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Friday, August 30, 2013

It snowed in the high Andes therefore global warming is a hoax, sez WUWT

Sou | 5:58 PM Go to the first of 4 comments. Add a comment

The last few weeks and months Anthony Watts at WUWT has been slipping further and further into the deluded end of the climate blogosphere.  Today he has a guest "essay" (a fancy name for a denial rant) by Argiris Diamantis who writes (see archived version here):
By not reporting (or underreporting) about “cold snaps” the public is being brainwashed into believing that the world is warming, while it in reality is cooling.
In reality the world is cooling?  Pull the other one.

Data Source: NASA


Might be worth doing a count of unfiltered science reports on WUWT compared to the various categories of denial - spanning ad homs of people, delusional prophesies of "ice age cometh" doom,  through to Lysenko conspiracy theories from Richard Lindzen and others, eugenics conspiracy theories and the grandest delusion of them all, that:
"all the world's scientists who work across the many disciplines that have any relationship to climate (agriculture, oceanography, marine science, glaciology, meteorology, geology, paleoclimatology etc etc) and their employers, colleagues, publishers and students are members of a cult so secret that no "sceptic" has been able to penetrate it or disprove the body of mainstream science of the past century or two".
More probably it's not worth doing a count.  I reckon a spot check would show about one unfiltered science story or fewer in every thirty. And that one story is more likely than not to bring out the 8% dismissives protesting "it's all a giant scam", "algore (sic) is fat", and "agw is a religion".

Thing about snow is that, just like rain, when it snows it can snow buckets full because of the extra moisture in the air as a result of global warming.

My sympathies to the people in the Andes in South America whose lives have been disrupted by heavy snow falls this winter.  I assure them that despite what Anthony Watts and Argiris Diamantis would have them believe, the world is not about to enter an ice age.  Quite the reverse.

And for all the moaning about lack of news, I did find quite a number of news items.

Worst snowfall in a decade - from NatureWorldNews

Approximately 250,000 alpacas have died as a result of the worst snowfall Peru has seen in a decade, and the unexpectedly intense blast of winter weather has claimed livestock and human life in other parts of South America as well.
A cold weather front from the Antarctic began to spread across South America earlier this week, with some regions devastated by the snowfall, and others reveling in it. Heavy snow fell upon a large swath of South America, from Peru and Bolivia in the northwest to Paraguay and Brazil in the southeast.
Ice and snow in the high Andes in southern Peru, with reports of 24,000 (not 250,000) llamas, alpaca and sheep "mainly baby animals" - from the Wall St Journal
LIMA, Peru--A cold wave has hit the southern regions of Peru, covering vast areas in snow and ice and leading the government to declare a state of emergency.  The central government has sent aid to the worst-hit areas, most located in high areas of the Andes mountains.
An official with the regional government of Puno, a southern district, said that the snowfall has reached up to about a meter high in some areas, with temperatures well below freezing.
"There have been about 24,000 livestock killed by the cold, mainly baby animals," said Percy Quispe, deputy director of civil defense in Puno. Those animals include alpacas, llamas and sheep.
Officials said the cold has left one person dead in Puno after a snow-covered roof collapsed, and that thousands of homes have been damaged by the snow and strong winds.  The Puno regional government said it has distributed 10,000 blankets and food supplies to the hard-hit district of Carabaya.  Various small towns have been cut off by the harsh weather, reports said.
Government's weather agency Senamhi said Thursday that temperatures of minus 20 degrees Celsius could be reached in the higher mountain areas.

While extremely bad news for the 250,000 or 24,000 baby animals who died in the cold, and the people who lived in the mountains and were affected by the winter snowfall, the "worst snow in a decade" doesn't quite match up in terms of breaking records to the "hottest summer on record in Australia" or the "hottest year on record in the USA" or 2010 being the wettest and equal hottest year on record globally - not just in one region but over the world as a whole!

Here is the archived WUWT article and comments again.



From the WUWT comments



Jim Steele says:
August 29, 2013 at 10:53 pm
This only proves Joe Romm’s “little known fact” that warmer weather causes more snow. ;-)


Jim Steele says:
August 29, 2013 at 10:56 pm
Peru Heavy Snowfall: Tens of Thousands Stranded, Livestock Killed
http://www.weather.com/news/peru-heavy-snow-20130829


walker808 says:
August 29, 2013 at 11:03 pm
It snowed recently on the island of Sumatra which is on the equator. This is the first time in recorded history that it has ever snowed there! Photos of the event were shown on Indonesia TV.
I suspect walker808 was referring to this reported hailstorm.


Richard111 says:
August 29, 2013 at 11:33 pm
South Africa is still getting low temperatures. It is spring for them.
Last night CCTV showed many townships in the Cape area are badly flooded.
No, Richard111.  If South Africa is like Australia then spring doesn't officially start until the first day of September.  Spring blossoms keep coming out earlier and earlier as the world gets warmer, and that might have confused Richard111.


4 comments:

  1. Cape Town and Sydney are both at 33°S, so that would be about right. I take it 9/1 and 3/1 are roughly analogous in the S and N hemispheres, of course.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Is this the same Tony who says not to worry about the Arctic sea ice minimums because the Arctic isn't global?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Did he really say that, George? Boy, that's one to add to the collection, isn't it.

      Delete
    2. He says that one several times a year -- don't worry about the Arctic, Antarctic ice is slowly increasing in winter extent. About the dumbest bit of misdirection I've ever seen: "look, squirrel!".

      Delete

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