Real Climate Science

(KITTREDGE)  As spring flirts with our eager spirits, it’s sobering to realize that we’re still deep in Lent. Lent starts 40 days before Easter, which this year is April 24, almost as late as possible. Easter is dictated by a formula established in 325 AD at the Council of Nicaea which states that it shall fall on the first Sunday after the first full moon after the vernal equinox.

Whether you observe Lent rigorously, in a haphazard fashion, or not at all, recent international events have brought many of us to our knees. Even before the earthquake, tsunami and nuclear crisis hit Japan, it seemed that countries in the Middle East were being driven by enormous waves of hope, protest, despair and anger.

This year I signed up for a Lenten Carbon Fast, cutting back not on chocolate – gracious, no! – but on my own carbon footprint. The New England Regional Environmental Ministries shoots me an email early each morning with a suggestion for the day: turn off one lamp for the duration of the fast; build a compost bin, watch closely what food you throw away as the food discarded annually by an average household adds the equivalent CO2 emissions of 1-5 cars. The suggestions are pretty easy to do and this is both good and bad. Because while I turn off a light, lower the thermostat, heat the stir-fry yet again, the tsunami of global warming continues to rise before us.

http://www.vpr.net/episode/50877/

The tsunami of global warming has left 50 inches of snow on the ground in Vermont.

http://www.weatherstreet.com//local_forecast_files/vermont-snow-cover.htm

http://www.catlinarcticsurvey.com/

People used to understand that before the age of global warming enlightenment.

Cool. Sea ice is now part of the tundra!

http://www.metro.co.uk/

NASA explains how these cracks form.

Lots of people think of the Arctic as just a flat expanse of white. This couldn’t be further from the truth. There are all sorts of cracks (leads) and mountains (ridges), similar to tectonic plates. The ice below is constantly moving via the winds and currents, and those forces acting on each piece of ice makes for a very dramatic seascape.

http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/IOTD/view.php?id=49932

Who encouraged the press to be so completely disinformed on this subject? Looking through older newspapers, the coverage of the Arctic tended to be much better informed  100 years ago.

Wind power’s impact on wildlife has long been a sticking point when it comes to the renewable resource’s development. Ever since the Altamont, California turbines went up in the late 1970s, bird kills have been highlighted as the best reason to show some restraint on massive wind farms. Nothing has changed today: most recently, Minnesota-based utility Xcel Energy canceled a contract to build a 150-megawatt wind farm because of concerns over bird impacts.

The wind farm, which was to be built in southeastern North Dakota by enXco Development Corp., would have cost about $400 million and was scheduled to be completed by the end of this year. But two endangered species have scuttled the plan: the whooping crane and the piping plover. Xcel would have had to spend time and money attempting to mitigate any threats to the birds, and apparently those requirements made the project too uncertain to move forward.

http://spectrum.ieee.org/

h/t to reader Dave G

 

http://cdiac.ornl.gov/

More on Clarinda, Iowa. The blue line is the measured thermometer data. As you can see, the 1930s was very hot there. The red line shows temperatures after USHCN adjustments.

The Dust Bowl is gone, through the magic of government software.

How do you reduce the debt? Stop spending.

If you lined up that many dollar bills end to end, they would make it well past Jupiter and Saturn.

We keep hearing from leading experts that spring snow cover is on the decline. The graph above plots week 13 (the most recent published) since the start of records in 1968.

What is clear is that there was a sharp decline in year-over-year variability after 1990, and that spring snow cover has generally been increasing over the last 20 years.

http://climate.rutgers.edu/snowcover/table_area.php?ui_set=0&ui_sort=1

April 7 – heavy snow in the forecast.

http://www.weatherstreet.com/data/SPC_012.jpg

The webcam view from this morning. Salon reported that Hansen predicted Manhattan would submerge by 2008, but reader Tony Duncan claims that was a mistake and that Manhattan won’t actually be flooded for another 18 years.

We know we want to bomb someone, we just aren’t sure who yet. Last week we were bombing civilians in Pakistan. Probably Bush’s fault.

http://www.voanews.com/