Rare Volcanic Smoke Ring - Speculation about Katla

Spaceweather.com

On May 1st, volcano photographers Steve and Donna O’Meara were stunned when they photographed a perfectly shaped volcanic smoke ring blown out by Eyjafjallajokull volcano in southern Iceland:

©Steve & Donna O’Mears

“This is a rare phenomenon,” say Steve and Donna. “We’ve only seen it one other time at Italy’s Stromboli volcano in 2001.”

Joseph Licciardi, an earth sciences professor from Oregon State University, was there to see it, too. “The ring was visible for five minutes and then fell apart,” he told the UK Dail Mail. “I am thrilled that I was present at the event.”

In addition to Eyjafjallajokull and Stromboli, volcanic smoke rings have also been observed at Mt Etna.

Just how the rings form remains a mystery. It’s possible that bursts of gas through narrow vents would do the job, much like cigar or cigarette smokers blow rings with their mouths.

Smoke rings could soon become more common over Iceland. Eruptions of Eyjafjallajokull are usually followed by even bigger eruptions from the nearby Katla volcano. Indeed, experts are warning that an eruption of Katla may be close at hand. Check the odds!

See also this MSNBC story about scientists claiming Katla is close to failure (though eruption not imminent).

June Skiing! Are You Ready?

NOTE: Heartland is working very hard through the weekend getting the presentations and powerpoints posted for the Heartland ICCC IV.  If you could not go, there is plenty to see there and soon all of the available 80 presentations will be posted.

by E.M.Smith

Global Warming? No Way, Dude! It’s time for June Skiing!

Squaw Valley High Camp

From Mammoth Mountain we have this report.

Yes, that URL says JUNE 14th. As in 1 week shy of the summer SOLSTICE.

Ski Your heart out till Memorial Day this year!. Mammoth has promised till the end of May after a wonderful season. The snow is still fresh and Mammoth skiing, is still… well Mammoth! There is a 4-6 foot base reported and the snow is holding although spring conditions are here. That means cold nights below freezing and warm days in the 50’s. Sorry fisherman, but we don’t do early mornings this time of the year! The main lodge is open with all lifts around Main Lodge operating, including 1, 3, Gondola to the top, 6, Stump Alley and the terrian parks, Unbound Main, Disco Park, Forest Trail, Main Superpipe and Main Super-Duper Pipe (that’s the beeg one!) So get on your skis, your board...your shorts and tank top and go for some runs.

Yup, it’s loads of snow and plenty of runs!

Is It Just One Mountain?

No way, dudes and dudettes! Squaw Valley is doing the ski party this weekend too!

Squaw will be open for skiing & riding this Memorial Weekend. Join us for Memorial Weekend at Squaw Valley USA! This is the place to be for skiing, riding, scening Cable Car rides, mountaintop dining and swimming at the High Camp Swimming Lagoon & Spa.

The high camp camera shows plenty of snow right now.

Just A California Thing?
Nope!

Shows some Colorado resorts closed crazy early for no good reason, but with some folks taking advantage of long sticking snow and cold conditions this year. In particular:

Even with some resorts looking to stay open into May & June this year, the 2009-10 Colorado Ski Season is still coming to a close. We know this news will be hard for some of you, but looking back it has been an amazing winter season in Ski Country. We here at Colorado Ski Country will be cherishing this season’s memories for many a year to come. So grab that box of tissues and your favorite blanket you’ve had all these years, here is the list of projected closing dates* for the resorts all across Colorado.

*All dates subject to change
Arapahoe Basin - June 2010

So at least one is keeping the doors open.

Similar story in Utah:

Snowbird Remains Open Until June 20
5-20-2010 – Snowbird will remain open Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays until Father’s Day June 20th. We’re still skiing in Utah!

BUT: Common Guys! Just One More Day and you can have a summer solstice skiing special! Just imagine the fun of a hillside covered in Druids on Skis!

All the Earth Mothers and Wiccans skiing by moonlight on the mid summer day! (But be prepared, many neo-pagans practice their spiritual quest in the buff...)

It’s a whole new market! I’m sure there are more. This was the result of just a quick look at some local (to Western US) ski areas that most folks have heard of before I’m sure there will be others, too.

And I’ve heard that the ski season is coming early to the Southern Hemisphere this year… Forget global warming and The Perpetual Summer, it’s time for The Perpetual Ski Bum! Snow Reports NZ a 120 cm base at Mt. Dobson, so we’re likely to have a June opening available.

So now there is no reason to ever put those skis away! If we keep getting “Global Warming” like this, we’ll be skiing on the 4th of July in Colorado and California…

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Persistent cold, wet weather delays crop harvests, worries farmers - Record Late Snow Utah
By Loretta Kalb, Sacramento Bee

Keep your sweater - and umbrella - within reach. The chilly weekend temperatures were among the coldest in more than a half-century from Redding to Stockton, the National Weather Service reported Sunday.

More cold is expected today - a low of 45 and a high of 69 in downtown Sacramento - with rain forecast through much of this week. The dogged pattern of rain and cold has prompted worries of another sort: Melon crops are less likely to be ready for market in time for July 4 celebrations, and tomato harvests likely will be delayed.

Cold “slows everything down,” Yolo County Agriculture Commissioner John Young said Sunday. “We’re not getting the temperatures we need for germination of seed. It slows the melons down, it slows the rice down, it slows any of the warm-weather crops.”

Of course, the cooler temperatures have an upside, delaying Sierra snowmelt. On Friday the state Department of Water Resources boosted the delivery forecast for its customers to 45 percent of contract amounts, reflecting a snowpack that’s at 167 percent of normal.
In the Valley, however, the regular cycle of spring rains threatens to narrow the timetable for tomato harvests, said Gene Miyao, farm adviser for the University of California Cooperative Extension.

Growers try to plant while soils are dry. “Under wet conditions, (planting) causes soil compactions. That affects root growth. Irrigation doesn’t infiltrate as well,” Miyao said. “I think it certainly is a concern.” Waiting for soil to dry means risking that rain will fall again before planting. In that case, greenhouse growers can’t move young-plant inventory to fields on schedule. And at harvest time, some growers must waiting for processor capacity. Tomatoes may rot in the field or face exposure to insects while waiting, Miyao said.

The late rains are no better for hay baling. “If you get anywhere up to a half-inch or more (rain), you’re going to start getting problems with mold,” said Casey Stone, a partner in the 7,500-acre Yolo Land & Cattle Co. The company has about 600 Yolo County acres in hay. Wind can help dry the hay. Winds from the northwest were forecast at 15 to 25 mph Sunday night in the Sacramento area.

And the forecast for rain? Figure on 0.2 to 0.5 of an inch of rain or showers starting by nightfall Tuesday, said Drew Peterson, National Weather Service meteorologist. Rain and showers will continue through Friday as a series of fronts arrive from the Gulf of Alaska. Rainfall in downtown Sacramento, at 18.99 inches, is 97 percent of normal since July 1.

Not so normal is the late-season cold, which set records over the weekend. “We’re actually watching a record set in 1971,” Peterson said. “We’re looking to see if we make it through June 6 without a 90-degree day.” The warmest days downtown this year were 86 on May 3 and May 15. That triggered a premature chorus among weather-watchers. “Everybody was saying, ‘Summer is finally here,’ “ Peterson said.

For the record-setting, consider the weekend just ended. Sunday’s low of 45 degrees in downtown Sacramento matched the low established on that day in 1960. In Red Bluff, the low of 45 matched the low set in 1953. In Redding, the low was 42 on Sunday and on the same date in 1946. On Saturday, the thermometer in Redding fell to 34 degrees, toppling the 39-degree record on that date in 1960. Red Bluff’s low fell to 37 degrees, 3 degrees below the dates in 1960. At the other end of the how-cold-it-got scale, Stockton Metropolitan Airport on Saturday never exceeded 67 degrees, two degrees lower than the coldest high for that day, set in 1943.

Read more here.

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Late spring snowstorm surprises Utahns

Many Utahns woke up to a blanket of snow Monday morning. The wet and slushy weather caused a few problems throughout the day, but the late storm was mostly an inconvenience.

Record-setting late snowfall

The storm produced the latest spring snow ever recorded at Salt Lake City International Airport. It arrived late Sunday night and produced huge, heavy snowflakes as Salt Lake City commuters arrived for work Monday morning.

Related: Snow, rain and mud may hamper some Memorial Day plans
If you’re planning a Memorial Day outing in Utah’s outdoors, it might pay to check out your final destination first. Much of the snow on the valley roads either didn’t stick or quickly melted away.

The Wasatch Mountains got significant snow for this time of year. Nine inches were reported at Brighton.

By late-morning, the most powerful parts of the storm had moved to the east.

