“Thing Of The Past” : Snow Arrives In The UK

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/topics/weather/8076667/Snow-falls-in-Yorkshire-In-October.html

 

About Tony Heller

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49 Responses to “Thing Of The Past” : Snow Arrives In The UK

  1. Brendon says:

    You do know the difference between obscuring the truth and a sensible approach to reporting on the climate?

    • You do understand that the UK’s top climate research organisation said ten years ago that this shouldn’t be happening?

      • Brendon says:

        I’m guessing 10 years ago they made a mistake, unlike the majority of climate scientists that did not think snow would disappear in such a short time frame.

        It has been said many times over that in places where the temps remain below zero the snowfall can increase because the warmer atmosphere holds more water vapour.

        You continue to push “that mistake by a select few” as some kind of evidence against AGW.

        That’s absurd.

      • truthsword says:

        The problem with that idea is that I did not see/hear that remaining large percentage of “climate scientists” clear the record so their good works weren’t tainted by the UKs top climate research organisation.

      • Yarmy says:

        The original article in the Independent quoted Dr David Viner:

        http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/snowfalls-are-now-just-a-thing-of-the-past-724017.html

        It’s possible he qualified his statements with “if things continue as they are” or whatever, but we’ll never know. Also, I think Phil Jones did dismiss it as a silly assertion fairly recently.

      • Brendon says:

        Steve says: “You do understand that the UK’s top climate research organisation said ten years ago that this shouldn’t be happening?”

        So it wasn’t the organisation, just one guy at organisation? Is that right?

      • Yarmy says:

        Yes. I’m guessing the journalist just rang up CRU and asked to speak to someone about the lack of snow in that and previous winters.

  2. PJB says:

    It was a report, therefore it was in the past so a model didn’t predict it so it can’t be real or meaningful. You’ve just got to stop getting confused by the facts, Steve, it is most uncooperative of you.

  3. PJB says:

    Two years ago, the first lasting snowfall was Nov. 10.
    Last year it was a full 30 cm that fell on Oct. 30.
    Snow is forecast for the weekend.
    Is it a trend, a fluke or just plain bad luck that I live in a northern town?
    (46°24′ N 75°02′ W, elevation 426 m)

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EQku74J5M4s

    (The extended version in honor of the above-mentioned “trend”.)

  4. Gneiss says:

    stevengoddard wrote,
    “You do understand that the UK’s top climate research organisation said ten years ago that this shouldn’t be happening?”

    It shouldn’t be happening when? If they said snow should be a thing of the past by 2010, they sure were wrong.

    But if they didn’t say by this year, then your claim to that they did is plain false.

  5. NoMoreGore says:

    Same individual shows up to whine and boo hoo about your terrible wrongness. No data, no point. Just vitriolic complaints.

    You have the patience of a saint, Steve.

    I must say, I feel sorry for the animals (Including the humans, but especially those who can’t seek shelter) A great deal of livestock was lost last winter.

  6. Dave says:

    Why is Brendon here? His ridiculous retorts are good for a laugh, but his undying support of the failed AGW theory is tiring.
    I guess his faith forces him to be so unsound.

    Similar silly claims about snow free winters were all the rage a few years ago, now idiots like Brendon try to claim all the snow is caused by AGW

    He must drink the koolaid with every meal

    • truthsword says:

      Well… I agree that Brendon’s responses are farcical at best and contradict themselves at every turn, but it is educational. Also it is helpful for any new readers to this blog who aren’t likey going to read previous posts. They get to see a typical AGW acolyte embarrass themselves daily. 🙂

    • ChrisD says:

      idiots like Brendon try to claim all the snow is caused by AGW

      Don’t make stuff up. Neither Brendon nor anyone else said anything remotely like that.

      He must drink the koolaid with every meal

      No, you drank the Kool-Aid.

      (You do realize that anyone can say “you drank the Kool-Aid”, right? This has got to be the most banal, most meaningless of all the so-called skeptics’ rote refrains.)

      • Dave says:

        I’m guessing 10 years ago they made a mistake, unlike the majority of climate scientists that did not think snow would disappear in such a short time frame.

        It has been said many times over that in places where the temps remain below zero the snowfall can increase because the warmer atmosphere holds more water vapour.

        You continue to push “that mistake by a select few” as some kind of evidence against AGW.

        That’s absurd.

