor industry just tried to sneak a $50 billion loan guarantee package into the stimulus bill. But for the third time since 2007, it got beat by a powerful national grassroots movement and key Congressional leaders.

Nuke pushers now want reactors painted "green" in a renewable standard Congress may soon set.
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Binoculars

"Extinct" Bird Seen, Eaten

Christine Dell'Amore
National Geographic
Wed, 18 Feb 2009 18:15 UTC
quail

A rare quail from the Philippines was photographed for the first time before being sold as food at a poultry market, experts say.

Found only on the island of Luzon, Worcester's buttonquail was known solely through drawings based on dated museum specimens collected several decades ago.

Scientists had suspected the species - listed as "data deficient" on the International Union for Conservation of Nature's 2008 Red List - was extinct.

A TV crew documented the live bird in the market before it was sold in January, according to the Agence France-Press news agency.
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Bizarro Earth

5.4 Earthquake Jolts Northern Japan


Bernama
Sat, 28 Feb 2009 09:53 UTC
A moderate earthquake measuring 5.4 on the Richter scale hit Japan's northernmost Hokkaido region Saturday, said the Japan Meteorological Agency Saturday.

The focus of the quake, which occurred at 9:36 local time (0036 GMT), was some 100 km underground at Hidaka-shicho Seibu region, Kyodo News quoted the agency as saying here.
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Alarm Clock

Schwarzenegger declares California drought emergency

Samantha Young
Associated Press
Sat, 28 Feb 2009 04:52 UTC
Sacramento - Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger declared a state of emergency Friday because of three years of below-average rain and snowfall in California, a step that urges urban water agencies to reduce water use by 20 percent.

"This drought is having a devastating impact on our people, our communities, our economy and our environment, making today's action absolutely necessary," the Republican governor said in his statement.
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Fish

Fish pivots tubular eyes to scan for food

David Perlman
San Francisco Chronicle
Fri, 27 Feb 2009 09:41 UTC
Image
The fishy denizens of the deep are many, varied and strange, and among the strangest are the barreleyes, swift little hunters with tunnel-shaped eyes that live in the darkness of the deepest waters of Monterey Bay and in other seas worldwide.

For decades, biologists have puzzled over those fishes' eyes, because apparently they could look in only one direction - upward - and have wondered at the role of the mysterious transparent shield that covers their heads much like the cockpits of jet fighter planes.

Now two marine biologists in Monterey Bay, trolling with remote-controlled submarines from their surface ship, have tracked and captured the 6-inch living barreleyes on film and studied them in a lab to solve the puzzle: Those tunnels that hold their eyes, the scientists discovered, can actually pivot up and down - a rarity for any animal.
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Snowman

Study: Global cooling causes vast Antarctic glaciation in ancient time


People's Daily Online
Thu, 26 Feb 2009 05:15 UTC
A study showed that vast Antarctic glaciation was caused by global cooling, according to a news release issued by the University of Hong Kong on Thursday.

Global climate rapidly shifted from a relatively ice-free world to one with massive ice sheets on Antarctica about 34 million years ago. A team of scientists from research units from different countries and regions offered a new perspective on the nature of changing climatic conditions across this greenhouse-to-icehouse transition, which has important implications for predicting future climate changes.

Detailed in the latest issue of Science, an international scientific journal, the data disproved a long-held idea that massive ice growth in the Antarctic was accompanied by little to no global temperature change.
      Read More...
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