At the Salt Lake City airport, .2 inches fell. Before Monday, the latest measurable spring snow at the airport was May 18 when half an inch fell in 1977 and one inch fell in 1960.

Storm is good news for snowpack

Monday’s storm came as good news for those keeping track of the state’s water supply.

“Rain on snow produces more runoff than smowmelt alone, so we’re getting a lot more water into our creeks and reservoirs than we would with snowmelt alone,” explained Randy Julander, snow survey supervisor with the Natural Resources Conservation Service.

A cooler spring has the snowpack sitting around average levels for this time of year. Julander hopes the wet weather will continue into June to build up our water supply and put off irrigation season until July.

“When you save a month and a half or two months worth of water, that results in larger carryover into the fall,” Julander said. “So, this is all money in the bank and water that we’ll be able to use later in the season, or carry it over into next year.”

Weather frustrates golfers, gardeners

Despite the water benefits, many people KSL News talked to were disappointed with the snow, saying they are more than ready for warmer weather. “It should’ve been gone a long time ago. It should be almost summer now,” said Salt Lake City resident Jeremy Miller, who spent the morning scraping snow off of his car.

Miller works at a golf course. The snow means no work for him, bat also no golfers on the green. Salt Lake City resident Jeremy Miller spent Monday morning scraping snow off of his car “The nice days are really busy; and the other days, well, there’s not going to be anyone there today,” Miller said.

He isn’t the only one fed up with the rain and snow. Jack Wilbur, with the Utah Fruit and Vegetable Association hopes his vegetables pull through this cold snap.

“Snow on May 24th is pretty crazy,” Wilbur said. “It’s been so cold for so long, it’s really hard to grow anything. Things are growing slowly.”

Wilbur planted his tomatoes in cans this year, which adds an extra layer of protection for the baby plants. At this rate, the vegetables need all the help they can get.

“If it stays cool, it will just take longer for things to mature,” Wilbur said.

The cold isn’t doing any favors for Wilbur’s fruit trees either.

“We worry maybe we didn’t get pollinated because the bees couldn’t do their work,” Wilbur said.

He said he’s still expecting a good crop but won’t know for a couple more weeks how well his fruit trees will do.

“[I’m so tired of this weather,” Wilbur said. “I can’t wait for it to get nice and sunny and warm.”

Read more here.

As is often the case cold in the west means hot in the east this time of year. Some areas will see 90F temperatures before cooling sets in mid-week. 

Army of Light and Truth 135, Forces of Darkness 110

By Christopher Monckton, SPPI

For what is believed to be the first time ever in England, an audience of university undergraduates has decisively rejected the notion that “global warming” is or could become a global crisis. The only previous defeat for climate extremism among an undergraduate audience was at St. Andrew’s University, Scotland, in the spring of 2009, when the climate extremists were defeated by three votes.

Last week, members of the historic Oxford Union Society, the world’s premier debating society, carried the motion “That this House would put economic growth before combating climate change” by 135 votes to 110. The debate was sponsored by the Science and Public Policy Institute, Washington DC.

Serious observers are interpreting this shock result as a sign that students are now impatiently rejecting the relentless extremist propaganda taught under the guise of compulsory environmental-studies classes in British schools, confirming opinion-poll findings that the voters are no longer frightened by “global warming” scare stories, if they ever were.

When the Union’s president, Laura Winwood, announced the result in the Victorian-Gothich Gladstone Room, three peers cheered with the undergraduates, and one peer drowned his sorrows in beer.

Lord Lawson of Blaby, Margaret Thatcher’s former finance minister, opened the case for the proposition by saying that the economic proposals put forward by the UN’s climate panel and its supporters did not add up. It would be better to wait and see whether the scientists had gotten it right. It was not sensible to make expensive spending commitments, particularly at a time of great economic hardship, when the effectiveness of the spending was gravely in doubt and when it might do more harm than good.

At one point, Lord Lawson was interrupted by a US student, who demanded to know what was his connection with the Science and Public Policy Institute, and what were the Institute’s sources of funding. Lord Lawson was cheered when he said he neither knew nor cared who funded the Institute.

Ms. Zara McGlone, Secretary of the Oxford Union, opposed the motion, saying that greenhouse gases had an effect [they do, but it is very small]; that the precautionary principle required immediate action, just in case and regardless of expense [but one must also bear in mind the cost of the precautions themselves, which can and often do easily exceed the cost of inaction]; that Bangladesh was sinking beneath the waves [a recent study by Prof. Niklas Moerner shows that sea level in Bangladesh has actually fallen]; that the majority of scientists believed “global warming” was a problem [she offered no evidence for this]; and that “irreversible natural destruction” would occur if we did nothing [but she did not offer any evidence].

Mr. James Delingpole, a blogger for the leading British conservative national newspaper The Daily Telegraph, seconded the proposition, saying that - politically speaking - the climate extremists had long since lost the argument. The general public simply did not buy the scare stories any more. The endless tales of Biblical disasters peddled by the alarmist faction were an unwelcome and now fortunately failed recrudescence of dull, gray Puritanism. Instead of hand-wringing and bed-wetting, we should celebrate the considerable achievements of the human race and start having fun.

Lord Whitty, a Labor peer from the trades union movement and, until recently, Labor’s Environment Minister in the Upper House, said that the world’s oil supplies were rapidly running out [in fact, record new finds have been made in the past five years]; that we needed to change our definition of economic growth to take into account the value lost when we damaged the environment [it is artificial accounting of this kind that has left Britain as bankrupt as Greece after 13 years of Labor government]; that green jobs created by governments would help to end unemployment [but Milton Friedman won his Nobel Prize for economics by demonstrating that every artificial job created at taxpayers’ expense destroys two real jobs in the wealth-producing private sector]; that humans were the cause of most of the past century’s warming [there is no evidence for that: the case is built on speculation by programmers of computer models]; that temperature today was at its highest in at least 40 million years [in fact, it was higher than today by at least 12.5 F for most of the past 550 million years]; and that 95% of scientists believed our influence on the climate was catastrophic [no one has asked them].

Lord Monckton repeatedly interrupted Lord Whitty to ask him to give a reference in the scientific literature for his suggestion that 95% of scientists believed our influence on the climate was catastrophic. Lord Whitty was unable to provide the source for his figure, but said that everyone knew it was true. Under further pressure from Lord Monckton, Lord Whitty conceded that the figure should perhaps be 92%. Lord Monckton asked: “And your reference is?” Lord Whitty was unable to reply. Hon. Members began to join in, jeering “Your reference? Your reference?” Lord Whitty sat down looking baffled.

Lord Leach of Fairford, whom Margaret Thatcher appointed a Life Peer for his educational work, spoke third for the proposition. He said that we no longer knew whether or not there had been much “global warming” over the 20th century, because the Climategate emails had exposed the terrestrial temperature records as defective. In any event, he said, throwing good money after bad on various alternative-energy boondoggles was unlikely to prove profitable in the long term and would ultimately do harm.

Mr. Rajesh Makwana, executive director of “Share The World’s Resources”, speaking third for the opposition, said that climate change was manmade [but he did not produce any evidence for that assertion]; that CO2 emissions were growing at 3% a year [but it is concentrations, not emissions, that may in theory affect climate, and concentrations are rising at a harmless 0.5% a year]; that the UN’s climate panel had forecast a 7 F “global warming” for the 21st century [it’s gotten off to a bad start, with a cooling of 0.2 F so far]; and that the consequences of “global warming” would be dire [yet, in the audience, sat Mr. Klaus-Martin Schulte, whose landmark paper of 2008 had established that not one of 539 scientific papers on “global climate change” provided any evidence whatsoever that “global warming” would be catastrophic].

Lord Monckton, a former science advisor to Margaret Thatcher during her years as Prime Minister of the UK, concluded the case for the proposition. He drew immediate laughter and cheers when he described himself as “Christopher Walter, Third Viscount Monckton of Brenchley, scholar, philanthropist, wit, man about town, and former chairman of the Wines and Spirits Committee of this honourable Society”. At that point his cummerbund came undone. He held it up to the audience and said, “If I asked this House how long this cummerbund is, you might telephone around all the manufacturers and ask them how many cummerbunds they made, and how long each type of cummerbund was, and put the data into a computer model run by a zitty teenager eating too many doughnuts, and the computer would make an expensive guess. Or you could take a tape-measure and” - glaring at the opposition across the despatch-box - “measure it!” [cheers].

