Or, as climatologist David Phillips puts it – “storm porn”;
To date, this winter is the coldest in 12 years and Phillips’s winter forecast is considered 70 to 75 per cent accurate, which he said is pretty good for a long-range prediction.
“It wasn’t necessarily the perfect forecast but I think to many Canadians it was bang on because there was something to complain about, it was a tough winter,” he said.
“And I must say, in kind of a perverse way I’ve been delighted in a way the way winter unfolded, I felt confident that it would.”
Whoa. 75% accuracy is “pretty good” for a seasonal forecast? He get in touch with those climate modellers, no? They have it nailed down to the century.
Related: The media snowjob on global warming. And brace yourself for more manufactured “storm porn”, as this Ottawa Citizen report suggests that “145 leading Canadian scientists” managed to put a 500-page report together blaming this winter’s widely predicted “wild weather” on “more heat into the atmosphere” without managing to stumble across this year’s La Niña, or the news that global temperatures have been slowly dropping for the past 10 years.
(Source – “Jim B” in the comments here)
Let me get this straight…
Dave Philips, national climatologist expert calls 75% accuracy for long-range weather forecasting “pretty good.”
Yet Al Gore, a trained politician can predict exactly what is going to happen in the next 50-100 years?
Pardon me if I am a little cynical about global warming!!!
Phillips publicly attributed this winter specifically to la nina twice over this past weekend, and expounded colloquially about it at some length on a CHCH 1/2 hour interview with him. He stated that la nina events (cold surface water pockets off S. America that alternate with el nino warm pockets on a cyclic basis) provide forecasters with a very specific north american climate regime that is consistent and predictable, and for Canada, forecast cold winters in the west and wet winters in the east. He stated that the truth about climate change, in his view has to lie somewhere between the extremes of all or none, and that he sees only a debate on either extreme, neither of which satisfies him.
I get a big kick out of supposed “scientists” who go on about permafrost melting like it actually means anything in the big picture.
Do the actually NOT understand what permafrost is?
It’s the frozen remnants of what was once Bogs and Swamps.
I’m not aware of either EVER being formed in frozen conditions.
The funniest thing about this “Global Warming” which they conveniently call “Climate change” these colder days is that no one has addressed the issues of volcano eruptions. I mean, once those things start huffing and puffing they go on for days and days spewing out HUGE amounts of CO2 and what-not. From my simple humble engineering background, I will not take any attempt to quibble global warming……..er………ah………….cooling………..until they can find a way to plug up all volcanoes. I can not verify this, can someone confirm that one large volcano pre-eruption and eruption surpass all the man made CO2 in mans history?
I always smile (sarcastically) when I see Philips being interviewed. Those with memory retention of more than one newscast will remember several years back , Philips waxing eloquently about global warming whenever he was interviewed. Once the Tories were in power , he seems to be relegated to reporting the facts , not championing global warming.
From the CBC web page back in Oct 07. http://www.cbc.ca/canada/story/2006/10/10/winterweather.html?ref=rss
“Warm, dry winter forecast for much of Canada”
Well the Farmers Almanac didn’t get it right either.
Mother Nature just doesn’t like having her actions predicted by anyone.
I’m not expert on climate but my guess would be that here in Calgary my all season tires will do for another winter. People that put on winter tires are seeing them wear down quickly on our dry roads.
I think Satan has just given a new seat to Gramsci in Hell closer to his throne. His Long March has paid off, big time.
And the useful idiots, Gore, Suzuki, don’t worry, you will be seated right next to the Dark Prince when you go to Hell.
“I can not verify this, can someone confirm that one large volcano pre-eruption and eruption surpass all the man made CO2 in mans history?”
Nobody will confirm that because it’s utterly false.
Man-made CO2 overwhelms volcanic contributions by a factor of at least 100. We produce about 23,000 megatons of CO2 yearly (mostly from burning fossil fuel, some more from cement production). Volcanoes produce about 100-150 megatons. Even a large eruption, like Pinatubo in 1991, produced about 42 megatons, equivalent to 16 hours of man-made CO2.
The evidence that man activities caused the increase of atmospheric CO2 is very strong. What remains to be debated is the actual effect this will have.
http://www.bgs.ac.uk/programmes/landres/segs/downloads/VolcanicContributions.pdf
Warning to True Believers! Extreme language:
“Climate modeling teams all over the world are sweating 24/7 to deal with it. They are producing epicycles for their models, to hang on the warming story.”
…-
“The Epicycles of Global Warming
When True Believers begin to harbor doubts, they don’t immediately give up the faith. It’s too scary; too much pride and money has been invested; too many jobs and reputations are on the line; and they need to find a new reason to live. So they always try to add on new wrinkles and qualifications to their crumbling story.
Today that’s happening with the global warming cult.
“Human-caused global warming” has now officially been re-named “climate change” to explain the inconvenient truth that the winter of 2007-8 was the coldest in a century, in spite of all those tons of “greenhouse gas” being spewed into the air from all the new factories in China and India. Worldwide temps dropped 0.6 of a degree C in one year. That may not sound like a lot, but it’s more than all the ballyhooed warming in the preceding century.
If you want to see cult therapy at work, read John Tierney in The New York Times. Tierney is a skeptic who now conducts recovery therapy for the faithful on his Tierney Lab page. It looks like someone at the NYT has finally caught on to the hoax but won’t admit it. So they hired Tierney to break it to the True Believers as gently as possible. Watch how the readers’ blogs are resisting his gentle skepticism; it scares them.”
http://tinyurl.com/29pdkz (american thinker)
Speaking of northern bogs & permafrost: there was an assumption by some AGW-biased scientists that when these thaw, they will release carbon dioxide and further ‘pollute’ the world. Surprise, when they actually measured it, it was ABSORBING co2 because in order to build carbon-based plants, they take in co2. Like, nobody could have predicted THAT. Or that those now-frozen bogs were at one point NOT frozen, which is how they were able to grow in the first place.