        ABOVE Directly from Brendon implying that the snow is caused by AGW because he clans all the warming is increasing the water vapor …. need I explain his stupid thoughts for you any further.

        Or just like Brendon are you too invested in your faith that you cannot process simple facts.

      • ChrisD says:

        ABOVE Directly from Brendon implying that the snow is caused by AGW because he clans all the warming is increasing the water vapor …. need I explain his stupid thoughts for you any further.

        No, here’s what you said. I’ll emphasize where you went off the rails:

        idiots like Brendon try to claim all the snow is caused by AGW

        You see the problem there? Neither Brendon nor anyone else said that all the snow is caused by AGW. That’s the bit you made up.

        As for the rest, yes, rates of evaporation are controlled by the temperatures. Warmer temps mean more evaporation, which means more water vapor in the air, which means more precipitation. If it happens to be cold enough to snow–and that is not particularly cold–then the extra precipitation means more snow. This is pretty basic stuff, Dave. You don’t even need to believe in AGW to understand that slightly warmer temps can lead to increased snowfall. It’s just ordinary physics.

  7. AndyW says:

    My mother says winters were worst in the past, so it must be true.

    Shetland is to the far north, and those other places you mentioned all seem to be hilly Steve! When it snows in Kent I’ll let you know and you can post it up.

    No snow yet.

    Andy

  8. M Carpenter says:

    Andy, I live near Canterbury, it’s -2 here and the car is all iced up. Looks like winter has started early again!

  9. Byz says:

    Here in Caterham Surrey it was -4 first thing, it is still below freezing outside.

  10. Lazarus says:

    Steve do you realise that the picture you included is not from Yorkshire?
    It appears from the caption to be from Scotland. The Cairngorms and Pennines are both mountain ranges and Sheltand is an Island to the North of Scotland. Snow there in Oct is not unusual. Neither would it be in Yorkshire in the north of England but the photo, and article from a climate sceptic paper, is VERY misleading as, while a little snow fell, it did not settle as the misrepresentation suggests.

    • Paul H says:

      The Pennines certainly are not mountain ranges , just hills.

      • Paul H says:

        Yes exactly, it is not unusual. Nobody claims we are heading for another ice age ( as some scientists predicted 40 years ago).

        We are just saying that there is no evidence of any significant warming.

        Things just carry on as usual.

      • ChrisD says:

        Nobody claims we are heading for another ice age ( as some scientists predicted 40 years ago).

        Which scientists predicted that, exactly?

      • Yarmy says:

        Which scientists predicted that, exactly?

        George J. Kukla was one. See here:
        http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,944914,00.html

        (The journalistic hype is amusingly familiar.) As far as I can tell Kukla still believes it’s going to happen and that the current warming is actually an indicator of it. Somehow.

        The late Stephen Schneider was also something of a cooler according to Craig Bohren:
        “I have lived long enough to have seen many doomsday scenarios painted by people who profited by doing so, but which never came to pass. This has made me a skeptic. Perhaps global warming is an example of the old fable about the boy who cried wolf, but this time the doomsayers are, alas, right. Maybe, but I can’t help noting that some of the prominent global warmers of today were global coolers of not so long ago. In particular, Steven Schneider, now at Stanford, previously at NCAR, about 30 years ago was sounding the alarm about an imminent ice age. The culprit then was particles belched into the atmosphere by human activities. No matter how the climate changes he can correctly say that he predicted it. No one in the atmospheric science community has been more successful at getting publicity. NCAR used to send my department clippings from newspaper and magazine articles in which NCAR researchers were named. We’d get thick wads of clippings, almost all of which were devoted to Schneider. Perhaps global warming is bad for the rest of us, but for Schneider and others it has been a godsend.”

        http://www.usatoday.com/tech/columnist/aprilholladay/2006-08-07-global-warming-truth_x.htm?csp=34

      • truthsword says:

        Chris D… U do realize your super-hero Hansen was in on the cooling bandwagon… at the ground floor?