Lord Monckton said that real-world measurements, as opposed to models, showed that the warming effect of CO2 was a tiny fraction of the estimates peddled by the UN’s climate panel. He said that he would take his lead from Lord Lawson, however, in concentrating on the economics rather than the science. He glared at the opposition again and demanded whether, since they had declared themselves to be so worried about “global warming”, they would care to tell him - to two places of decimals and one standard deviation - the UN’s central estimate of the “global warming” that might result from a doubling of atmospheric CO2 concentration. The opposition were unable to reply. Lord Monckton told them the answer was 3.26 plus or minus 0.69 Kelvin or Celsius degrees. An Hon. Member interrupted: “And your reference is?” Lord Monckton replied: “IPCC, 2007, chapter 10, box 10.2.” [cheers]. He concluded that shutting down the entire global economy for a whole year, with all the death, destruction, disaster, disease and distress that that would cause, would forestall just 4.7 ln(390/388) = 0.024 Kelvin or Celsius degrees of “global warming”, so that total economic shutdown for 41 years would prevent just 1 K of warming. Adaptation as and if necessary would be orders of magnitude cheaper and more cost-effective.

Mr. Mike Mason, founder and managing director of “Climate Care”, concluded for the opposition. He said that the proposition were peculiar people, and that Lord Monckton was more peculiar than most, in that he was not a real Lord. Lord Monckton, on a point of order, told Mr. Mason that the proposition had avoided personalities and that if Mr. Mason were unable to argue other than ad hominem he should “get out”. [cheers] Mr. Mason then said that we had to prepare for climate risks [yes, in both directions, towards cooler as well as warmer]; and that there was a “scientific consensus” [but he offered no evidence for the existence of any such consensus, still less for the notion that science is done by consensus].

The President thanked the speakers and expressed the Society’s gratitude to the Science and Public Policy Institute for sponsoring the debate. Hon. Members filed out of the Debating Chamber, built to resemble the interior of the House of Commons, and passed either side of the brass division-pole at the main door - Ayes to the right 135, Noes to the left 110. Motion carried. Read blog post here.

Is Global Warming Really Cause for Alarm?

By Paul Driessen, Willie Soon and David R. Legates

We’re often asked, “What really causes all these alarms about global warming disasters?”

As scientists and policy analysts who’ve studied our ever-changing climate for a combined 65 years and attribute the changes primarily to natural forces, we’ve wondered that ourselves and also asked: Why is warming always framed as bad news? Why does so much “research” claim a warmer planet “may” lead to more childhood insomnia, more juvenile delinquency, war, juvenile delinquency, violent crime and prostitution, death of the Loch Ness Monster - and even more Mongolian cows dying from cold weather?

We’re not making this up. In fact, this is just the tip of the proverbial melting iceberg of climate scare stories chronicled at Number Watch. Clearly, too much money is being spent on one-sided global warming advocacy cloaked as “research,” not enough on natural causes and adaptation. Despite the best of intentions, too much money can corrupt, or at least skew the science.

As they say, follow the money. Remember Indiana Jones’ immortal words: “Fortune and glory.”

Too many people in government, wealthy foundations and activist groups have decided they know what’s best for us, what kind of energy and economic future we should have, and who should be in charge. They intend to implement those policies - and global warming scare stories are key to achieving that objective. They’re pouring tens of billions of dollars into the effort.

A good example of how research money politicizes science is this May 4 headline: “Carbon dioxide effects on plants increase global warming.” The story enthusiastically reported the results of a science journal paper by Long Cao and Ken Caldeira from the Carnegie Institution. Carbon dioxide is not just making the atmosphere trap more heat, they say. It also enables plants to absorb CO2 more efficiently, so they don’t have to open stomata (pores) in their leaves as much, and they evaporate less water.

That should be good news, as it enables plants to survive better under dry conditions, even in desert areas where they couldn’t before. Any botanist or visitor to CO2science.org knows this. Indeed, hundreds of experiments show how growth, water efficiency and drought resistance of crop and wild plants are enhanced by higher levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide. So more CO2 and better plant growth should be celebrated - not serve as another “climate crisis” to further the political goal of ending hydrocarbon use and controlling our factories, jobs, cars, lives and living standards.

But the Carnegie folks turned this good news into bad, ominously saying the reduced evapotranspiration means plants don’t cool down as much, and that supposedly raises global temperatures slightly.

Equally interesting, the researchers based their findings not on actual experiments, but on yet another computer model that allegedly predicts future temperatures. When they tweaked various assumptions about the physiological effects of CO2, global air temperature over land increased 0.7 degrees F (0.4 deg C) above what supposedly would occur just from doubled CO2 levels directly increasing the greenhouse effect. But just six months earlier, the same authors tweaked the same model differently - and got only 0.2F (0.1 deg C) of additional warming. The authors now say this earlier result is “unrealistic.”

However, what guarantee do we have that the new assumptions are “realistic”? Maybe they are but, face it, there’s far less “fortune and glory,” far less headline grabbing, in a mere 0.2 degrees. It’s also far less “realistic” to expect another research grant, if the first one could only come up with 0.2 degrees of crisis. That’s not even 9:00 versus 9:30 on an average summer morning.

Besides fortune and glory, and more research grants and publications in prestigious journals, there’s also the matter of reputation. Dr. Caldeira, besides being a reputable scientist, is also an advisor to billionaire Bill Gates on renewable energy, and in charge of the $4.5 million in geo-engineering research funding that the Gates Foundation has provided over the past 3 years.

How many climate scientists can rub elbows with Bill Gates? Glory indeed. So 0.7 degrees it is.

Of course, this does not mean more robust plant growth can never be harmful. But does it really take five researchers and six funding sources (including the National Environmental Trust, NSF, NASA and NOAA) to model ragweed under doubled CO2 computer scenarios and conclude, “there may be increases in exposure to allergenic pollen under the present scenarios of global warming”?

All this makes us wonder: Why is it a bad thing that more CO2 helps plants tolerate droughts better and revegetate deserts? Should we cut down more forests, to generate even more cooling than the planet has experienced since 2005? Why do “error corrections” always seem to result in more warming than originally predicted, instead of less? And why do taxpayers have to shell out Big Bucks on this stuff?

The United States alone has been spending some $7 billion a year on “climate change research.” That’s a lot of money. But a majority of Americans now say climate change is due to natural forces, not to human CO2 emissions. To alarmists that means more “research” and “education” on the “climate crisis” is clearly needed - but not more on better oversight of questionable research or studying natural causes.

During a March 2009 closed-door meeting, Department of Energy senior advisor Matthew Rogers outlined his “dilemma” over how to comply with his new mandate to quickly spend $36.7 billion in grants and loan guarantees from the 2009 American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (aka, the Stimulus Act) on renewable energy and climate change. Today, with only $300 million of our taxpayer money and children’s inheritance left to spend, poor Matt says his “popularity continues to decline.”

Nearly $2.4 million dollars of that Stimulus loot may be funding the latest research by Penn State University Professor Michael Mann, father of Mann-made global warming, the debunked hockey stick temperature graph and many infamous Climategate e-mails. In one new project where Mike is the principal instigator, over a half-million dollars in grant money generated only “0.53” jobs in Pennsylvania. We must have missed the headline “Stimulus Creates Millionaire.”

We’re not suggesting fraud or corruption by Caldeira or anyone else. But we do find it curious that the vast bulk of the money goes to research that consistently discovers more “global warming crises.” We find several other phenomena equally curious.

* In an era when ExxonMobil posts all its grants on its website, and we have the “most transparent government in history,” government agencies, liberal foundations and activist groups jealously guard information on who’s getting how much money from whom, to finance all this crisis-oriented research.

* Universities are fighting attorney-general investigations, and insisting that any investigations into alleged misconduct must be conducted in-house and behind closed doors. Yet they are happy to give Greenpeace fishing-expedition access to emails and work product by climate crisis skeptics.

* Despite insisting that their research and findings are completely honest and above-board, climate alarmists still refuse to share their data, computer codes and methodologies, or discuss and debate their tax-funded work with scientists who might “try and find something wrong with it.”

If we didn’t know better, we’d think the operative rules were: Never seek logical or alternative answers, if you can blame a phenomenon or problem (like decreasing frog populations) on global warming. Do whatever it takes and fund whatever research is needed, to advance the goals of ending hydrocarbon use, increasing government control and “transforming” society. And always include the terms “global warming” or “climate change” in any grant application.

It may not be corruption. But it sure skews the research, conclusions and policy recommendations.

Willie Soon is an independent scientist at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. David Legates is a climatologist at the University of Delaware.

