On Feb 12, 8:46*am, Joseph Gwinn wrote:
The academic world was stunned by Climategate. *This is another piece of
the fallout.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000...05930310700065
6.html?KEYWORDS=climate+study+gets+review
The Wall Street Journal, 12 February 2010, page A15.
Joe Gwinn
Yeah...the WSJ...definitely NOT a neutral source.
Too bad you don't know what you are talking about.
Global Warming Makes Blizzards Worse
Need proof?
Get the heck outside and shovel the proof off your sidewalk.
Laugh...laugh...laugh...
TMT
D.C. Snowstorm: How Global Warming Makes Blizzards Worse
By BRYAN WALSH Bryan Walsh
Wed Feb 10, 7:30 am ET
As the blizzard-bound residents of the mid-Atlantic region get ready
to dig themselves out of the third major storm of the season, they
may
stop to wonder two things: Why haven't we bothered to invest in a
snow
blower and, also, what happened to climate change? After all, it
stands to reason that if the world is getting warmer - and the past
decade was the hottest on record - major snowstorms should become a
thing of the past, like Palm Pilots and majority rule in the Senate.
Certainly that's what the Virginia state Republican Party thinks: the
GOP aired an ad last weekend attacking two Democratic Congressmen for
supporting the 2009 carbon-cap-and-trade bill, and using the recent
storms to cast doubt on global warming. (See pictures of a massive
blizzard hitting Washington, D.C.)
Brace yourselves now - this may be a case of politicians twisting the
facts. There is some evidence that climate change could in fact make
such massive snowstorms more common, even as the world continues to
warm. As the meteorologist Jeff Masters points out in his excellent
blog at Weather Underground, the two major storms that hit
Philadelphia, Baltimore and Washington, D.C., this winter - in
December and during the first weekend of February - are already among
the 10 heaviest snowfalls those cities have ever recorded. The chance
of that happening in the same winter is incredibly unlikely.
But there have been hints that it was coming. The 2009 U.S. Climate
Impacts Report found that large-scale cold-weather storm systems have
gradually tracked to the north in the U.S. over the past 50 years.
While the frequency of storms in the middle latitudes has decreased
as
the climate has warmed, the intensity of those storms has increased.
That's in part because of global warming - hotter air can hold more
moisture, so when a storm gathers it can unleash massive amounts of
snow. Colder air, by contrast, is drier; if we were in a truly
vicious
cold snap, like the one that occurred over much of the East Coast
during parts of January, we would be unlikely to see heavy snowfall.
(See pictures of the effects of global warming.)
Climate models also suggest that while global warming may not make
hurricanes more common, it could well intensify the storms that do
occur and make them more destructive.
But as far as winter storms go, shouldn't climate change make it too
warm for snow to fall? Eventually that is likely to happen - but
probably not for a while. In the meantime, warmer air could be
supercharged with moisture and, as long as the temperature remains
below 32°F, it will result in blizzards rather than drenching winter
rainstorms. And while the mid-Atlantic has borne the brunt of the
snowfall so far this winter, areas near lakes may get hit even worse.
As global temperatures have risen, the winter ice cover over the
Great
Lakes has shrunk, which has led to even more moisture in the
atmosphere and more snow in the already hard-hit Great Lakes region,
according to a 2003 study in the Journal of Climate. (Read "Climate
Accord Suggests a Global Will, if Not a Way.")
Ultimately, however, it's a mistake to use any one storm - or even a
season's worth of storms - to disprove climate change (or to prove
it;
some environmentalists have wrongly tied the lack of snow in
Vancouver, the site of the Winter Olympic Games, which begin this
month, to global warming). Weather is what will happen next weekend;
climate is what will happen over the next decades and centuries. And
while our ability to predict the former has become reasonably
reliable, scientists are still a long way from being able to make
accurate projections about the future of the global climate. Of
course, that doesn't help you much when you're trying to locate your
car under a foot of powder.