        “On July 9, 1971, the Post published a story headlined “U.S. Scientist Sees New Ice Age Coming.” It told of a prediction by NASA and Columbia University scientist S.I. Rasool. The culprit: man’s use of fossil fuels…the Post reported, was a “computer program developed by Dr. James Hansen,” who was, according to his resume, a Columbia University research associate at the time…”They found no need to worry about the carbon dioxide fuel-burning puts in the atmosphere,” the Post said in the story…”

      • truthsword says:

        To clarify… I wasn’t sayin’ Hansen pushed ice age talk… just that his work/data was the catalyst. His puter programs about distant planets sure seem to inspire folk in weird ways… heh

      • ChrisD says:

        George J. Kukla was one. See here:
        http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,944914,00.html

        No. Here is what George Kukla is quoted as saying:

        When Climatologist George J. Kukla of Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Geological Observatory and his wife Helena analyzed satellite weather data for the Northern Hemisphere, they found that the area of the ice and snow cover had suddenly increased by 12% in 1971 and the increase has persisted ever since. Areas of Baffin Island in the Canadian Arctic, for example, were once totally free of any snow in summer; now they are covered year round.

        Is that a prediction? Or is it an observation? You see the difference?

        Now, again, what scientists were predicting that a new ice age was coming?

      • Yarmy says:

        Chris, he definitely predicted (and predicts) we’re on the verge of an ice age. (I don’t buy his argument, for what it’s worth)
        http://www.gelfmagazine.com/archives/an_unrepentant_prognosticator.php
        GM: In 2000, you told the Columbia University News that you believed that global warming was merely a blip before a coming ice age. Do you still agree with that?
        GK: That article is principally still OK. Only then I didn’t know that the glacials, all glacials by the way, started by global warming.

      • ChrisD says:

        If Kukla predicted it, it wasn’t in the Newsweek article. The quote above is everything he says. As you can clearly see, it is not a prediction; it is an observation.

        But the real point is this: There is this persistent myth that the panicky, whacko scientists were all predicting an imminent ice age in the 70s. It is simply not true. All you have to do is review the literature, which fortunately has already been done. Over the 15-year period from 1965 to 1979, exactly seven papers predicited cooling. That’s fewer than one paper every other year (and some of those weren’t for anything imminent, they were for long-term Milankovitch-style cooling, so they’re still quite valid).

        In contrast, during the same period nearly 50 papers predicted warming.

        So the fact is that “Scientists were predicting a new ice age in the 70s!!!!!” is just not true, no matter how often it’s repeated. It was very much a minority position.

      • ChrisD says:

        U do realize your super-hero Hansen was in on the cooling bandwagon… at the ground floor?

        That’s cooling from aerosols. What the aerosol guys were saying was, “If we don’t do something about aerosol pollution, less sunlight is going to reach the surface, and that’s going to cause significant cooling.” That is still a valid hypothesis; if you can find evidence that it was wrong, I’d like to see it.

        But fortunately, we did do something about aerosol pollution, so the fact that it didn’t come to pass doesn’t mean they were wrong. Here’s the logic of that:

        1. Scientists said that global cooling will result if we don’t curb aerosol pollution.
        2. We curbed aerosol pollution.
        3. There was no cooling, therefore the scientists were wrong.

        See the problem there?

      • ChrisD says:

        PS: Hansen is not my “super-hero”. He’s just a scientist. It’s hard to understand why you guys insist on this ridiculous characterization.

      • ChrisD says:

        Chris, he definitely predicted (and predicts) we’re on the verge of an ice age. …

        http://www.gelfmagazine.com/archives/an_unrepentant_prognosticator.php

        OK, I read this, and here’s the money quote:

        No doubt that we have about 10,000 or even possibly 20,000 years still ahead before the major ice advance can start.

        So, he’s not saying that we’re “on the verge” of an ice age at all. He’s talking about Milankovitch cycles. It’s still a valid prediction, and it’s probably right.

      • Yarmy says:

        Well, yes. But the warming was generally thought to be benign, to be welcomed (as indeed Arrhenius thought), and a bit boring whereas an imminent ice age was scary and exciting which is why the media picked up on it and made things like this:
        http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ndHwW8psR8
        Even I can remember the stories and I was born in the 70s.

        BTW, Craig F. Bohren’s interview above is well worth reading in its entirety, as are his books. Like me, he’s more of a catastrophe sceptic, than a global warming sceptic (I think the world is warming and will continue to do so).

      • intrepid_wanders says:

        ChrisD says:
        “But fortunately, we did do something about aerosol pollution, so the fact that it didn’t come to pass doesn’t mean they were wrong. Here’s the logic of that:”

        What exactly did “we” do?

      • Yarmy says:

        “On the verge” is meant in geological terms of course. But it’s clear that Kukla has tempered his opinion somewhat from the letter he wrote to Nixon way back then.

        http://fabiusmaximus.wordpress.com/2009/10/21/letter/

      • ChrisD says:

        intrepid_wanders says:

        What exactly did “we” do?