Phil Mote at it Again

Phil Mote single-handedly damaged the economy of Washington State when as state climatologist he published a cherry picked data analysis allegedly linking western snowpack to global warming. Action taken by the Governor and Seattle’s equally clueless mayor have moved the state in the wrong directions with regards to energy policy and planning and left the state unprepared for the snow and cold of recent winters, costing lives. Mote’s paper while state climatologist for Washington State was published readily by the sadly advocacy driven AMS. The much more qualified Oregon state climatologist he subsequently replaced, George Taylor and the Assistant Washington State Climatologist Mark Albright (who Mote stripped of his title for questioning Mote’s hypothesis) and even UWA warmist Professor Cliff Mass published papers that showed by analyzing the entire record you see no trend but a cyclical change related clearly to the PDO. See how with the recent change to the negative PDO, heavy snow has returned to the Pacific Northwest. Given the imminent return to La Nina and forecast for deepening of the negative PDO stage, another wild winter with deep snowpack is likely.

Now as he moved onto Oregon as state climatologist, he is at it again spreading nonsense about western snowpack and this past week by attacking Dr. Art Robinson, a real scientist and American hero who won the primary to contend for the congressional seat in the 4th district, home for the University.

Here is a letter from another fine scientist, Dr. Gordon Fulks to Dr Robinson congratulating him on his victory. It is followed by Mote’s politically driven attack sent to the University democratic club.
Dear Dr. Robinson,

Congratulations on winning the Republican nomination for Congress in the 4th District of Oregon.  I am one of many scientists in Oregon who appreciate your magnificent efforts to set the record straight on Global Warming.

Of course those who have greatly benefited from the AGW gravy train, like Professor Phil Mote at OSU, see you as a threat to their continued funding and are already helping your opponent (see below).  Their blatant use of their official positions to promote your opponent clearly demonstrates that they have abandoned any pretext of objective science.  Although trained as a scientist, Phil is now a pure advocate who is busy promoting Ocean Acidification as the next scare to replace Global Warming when Global Warming loses its luster as a funding vehicle.

If elected, you will likely be the only person in Congress with any scientific training.  I hope you will lead an effort to change the way the Federal government supports scientific research by especially targeting those who use scare tactics to obtain funds.  It is long past time to return federally-funded science to the objective pursuit it once was.

Best of luck in November,

Gordon J. Fulks, PhD (Physics, University of Chicago)
Corbett, Oregon USA

Here is Mote’s purely political letter to the democratic club at the university.

Art Robinson, self-styled climate expert from the charming hamlet of Cave Junction, Oregon, and the person primarily responsible for the Oregon Petition Project (here ), won the Republican primary in the election held Tuesday, and will face Rep. Peter deFazio in the fall for the privilege of representing a Congressional district that includes both Oregon State University and University of Oregon.

A Robinson victory would be put us in the tragic ranks of our climate colleagues at University of Oklahoma (Senator “global warming is a hoax” Inhofe) and Univ of Alaska (Rep. “scientists have their opinion, I have mine” Young)

Philip Mote, Director
Oregon Climate Change Research Institute and Oregon Climate Services
College of Oceanic and Atmospheric Sciences
Oregon State University
Corvallis, OR 97331-2209
pmote@coas.oregonstate.edu

Apparently OSU was not happy with the Mote email. He issued an apology.

From: Phil Mote Date: May 22, 2010 6:51:02 AM PDT
To: “GECO@lists.oregonstate.edu”
Subject: [GECO] my Thursday message

Thursday I sent a message to the Global Environmental Change Organization at Oregon State University.  Normally, messages to this group address science topics related to environmental change and involve announcements of seminars, conferences, and other opportunities.  The message I sent was a mistake and I apologize.

First, it sounded very much like a political endorsement, which not only was not what I intended, but also could be interpreted as an inappropriate use of an OSU e-mail account or of the listserve.

Second, my e-mail drew attention to a candidate’s past activity in an area that, as far as I can tell from his web site, has not been a factor in his campaign.

Third, I used inflammatory language that is not appropriate for scholarly discussion of climate change issues.  My tone was not constructive and my characterization of Mr. Robinson, Cave Junction, and other political leaders was inappropriate.

Finally, my e-mail included a factual error:  While many who live in Corvallis may reside in the 4th Congressional district, the OSU campus is in the 5th district. 

Regardless of anyone’s views involving global and environmental change, one of the greatest challenges we face is to conduct discussions and debate in a civil and measured way.  Scientists in particular have an obligation to conduct and communicate research objectively.  My e-mail Thursday failed to meet this standard and for this I apologize.

I appreciate those who have brought this to my attention.  If you forwarded my message, please forward this one too.

Regards,
Phil Mote, Director
Oregon Climate Change Research Institute and Oregon Climate Services
College of Oceanic and Atmospheric Sciences Oregon State University
Corvallis, OR 97331-2209

Tom Karl’s Senate Dog & Pony Show - it’s worse than we thought, again

By Anthony Watts

Well, the Kerry Lieberman cap and trade fiasco has brought Tom Karl to give a Senate briefing last week. Predictably, they couldn’t wait to spring more adjustments du jour on the hapless Senators, claiming once again, everything analysis-wise the government does is ‘robust’ (used several times). But ‘robustness’ just isn’t convincing enough anymore. The new catch phrase is shown below:

What’s the most interesting thing about this PowerPoint? It reads like a skeptics refutation handbook. NCDC reacted. I’ve highlighted a few slides of interest, including one refuting me and the surfacestations project. Because, well, as readers of DeSmog blog and Romm’s fairy tales know, I’d never want anyone to see that.

The key word above (enlarged here) is “adjusted”. Comparing adjusted data to adjusted data will almost guarantee an agreement.

I’m sure Karl (or Peterson) was thinking “Better not make those graphs too big”. Surely he didn’t mention that he and Menne et al ‘borrowed’ my incomplete surfacestations rating data against my protests. Dr. Pielke Sr. and I, plus others on the surfacestations data analysis teams (two independent analyses have been done) see an entirely different picture, now that we have nearly 90% of USHCN surveyed. NCDC used data at 43%, and even though I told them they’d see little or nothing in the way of a signal then, they forged ahead anyway. Assuming we aren’t blocked by journal politics, we’ll have the surfacestations analysis results in public view soon. If we are blocked by journal politics, we’ll have other ways.

What’s humorous about this PowerPoint (besides the claims) is that after Peterson previously authored a rushed and ghost written “Talking Points Memo” critical of the surfacestations project, attributable to nobody, but who got caught in the PDF document properties.

...they now show this for the author, heh.

Once I took the test to be a “Govenment” employee, now I are one.

After NCDC’s unethical borrowing of my data and denying my right of first publication, don’t ask to see the surfacestations analysis results here. I learned my lesson not to trust Karl et al the first time. Full disclosure comes in an SI with journal publication, not before.

Here’s some other slides of interest.

The urbanization signal, easily dispensed with thanks to homogenization (enlarged here).

This slide above is part of the “nothing matters and we can adjust for everything” meme. Now they are using Hansen’s night lights method. Heh. The rural trend they present is different than what I’ve seen.

Above (enlarged here): New and improved! Gotta show progress for the senators! Thanks to GHCN3, it’s now even hotter, faster.

Look for new pronouncements of “unprecedented” and ‘it’s worse than we thought” when they publish GHCN3. Robust times two. Gosh.

Of course, airports don’t matter. Naw. Never, even when they don’t bother to remove the base measurement errors at airports (below enlarged here), even when pointed out. Like movie directors, I’m sure they are thinking: “we can fix that in post production”.

Yes, I’m being sarcastic here. Yes, I think most of this shown to the Senate is based on self fulfilling adjustments and a need to keep bureaucracy alive.

You can download the entire powerpoint here. Do it fast before it gets “disappeared”.

In related news. I’ve been made privy to a new surface data set, one that doesn’t have the problem of NCDC’s need to show additional warming to keep the cap and trade dream alive. This surface data set uses an entirely different methodology to fix the errors, deal with dropouts, and separate good records from bad. I’ve seen the methodology. I won’t insult everyone’s intelligence by calling it “robust”. Instead, I’ll call it properly engineered.

The best part is, it was never designed with global warming in mind. So there’s no built in confirmation bias.

And to Mr. Karl, Dr. Menne, Dr. Petersen, and Dr. Easterling (who I know will read this): stay tuned.

Oh, and another team sends word today and that’s not the only surprise to come. But, that’s another story for another day.

h/t to Steve Mosher, who is the new inspector Columbo. See full story and comments here.

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Hurricane Roulette - State of the Art in Hurricane Forecasting

This is a funy bit below by NCPPR, but I want to make clear I have a high regard to those at NOAA outside the new climate branch and high level administration. Those who work at the national forecast centers including the hurricane center, the hurricane labs, the storm prediction center, the severe storms lab and also the vast majority of the local offices are hard working, honest people who care about public safety and I have found extremely helpful and do very good work.  Also Dr. Bill Gray and now Dr. Phil Klotzbach have demonstrated real skill at hurricane forecasting over the years, despite some recent surprises.