I loved the one about melting glaciers eventually leading to a shortage of fresh water downstream. Imagine how much fresh water you would(n’t)get from a non-melting glacier!
I am a firm believer in climate change; I know it to be true! Either it is getting colder or warmer, I can’t be wrong.
“Norm Catto, a geographer at Memorial University in Newfoundland”
“Quentin Chiotti, a senior scientist with Pollution Probe in Toronto”
“Suren Kulshreshtha, a professor in the University of Saskatchewan’s bioresource policy department”
Lots of climate scientists and meteorologists quoted in the article.
/sarc
On another front:
I think we could correlate the death of print media with their inability to consider any other position on global warming other than Al Gore’s.
Check this out at the National Post
The media snowjob on global warming
> Lorne Gunter, National Post
http://www.nationalpost.com/opinion/columnists/story.html?id=b6301dfc-7ee1-4c9b-9a58-2ef1f3eb8443&k=66577
Read the …Expletive Deleted …. article mr Slider?
Gunter was already linked by Kate… eh?
On the topic of Storm Porn they TV media are all over a BBC report on the Heavy Weather that’s pounding Britain….
Lovely interview with a lady who is “Quite fed up with all the rain!” Sorry no link yet.
OMMAG. Oops. Mistakes happen. Deal with it.
BTW…grow a set next time you want to cuss.
Heheh…. sure Slider….
global warming , the only thing bigger than this crack is Al Gores.
http://www.cbc.ca/canada/ottawa/story/2008/03/10/roof-collapse.html
paying the piper one way or t’other.
http://www.cbc.ca/world/story/2008/03/10/science-ethanol.html
not until the whole world economy and the ecosystem is in chaos will they be satisfied.
Has this winter season made you doubt the validity of climate-change or global-warming theories?
No. I believe the planet is warming and our climate is changing. Severe storms are another sign of a changing climate
23.1%
I still think climate change is happening, but after this winter, I am having my doubts about global warming
21.3%
Yes. I never believed in climate change or global warming in the first place
53.6%
Other
1.82%
Total Votes: 1532
http://cfra.com/polls/index.asp
One of my favourite analogies about climate change is the following:
If you took a 100 yard long American football field as the proxy for the composition of the Earth’s atmosphere and started on your own goal line, the amount of nitrogen in the air would bring you to the other teams’ 22 yard line. Add the amount of oxygen to the nitrogen and that would bring you to their 1 yard line. Add to that the amount of water vapour and argon and you reach the 1 inch line. So less than 1 inch of our football field is left over for carbon dioxide, methane, ozone, and other trace gases. Funny how that less than1 inch of carbon dioxide can cause sea levels to rise, civilizations to end and hundreds of species to terminate (sorry, Arnie!). Despite the fact that we exhale it in every breath this carbon dioxide must be pretty potent stuff!
The link between human activity and carbon dioxide levels is even more of a stretch. Today, carbon dioxide forms about 370 parts per million or our 1 inch line in the football field example. Both Darwinians and biblical scholars can agree that two hundred million years ago predates human existence on the planet by a quite considerable time span. Yet carbon dioxide levels were 6,000 parts per million (or half a yard on our football field example) at that time. From the geologic record it appears that rises in the levels of carbon dioxide tend to follow rather precede warming trends in Earth’s climate. Thus carbon dioxide cannot be the cause of climate change.
But what about the greenhouse gas effect as is illustrated by Venus? Well, turns out the Venusian atmosphere has a tad more carbon dioxide than the earth’s atmosphere. How much more? How about a whopping 3000 times more carbon dioxide. A grand total of 96% of the Venusian atmosphere is carbon dioxide. (Or from our goal line to the opponent’s 4 yard line in the football field example). Comparing apples and oranges is far more realistic than using the atmosphere of Venus as a proxy for that of the Earth. Funny, I haven’t heard of any clear evidence of Industrial Age human civilizations discovered on Venus have you?
My apologies to Mr. Al Gore but I think I will keep my winter coat around for some time to come.
Just watched the B.C. Global supper news. Have you heard? In breathless shocked tones, the anchor informed how within 100 years, (according to some UBC researchers) the ocean would flood low lying areas, and OMYGAWD lower mainland ski areas would find the snowline moved above their trails. Can you imagine? Oh, the humanity.
BCers will put up with a lot, but I’m thinking threatening their urban ski areas will make everyone beg for a doubling of the Carbon Tax!
But, oddly enough, no mention of the worldwide temperature drop that took care of a decades worth of warming in just one cool year. I wonder why. Perhaps the aforementioned researchers weren’t able to leverage research funds out of a growing non-crisis
you can’t blame left-tards for believing in gorebullwarming, withn their lower heads hording all the blood so’s they can govern from a cathouse, the thinking head is oxygen starved and unable to function properly
The exceedingly dry summer of 2007—we had nearly a tablespoon of rain in the GTA —is probaby mother nature ‘s way of compensation.
There are plenty of other persons who deserve the nobel prize other then a habituial liar and fabricator as all out sore loser and demacrook
And then, of course, there more recent modeling that seems to show an actual negative feedback loop on greenhouse gas induced global warming:
http://www.dailytech.com/Researcher+Basic+Greenhouse+Equations+Totally+Wrong/article10973c.htm