        Clean air acts, all over the world. Aerosol pollution has been dramatically reduced over the levels of the 60s.

      • ChrisD says:

        Yarmy says:

        But it’s clear that Kukla has tempered his opinion somewhat from the letter he wrote to Nixon way back then.

        Fair enough. Interesting letter, thanks.

        The basic point remains, though: Although you can find a few isolated scientists who thought that global cooling was near, this was very much a minority position, and the repeated claims to the contrary are just plain wrong. The claimed consensus on global cooling simply did not exist. Even back then, many more scientists were concerned about warming than cooling.

        I’m pretty sure that even though Kukla was worried about cooling, Fran and Ollie were not.

      • ChrisD says:

        Yarmy says:

        an imminent ice age was scary and exciting which is why the media picked up on it

        Yes, and therein lies a key point: This was mainly a media event, not a scientific event. There was, as I’ve said, almost no support for a near-term ice age in the scientific community.

        But even the media articles weren’t as dire as people remember. If you carefully read the two famous articles in Time and Newsweek (both are online), you’ll see that neither one actually contains any predictions of cooling from named scientists; they’re about observed, not predicted, cooling. They can both be summarized by “It’s been cold for a few years, what if this continues?”

        But that’s not how people remember them (including me, until I went back and re-read them a few years ago). They’ll guarantee you that both articles foresaw polar bears in Central Park. They didn’t, but memory is a fickle thing.

      • intrepid_wanders says:

        ChrisD says:
        “Clean air acts, all over the world. Aerosol pollution has been dramatically reduced over the levels of the 60s.”

        Ah, so, in essence, you are saying that the “Clean air acts could be responsible for the warming trend…less aerosol, less reflection, warmer earth. I am good with that too.

      • ChrisD says:

        intrepid_wanders says:

        Ah, so, in essence, you are saying that the “Clean air acts could be responsible for the warming trend…less aerosol, less reflection, warmer earth.

        Well, I wouldn’t say that they’re responsible for it. It seems very likely that they were masking it for a while.

      • intrepid_wanders says:

        ChrisD says;
        “Well, I wouldn’t say that they’re responsible for it. It seems very likely that they were masking it for a while.”

        Well, that is certainly a conflated issue then. Would you happen to have any data that supports observation of aerosols in the 60s and the “dramatic” (I assume an order of magnitude) reduction as of late?

      • ChrisD says:

        intrepid_wanders says:

        Would you happen to have any data that supports observation of aerosols in the 60s and the “dramatic” (I assume an order of magnitude) reduction as of late?

        In a few minutes’ searching, I didn’t find any charting/numbers on aerosols back to the 60s, but I did find a few things.

        Pages 92-93 here show levels of various aerosols back to about 1980, which is well after the various clean air acts took effect, but you get the idea. (I think that anyone living in a major city where pollution controls are in effect can also attest that the air quality is much better than it was in the 60s.)

        And here is a general chart of sunblocking aerosols since 1981. You can see what’s happening there, too.

        Nova did a pretty good show on global dimming a while back. There’s useful information about it here.

        We also have some real-time empirical evidence of the effects of aerosols. After Mt Pinatubo erupted in 1991 (that’s the big peak in the wikimedia chart), there was an observed reduction in energy reaching the surface, along with an observed reduction in temperature. We also observed a reduction in energy at the surface in the days following 9/11 when there was no air traffic (and thus no contrails).

  11. m white says:

    Problem is we are regularly told what the future climate wil be.

    http://ukclimateprojections.defra.gov.uk/content/view/1290/499/

    Vast amounts of public money are used to tell us that Britain will have long hot mediterranean summers and mild wetter winters.

    http://www.bbc.co.uk/sn/climateexperiment/whattheymean/theuk.shtml

  12. PJB says:

    Inter-glacial periods don’t last forever.

    We have been in this one a typical amount of time based on the last several ones. If the cycle repeats another time, here comes the ice. Personally, I will have to move as several kilometers of ice is just too much to dig out from…. in the mean time, I am enjoying the clement weather and looking forward to spring, as always.

    To err is human (and climate scientists are VERY human) to ignore is what trolls deserve.

  13. mkelly says:

    As I drove to work this morning, at 0630, in the easteren UP of Michigan it was snowing. Lake effect off Lake Superior.

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