“The U.S. government’s National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has been wrong about its hurricane forecasts three out of the last four years, and 7 out of the last 11 years. The National Center for Public Policy Research believes there may be a better way, so we commissioned a forecast by our own climate expert, Dr. James Hansimian.” NCPPR

ICCC IV - Chicago

By Tom Stacy

UPDATE: See the keynote addresses now posted on Heartland.org here. All presentation coming soon.

Greetings to my friends and those I have worked with in matters of energy choices.  I am writing to you from my Hotel room in Chicago just after the close of the fourth international conference on climate change, where the science is always never settled, and the first law of thermodynamics and our climate continue to ignore computer models. 

The entire conference - all 94 presentations by scientists from 30 nations - is available (or soon will be) for replay, and the presentation slides from many for download, here. What a tremendous and important resource for our work to preserve our nation and its founding principles!!!

Several speakers stood out for me.  Dr, Bryan Leyland of New Zealand spoke in concise terms about wind energy.  I hope to use his presentation as a model for some education opportunities on my horizon.  It can be found soon here (Session Four, Economics Track).  Video for certain, and the presentation slides if he decides to release them. 

Dr. Willie Soon, astrophysicist made some down to earth comparisons for us non-scientists, noting that if Refrigerator Perry (Chicago Bears, retired) were our climate, then King Kong might represent the sun’s ability to move it up or down, and he (a gentleman of modest stature), might represent CO2 in the same effort. Man’s contribution to atmospheric CO2 was represented in the example by a plate of five cheeseburgers that Willie was eating in preparation for his attempt to “impact” Refrigerator Perry. 

For the first time, scientists from the climate change camp also presented at the Heartland conference.  Two of them.  Mr. Tam Hunt, owner of Community Renewable Solutions spoke on behalf of renewable energy’s growth and economics (but not on their measured impact on AGW), and A. Scott Denning of NOAA and Colorado State University presented on the first law of thermodynamics, and the infra-red energy absorption potential of CO2 molecules in contrast to nitrogen and oxygen molecules in the atmosphere.  I found Dr. Denning to be a very effective communicator.  At the close of the conference, Scott thanked Heartland and the 800 conference attendees for inviting him, said he had made friends and learned much over the three day event.  He concluded by imploring that squelching scientific debate undermines the scientific method, and called out to his global warming theory believing peers to attend the next (fifth) conference.  I hope this message finds its way somehow to the boards of education in every public and private school system in America.

Several speakers including Apollo moon walker and Senator, Harrison Schmitt, and network television meteorologist (and Icecap board member) Art Horn both indicated their dedication to preserving the teaching of the scientific method in our schools - by appropriately exploring both sides of the global warming theory issue in the science classrooms.  I had an opportunity to interview Senator Schmitt on video during the conference, and am happy to share that footage with you upon request at a later time.

In addition to Schmitt, numerous lawmakers attended and several gave speeches at the conference. State Senator Jungbauer of Minnesota, Utah Assemblyman, Mike Noel, Senator Cory Bernardi of South Australia, former US Senator and Representative from Virginia, George F. Allen, and via video tape, US Congressional hopeful, Dr. Arthur Robinson (primary today).  Thanks to all of them for making cap and trade and its underlying driver, climate consensus, a priority issue.

Dr. Gabriel Calzada Alvarez, the author of the contentious “Spanish Green Jobs Study” last year also spoke, although I jumped to two other tracks to see Cork Hayden and Willie Soon present, so missed Alvarez.  I do encourage you to review his paper at:  It was important enough to AWEA and NREL that they collaborated on a rebuttal, setting a dubious precedent in the US Department of Energy.  We’ll have to catch the replay here.

From leading MIT climate scientist Dr. Richard Lindzen to economists from CATO, the Competitive Enterprise Institute and the Heritage Foundation, to numerous active and retired energy experts, the message was loud and consistent:  Our government has no business mandating carbon emissions or energy sources, and the clear winners from such policies will be the mega-corporations whose lobbysists conspire with politicians to ensure and pad their future success at taxpayer and rate-payer expense.

My friend Jay Lehr is, among other things, Science Director for The Heartland Institute.  I will echo advice from his key-note speech this morning:  We each bear the burden and responsibility to preserve sound science, our country, our freedom, and our constitution.  We can do so just by casually but credibly sharing with others what we learn about important topics like “cap & trade” and “global warming.”

The closing speaker at the conference was Lord Christopher Monckton of the United Kingdom.  Monckton, who claims to be a lowly non-scientist, proved his scientific competence by coherently summarizing much of the meat from other heavy presentations into a resounding policy message:  Man Made Climate Change cannot be proven, but the media-enticing scare tactics of the theory’s sponsors can be.  Lord Monckton, after citing a passage from Article One of the US constitution as “proof enough” that the EPA has no rights under the law, closed in tears while reciting ta passage from Lincoln’s Gettysburg address:

“It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us—that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion—that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom—and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”

Consensus?  What consensus?

By Roger Helmer, MEP

I’m writing this in the Marriott Hotel in Chicago, where I’m attending the Heartland Institute Climate Conference (and I’ve just done an interview with BBC Environment Correspondent Roger Harrabin). 

Ahead of the interview, I thought I’d just check out the Conference Speaker’s list.  There are 80 scheduled speakers, including distinguished scientists (like Richard Lindzen of MIT), policy wonks (like my good friend Chris Horner of CEI), enthusiasts and campaigners (like Anthony Watts of the wattsupwiththat.com web-site), and journalists (including our own inimitable James Delingpole).

Of the 80 speakers, I noticed that fully forty-five were qualified scientists from relevant disciplines, and from respected universities around the world—from the USA, Canada, Mexico, Russia, Sweden, Norway, UK, Australia and New Zealand.

All of them have reservations about climate alarmism, ranging from concerns that we are making vastly expensive public policy decisions based on science that is, to say the least, open to question, through to outright rejection of the Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW) model.

Several of these scientists are members or former members of the IPCC Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

But how do 45 sceptical scientists stack up, you may well ask, against the 2500 on the official IPCC panels?  But of course there aren’t 2500 relevant scientists on the IPCC panel.  Many of them are not strictly scientists at all.  Some are merely civil servants or environmental zealots.  Some are economists—important to the debate but not experts on the science.  Others are scientists in unrelated disciplines.  The Chairman of the IPCC Dr. Ravendra Pachuari, is a Railway Engineer.

And of the remaining minority who are indeed scientists in relevant subjects, some (like my good friend Prof Fred Singer) have explicitly rejected the IPCC’s AGW theory.  Whittle it down, and you end up with fifty or so true believers, most of whom are part of the “Hockey Team” behind the infamous Hockey Stick graph, perhaps the most discredited artefact in the history of science.  This is a small and incestuous group of scientists (including those at the CRU at the University of East Anglia).  They work closely together, jealously protecting their source data, and they peer-review each other’s work.  This is the “consensus” on which climate hysteria is based.

And there are scarcely more of them than are sceptical scientists at this Heartland Conference in Chicago, where I am blogging today.  Never mind the dozens of other scientists here in Chicago, or the thousands who have signed petitions and written to governments opposing climate hysteria.  Science is not decided by numbers, but if it were, there is the case to be made that the consensus is now on the sceptical side.

ICECAP NOTE: Three ICECAP board memers were at the IPCC. Two of us were speakers. I did three interviews for broadcast and documentaries today and am travelling back tonight. Nearly 1000 attended the conference from 23 countries with 80 speakers. It was another big success. Posting will resume tomorrow. I am writing this from an airport. Within a few days, all the powerpoints and presentations will be posted on the Heartland.org website. ICECAP will privileged to sponsor several attendees including Steve Goreham, author of Climatism. See review of Climatism by Khalil Ahmad, Executive Director of the Alternate Solutions Institute of Pakistan here.

Please see these videos of Dr Bob Carter by the excellent NZ cable channel NZone.

One other note: it appears Joe Romm asked his readers to write angry letters to the Boston Globe complaining that Beth Daley should do a balanced piece on climte change featureing Kerry Emanuel and Richard Lindzen. Please write letters and emails or comments applauding the Globe for doing so.

Crisis in New Zealand climatology

By Barry Brill, Quadrant

The warming that wasn’t

The official archivist of New Zealand’s climate records, the National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research (NIWA), offers top billing to its 147-year-old national mean temperature series (the “NIWA Seven-station Series” or NSS). This series shows that New Zealand experienced a twentieth-century warming trend of 0.92C.

The official temperature record is wrong. The instrumental raw data correctly show that New Zealand average temperatures have remained remarkably steady at 12.6C +/- 0.5C for a century and a half. NIWA’s doctoring of that data is indefensible.

The NSS is the outcome of a subjective data series produced by a single Government scientist, whose work has never been peer-reviewed or subjected to proper quality checking. It was smuggled into the official archive without any formal process. It is undocumented and sans metadata, and it could not be defended in any court of law. Yet the full line-up of NIWA climate scientists has gone to extraordinary lengths to support this falsified warming and to fiercely attack its critics.

For nearly 15 years, the 20th-century warming trend of 0.92C derived from the NSS has been at the centre of NIWA official advice to all tiers of New Zealand Government - Central, Regional and Local. It informs the NIWA climate model. It is used in sworn expert testimony in Environment Court hearings. Its dramatic graph graces the front page of NIWA’s printed brochures and its website.

Internationally, the NSS 0.92C trend is a foundation stone for the Australia-New Zealand Chapter in the IPCC’s Third and Fourth Assessment Reports. In 1994, it was submitted to HadleyCRUT, so as to influence the vast expanses of the South Pacific in the calculation of globally-averaged temperatures.

The Minister of Research Science and Technology, the Hon Dr Wayne Mapp, has finally become alarmed at the murky provenance of the NSS. The Government has directed and funded a 6-month project to produce a new national temperature record, with published data and transparent processes. The replacement record is to be the subject of a scientific paper, which is to be peer-reviewed by the Australian Bureau of Meteorology.

Hon Rodney Hide, a climate sceptic who is a Minister in the current Government and leader of the junior coalition partner, the ACT Party, has called upon his ministerial colleagues to formally repudiate the NSS and to withdraw all publications and formal papers which are based on the spurious warming trend of 0.92C. The Government has not yet responded to this challenge.

New Zealand is a small country, with a strong tradition of open Government, and is not an easy place to keep secrets. The acceptance of the NSS for so long offers evidence of the dictum: “you can fool all of the people some of the time..” But if that can happen in New Zealand, how much greater is the probability that similar shenanigans could be happening in larger, more complex, jurisdictions?

BACKGROUND

The New Zealand Meteorological Service, with its forebears, has been measuring and recording our weather since 1861. In 1992, it published a booklet containing a detailed history of all its weather stations, along with 140 years of climate data. In that year, NIWA came into being and has now published most of the Met Service data online.

In 2007, the then Prime Minister announced her party’s intention that New Zealand should lead the world in fighting climate change, and aim to be the world’s first carbon-neutral country by 2025.

Earlier in 2007, NIWA produced a web page, followed by a printed brochure, with a graph showing that New Zealand had already warmed by an amount far in excess of global averages. The web page claimed a temperature increase of 1.1C during the 144 years of Met Service records, and a 0.92C trend during the 20th century.

These are remarkable claims. They came out of the blue and do not accord with any written histories, or the personal impressions of our older generations. They don’t square with “hottest day” records held in provinces and city archives. They were not accompanied by big changes in rainfall or winds or sea levels. In these claims, NIWA is a very lonely orphan.

Global warming during the 20th Century was 0.6C, with a margin of error of +/-0.2C. The Southern Hemisphere warming was less than half that level. But New Zealand warming, according to NIWA, was almost twice the global average - and with no error margins mentioned.

Referring to the NIWA web page, one finds that this major warming trend is the product of a single study involving only 7 temperature stations - out of the 238 stations which currently report to NIWA. In response to a request under the Official information Act, NIWA has disclosed that this study was undertaken as part of a student’s thesis some 30 years ago.

NIWA has no record of how the NSS came to be in their computers. The only reasonable inference is that the student himself, one Jim Salinger, must have added it when he became NIWA’s Principal Scientist many years later. 

Their data have been downloaded and graphed in a document by the New Zealand Science Coalition entitled ”Are We Feeling Warmer Yet?” Some excerpts from that document:

“Straight away you can see there’s no slope—either up or down. The temperatures are remarkably constant way back to the 1850s. Of course, the temperature still varies from year to year, but the trend stays level—statistically insignificant at 0.06°C per century since 1850.

Putting these two graphs side by side, you can see huge differences. What is going on? Why does NIWA’s graph show strong warming, but graphing their own raw data looks completely different? Their graph shows warming, but the actual temperature readings show none whatsoever!”

It turned out that NIWA had undertaken some internal and undisclosed adjustments to the Met Service data:

“About half the adjustments actually created a warming trend where none existed; the other half greatly exaggerated existing warming. All the adjustments increased or even created a warming trend, with only one (Dunedin) going the other way and slightly reducing the original trend.

The shocking truth is that the oldest readings have been cranked way down and later readings artificially lifted to give a false impression of warming..”

The NSS has not been retained out of respect for Salinger. The only remaining explanation is that NIWA and the Climate Ministers are attempting to save face rather than confess that they have been running their policies on the basis of bogus data for many years.

CONCLUSION

Piecing together the provenance of the New Zealand historical temperature record has been no easy task. Much of the detail is set out in the Climate Conversation blog. It has involved a myriad of investigative methods but the most productive has been the placement of nearly 50 Parliamentary Questions for Written Answer, for which credit must go to John Boscawen MP. The New Zealand mainstream media, all highly partisan on climate change matters, have evinced little interest in the scandal to date.

Science claims a special place in the trust of the public because of its unswerving adherence to certain objective methodologies, involving transparency, peer review, replicability and honest purpose. NIWA has forfeited that trust in so many ways.

Hon Barry Brill OBE is a New Zealand barrister and solicitor. He is a former Minister of Science & Technology, and Minister of Energy, and is currently chairman of the New Zealand Climate Science Coalition.

Read much more here. H/T: SPPIblog. Issues preliminarily covered in SPPI’s Surface Temperature Records, a Policy Driven Deception? by Joseph D’Aleo and Anthony Watts with help from E.M. Smith and many others. 

ICCC IV Starts Sunday - PJTV to Cover Climate Conference Live

From the desk of Tammy Nash, Mainstream Media Specialist

Live coverage of the eight keynote speeches at the fourth International Conference on Climate Change, Reconsidering the Science and Economics, in Chicago will be streamed online by Pajamas Media’s PJTV. See the program here.

The two-year-old PJTV network also will tape and stream selected breakout sessions of the conference, which will bring together more than 700 scientists, economists, policymakers, and interested citizens under the theme “Reconsidering the science and economics of climate change.”

Viewers can access the coverage at this URL.

“Climategate is hotter than ever, especially after the introduction Wednesday (May 12) of Sens. Kerry and Lieberman’s American Power Act,” said Roger L. Simon, CEO of Pajamas Media. “New evidence calls into question the impact human activity had on global temperatures in the 20th Century. Nonetheless, many opinion leaders and members of Congress fail to discuss these new scientific discoveries that dismantle the liberal agenda. PJTV is excited to bring viewers a different part of the debate than is portrayed on Capitol Hill or in the mainstream media.” Conference-goers will hear presentations from 75 experts about new scientific discoveries that force researchers to reassess humans’ impact on global warming. Additionally, economists will weigh the cost of slowing or stopping global warming against the perceived social benefits.

PJTV-a division of Pajamas Media-debuted online at the 2008 Republican National Convention, and since then has evolved into the first center-right online television network, broadcasting over the Internet from its headquarters in El Segundo, California.

Scheduled coverage will begin at 7:25 p.m. CDT Sunday, May 16, with moon walker and former astronaut Harrison Schmitt, Ph.D., speaking on “Constitutional Constraints Related to Climate and Energy.” Coverage will continue with Steve McIntyre, a key investigator of events that led to the exposure of the Climategate scandal.

PJTV’s keynote coverage continues at 7:15 a.m. CDT Monday with the Cato Institute’s Pat Michaels, Ph.D., outlining new scientific data on global temperatures that requires the EPA to reopen its finding that carbon dioxide endangers human health, and former Virginia governor George Allen on “A Winning American Energy Game Plan.”

Other scheduled keynoters are: Monday lunch session, Sen. James Inhofe (R-OK) and MIT meteorologist Richard Lindzen, Ph.D.; Tuesday breakfast, Heartland Institute Science Director Jay Lehr, Ph.D., on scientific credibility in the wake of Climategate, and Roy Spencer, Ph.D., principal research scientist at the University of Alabama in Huntsville.

Coverage concludes with Tuesday’s lunch session with economist Julian Morris, Ph.D., presenting “A Fable for Carbon Traders,” and Lord Christopher Monckton, former science advisor to UK Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, on “Global Warming: The Trojan Horse That Menaces Global Freedom.”

The conference is produced by The Heartland Institute, a 26-year-old Chicago-based think tank that in 2008 and 2009 hosted three international conferences challenging the claim that a consensus exists among scientists that global warming has brought the Earth to a crisis point and that human activity primarily is to blame.

Complimentary registration is available to qualified print, broadcast, and online journalists. For more information about the presenters, topics, and agenda, contact Dan Miller or Tammy Nash at The Heartland Institute—dmiller@heartland.org or tnash@heartland.org or visit here.

The nonprofit Heartland Institute is funded by 1,700 donors. No corporate donor provides more than 5 percent of its $7 million annual budget.

See Marc Sheppard’s “The Heartland Climate Conference Smear Campaign Begins” on the American Thinker here.

Floods More Likely During Cooling Periods; Glacier Melting Much Less than Previous Estimates

C3 headlines

Floods 10X More Likely During Global Cooling Periods Vs. Global Warming Periods, EU Scientists Discover

Read here. IPCC global warming scientists and their climate models have been predicting more floods due to human-caused, CO2 warming. Like most predictions by climate model scientists, their predictions are not based on actual scientific evidence. When the proper research was done, scientists discovered that floods occur with significantly more frequency during global cooling periods, such as the Little Ice Age.

Nashville, TN May 5, 2010

“Benito et al. report that the combined palaeoflood and documentary records indicate that past floods were clustered during particular time periods: AD 950-1200 (10), AD 1648-1672 (10), AD 1769-1802 (9), AD 1830-1840 (6), and AD 1877-1900 (10), where the first time interval coincides with the Medieval Warm Period and the latter four time intervals all fall within the confines of the Little Ice Age; and calculating mean rates of flood occurrence over each of the five intervals, we obtain a value of 0.40 floods per decade during the Medieval Warm Period, and an average value of 4.31 floods per decade over the four parts of the Little Ice Age, which latter value is more than ten times greater than the mean flood frequency experienced during the Medieval Warm Period.” See post here.

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New Peer-Research Finds Alaskan/Canadian Glaciers Melting Significantly Less Than Previous Estimates

Read here. Global warming alarmists and associated IPCC scientists have made erroneous claims about glaciers worldwide. The basic claim is that glaciers are rapidly melting, adding to rising sea-levels because of human CO2-induced warming. As with almost all of these claims, they shrink to minor issues when proper scientific observation is finally applied.

Tonsina Glacier, northcentral Chugach Mountains, Alaska

“The five scientists report that “between 1962 and 2006, Alaskan glaciers lost 41.9 plus/minus 8.6 km3 per year of water, and contributed 0.12 plus/minus 0.02 mm per year to sea-level rise,” which they note was 34% less than estimated by Arendt et al. (20002) and Meier and Dyurgerov (2002)...In addition to significantly revising what was previously believed about the magnitude of ice wastage in Alaska and northwest Canada in recent decades, Berthier et al. say their results suggest that “estimates of mass loss from glaciers and ice caps in other mountain regions could be subject to similar revisions,” all of which would tend to mitigate against the rapidity with which the world’s climate alarmists have long contended earth’s mountain glaciers and ice caps were wasting away and thereby contributing to global sea level rise.” Read more here.

Harvard astrophysicist dismisses AGW theory, challenges peers to ‘take back climate science’

Seminole County Environmental News Examiner Kirk Myers

In the following interview, Dr. Willie Soon, a solar and climate scientist at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics, questions the prevailing dogma of man-made global warming and challenges his peers to “take back climate science.” His remarks are his personal opinion based upon 19 years of scientific research.

Examiner.com: What drives climate change on Earth?

Dr. Soon: Most of the weather and climate variations we observed are essentially related to the sun and the changing seasons - not by CO2 radiative forcing and feedback. The climate system is constantly readjusting naturally in a large way - more than we would ever see from CO2. The CO2 kick [impact of CO2 emissions] is extremely small compared to what is happening in a natural way. Within the framework of a proper study of the sun-climate connection, you don’t need CO2 to explain anything.

Examiner.com: What is your opinion of the anthropogenic (man-caused) global warming theory?

Dr. Soon: It’s never been about the science - even from the very beginning. It’s based on confusion and a mixture of ideology. We should deal only in the facts that we do know.

Examiner.com: Many of the scientists promoting the global warming theory appear to be driven by politics rather than hard scientific data. What are your thoughts?

Dr. Soon: I am a scientist. I go where the facts take me. And the facts are fairly clear. It doesn’t take very long to discover that their views [of man-caused global warming] aren’t grounded in the facts. Why would any solid science need so much promotion and advertisement and the endless shouting about how the science has all been “settled”? And now we’re supposed to believe that the growing consensus on the street that humans are not responsible for global warming is due mainly to the confusion created by climate “deniers.”

Examiner.com: Many scientists like you (often referred to as “skeptics") are ridiculed and isolated for challenging the dogma of man-made global warming. Many of your peers have been very successful in their efforts to marginalize anyone who deviates from the approved script? What is happening?

Dr. Soon: The pro-AGW supporters have become more and more confrontational in their attacks on scientists who challenge their views. For instance, Stephen Schneider [a professor of environmental studies at Stanford University], says that skeptics sell garbage and that we are playing games with science. He compares it to selling drugs and believes that we are criminals who should go to jail. Guess what? You don’t pull that sort of thing on people who know something about science.

Examiner.com: What needs to be done to combat the strong-arm tactics being used against scientists who disagree with the AGW theory?

Dr. Soon: Science needs to stand up. The AGW movement is killing science. It’s very unhealthy in many ways. They are corrupting science for material gain. It’s time for us to take back climate science.

Examiner.com: Many AGW scientists state with confidence that there is a very high probability that the earth is warming. Therefore, something must be done now to cut CO2 emissions. How accurate are their statistics?

Dr. Soon: Their probabilities are absolute crap. They are pulling these statistics out of thin air. It is completely anti-science. They talk about 90 percent probability. It sounds high, but would anyone fly in an airplane if it would crash once out of every 10 flights?

Examiner.com: The temperature data over the past eight years or so seem to indicate that we have entered a period of global cooling. Are we experiencing a cooling trend?

Dr. Soon: If you look at the data empirically, there is a cooling tendency. We’re already seeing signs. The possibility of a colder climate ahead is a very real thing.

Examiner.com: What is your opinion of Al Gore?

Dr. Soon: He’s somebody who needs to just shut-up and stop spreading nonsense. He has neither credibility on science nor moral standing.

Examiner.com: In its latest Assessment Report, the IPCC talks about a “water vapor feedback” that magnifies the warming of CO2 emissions. Does such a feedback exist?

Dr. Soon: There is some CO2-water vapor feedback. But it’s not operating on a global scale. The modellers cannot accurately separate water vapour from the effects of clouds and rainfall. In other words, they lack the detailed understanding of clouds required to construct atmospheric models. But they keep tuning their models and claiming they can accurately simulate the effects of water vapour, but how can you do this when you can’t model clouds or rainfall properly. Changes in clouds and rainfall can overwhelm what little effect CO2-water vapour has on temperature. CO2 can never be the climate driver they say it will be over the next 20 to 50 years.

Examiner.com: Which plays a stronger role in its impact on climate - atmospheric CO2 or changes in albedo?

Dr. Soon: If you change planetary albedo by as little as one or two percent, it has the same effect as doubling atmospheric CO2. The warming we’ve experienced in the late 20th century could just as easily be explained by small decreases in cloud cover - natural changes in the system - and have nothing to do with CO2.

Examiner.com: You have developed a theory showing a close correlation between solar radiation and temperatures in the arctic and surrounding regions - and, perhaps, even globally. Would you like to explain it?

Dr. Soon: In 2005, I discovered a surprisingly strong correlation between solar radiation and temperatures in the Arctic over the past 130 years. Since then, I have demonstrated similar correlations in all the regions surrounding the Arctic, including the U.S. mainland and China.

The close relationships between the abrupt ups and downs of solar activity and of temperature that I have identified occur locally in coastal Greenland; regionally in the Arctic Pacific and north Atlantic; and, hemispherically, for the whole circum-Arctic, suggesting that changes in solar activity drive Arctic and perhaps even global climate.

There is no such match between the steady rise in atmospheric CO2 concentration and the often dramatic ups and downs of surface temperatures in and around the Arctic.

I recently discovered direct evidence that changes in solar activity have influenced what has been called the “conveyor-belt” circulation of the great Atlantic Ocean currents over the past 240 years. For instance, solar-driven changes in temperature, and in the volume of freshwater output from the Arctic, can cause variations in sea surface temperature in the tropical Atlantic five to 20 years later.

The hallmark of good science is the testing of a plausible hypothesis that is then either supported or rejected by the evidence. The evidence in my paper is consistent with the hypothesis that the sun causes climatic change in the Arctic.

It invalidates the hypothesis that CO2 is a major cause of observed climate change - and raises serious questions about the wisdom of imposing cap-and-trade or other policies that would cripple energy production and economic activity, all in the name of “preventing catastrophic climate change.”

Thanks, Dr. Soon, for taking the time to speak to Examiner.com. Read more here.

Disgraceful Display of the Day

By Chris Horner on 5.12.10 @ 8:50AM

Today at 1:30 pm Eastern time Senators John Kerry (D-MA) and Joe Lieberman (I-CT) will host a press conference announcing the fifth Senate reinvention of “cap-and-trade” global warming legislation since 2003, the “American Power Act”. Call it the American Power Grab Act, instead, for reasons that will become obvious momentarily.

The orchestrated spectacle, with a cast expected to be in the dozens which massive alignment of special interest groups is apparently supposed to persuade you of the justness of their cause, is in fact a manifestation of all that is wrong with Washington and what Americans have become increasingly enraged by.

At this press conference, Sens. Kerry and Lieberman have both already indicated, they will insist that their scheme isn’t “cap-and-trade” because… they aren’t going to use that term this time around. Kerry has even said that “this is not an environment bill.” It seems that the public aren’t buying that argument, either, so it’s really about whatever appeals to you. Just not what it was about the previous four times they’ve tried to slip this Power Grab past you. Except that a summary of the bill makes plain it is, too, cap-and-trade. And worse. It includes billions of dollars each year in gas tax revenue to underwrite the wealth transfers these companies are so in favor of.

For this latest effort to hide an enormous tax and wealth transfer—a unilateral move that guarantees jobs will be shipped to China, India, Philippines, Mexico and elsewhere—-- these lawmakers will be surrounded by numerous representatives of Big Green. That includes not just the wealthy pressure group industry but many among “Big Business”, numerous of whom are the benefactors enabling those pressure group chiefs’ huge salaries and vast PR budgets to scare you into accepting an agenda that uses the state to, oddly enough, enrich these same companies. Huh.

Sen. Lieberman has repeatedly teased the breadth of today’s organized scrum as proof that the scheme is now a good idea.  Absent from his cheerleading is the fact that you are not represented at the table when your wealth and future prospects were being divvied up.

The reason for so many businesses leaping onto the stage today is also the dog that surely will not bark when the media report on industry’s touting of an enormous energy tax and wealth transfer from individuals: why do they support this?

The answer is because they have been promised a slice of the spoils taken from the average taxpayer and ratepayer. I detail who these companies are and how they hope to cash in on this scheme in my new book “Power Grab”. For example, consider Exelon. This Chicago-based utility, which today is expected to be represented both individually by its CEO and by its trade association the Nuclear Energy Institute (NEI), expects more than one billion dollars in increased profits for no additional capital investment if the scheme announced today passes. Their only cost would have been the lobbyists.

That’s just one company. But the windfall, arranged by politicians, comes from average American families. The company even admits the whole sordid mess in a Forbes article from earlier this year:

“Exelon needs that legislation to happen sooner rather than later. Without a carbon price of some sort, Exelon’s fortunes aren’t so bright.... ‘The conundrums are real,’ [Exelon CEO John] Rowe acknowledges. ‘There’s nothing that’s going to drive Exelon’s profit in the next couple of years wildly. It just isn’t going to happen.’

Except, of course, carbon legislation. And because of that, the company views spending on lobbying for legislation almost like a capital expense....

Exelon has very deep ties to the Obama Administration. Frank M. Clark, who runs ComEd, helped advise Obama before he ran for President and is one of Obama’s largest fundraisers. Obama’s chief political strategist, David Axelrod, worked as a consultant to Exelon. Obama’s chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, helped create Exelon. Emanuel was hired by Rowe to help broker the $8.2 billion deal between Unicom and Peco when Emanuel was at the investment bank Wasserstein Perella (now Dresdner Kleinwort). In his two-year career there Emanuel earned $16.2 million, according to congressional disclosures. His biggest deal was the Exelon merger.”

The article details how Exelon wrote the provisions allocating the energy use “allowances”, or ration coupons. Others, including (according to Sen. Kerry) BP, wrote the provisions applying to oil companies, to ensure costs are passed straight through to you.

I lay the particularly odious example of Exelon—and those of others on the dais, ranging from Duke Energy to GE to “Chicago Climate Exchange” members—bare in “Power Grab”. Before your elected representatives impose this on you later this year, as soon as by the July 4 congressional recess, educate yourself on the rhetoric and ruses employed to part you from your money and, if history is any guide, threaten your family’s lives and indeed your livelihood altogether. See post here.

Many signatories of controversial letter on climate science not working in climate related fields

Climate Change Examiner Tony Hake

The mainstream media and these pages on Examiner.com reported the release of a letter from 255 scientists last week that said despite recent scandals in climate science, the science behind the manmade climate change theory remains sound. The embarrassing use of a faked photo in the trade journal that published the letter damaged the credibility and now a look at the resumes of the signatories shows most don’t even work in climate science.

...an investigation into the professional backgrounds of the scientists finds that many do not work in climate science and some work in fields not even remotely related to it. In fact, among the first 20 listed, none work in climate science. Pediatric surgeons, an expert in the Maya and the Olmec civilizations, a chemist that studies bacteria, a ‘computer pioneer’ with Microsoft, an electrical engineer, the chairman of a biotechnology firm, and even an expert studying corn are but a few of the 255 ‘experts’ that signed the letter.

There are many other questionable signatories on the letter that tries to convey the message that the ‘science is sound.’ This is of course leading one to question why their statements should be leant any great deal of credence, particularly since the credentials of climate change skeptics are similarly questioned. Read more here.

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Atmospheric Scientist Slaps Down 255 Warming Scientists Letter
Monday, May 10, 2010 - By Marc Morano - Climate Depot

There is ‘no scientific evidence that burning of fossil fuel is responsible for climate change’ The ‘arguments of these 255 scientists is based on pure speculation… Speculation is not covered by any scientific standard’

Special to Climate Depot—Written by Atmospheric Scientist Dr. Gerhard Kramm of the University of Alaska Fairbanks. Dr. Kramm is at the Geophysical Institute and Department of Atmospheric Sciences, College of Natural Science and Mathematics - Dr. Kramm’s website.

May 6, 2010 - By Dr. Gerhard Kramm

The 255 warming scientists stated in their letter:

(I) The planet is warming due to increased concentrations of heat-trapping gases in our atmosphere. A snowy winter in Washington does not alter this fact.

Professor Kramm’s Response: Until today there is no scientific evidence that the increase of the globally averaged near-surface temperature by less than one Kelvin during the last 160 years (see HadCRUT3 data) can be linked to the increase of the atmospheric concentrations of so-called greenhouse gases. The notion “heat-trapping” is unphysical and does not describe the radiative processes taking place within the atmosphere.

In 1971, Prof. Dr. Heinz Fortak, the Director of the Institute for Theoretical Meteorology at the Free University of Berlin, Germany, and one of the world leading theorists in meteorology stated in his book “Meteorologie”: “The ‘cycle’ of the long-wave radiation between that Earth?s surface and the atmosphere does not contribute to the heating of the system. The outgoing emission of infrared radiation only serves to maintain the radiative equilibrium at the top of the atmosphere.”

All explanations of the so-called atmospheric greenhouse effect are linked to a global scale. This means that the global energy budget for the system ‘Earth-atmosphere” has to be considered. Based on this global energy budget one can show that Heinz Fortak was right. Note that a “global climate” does not exist. It is a contradiction in terms.

The 255 Scientists Stated: (II) Most of the increase in the concentration of these gases over the last century is due to human activities, especially the burning of fossil fuels and deforestation.

Prof. Kramm’s Response: If the first argument of these 255 scientists is not correct as documented before, no scientific evidence that the burning of fossil fuel is responsible for climate change does exist. Deforestation may alter the planetary albedo of the system ‘Earth-atmosphere’ in the solar range. To investigate such land-use changes numerically, the so-called GCMs are rather inappropriate for this purpose because their grid increments are too coarse to fit the requirements in simulating the soil-biosphere-atmosphere interactions with a sufficient degree of accuracy. Is one of these 255 scientists able to formulate the stomatal conductance for an area of more the 60,000 km^2, the typical area of a grid element in a GCM?

The 255 Scientists Stated: (III) Natural causes always play a role in changing Earth’s climate, but are now being overwhelmed by human-induced changes.

Professor’s Kramm’s Response: If the first argument of these 255 scientists is not correct, as documented before, their third argument is so useless like their second argument.

The 255 Scientists Stated: (IV) Warming the planet will cause many other climatic patterns to change at speeds unprecedented in modern times, including increasing rates of sea-level rise and alterations in the hydrologic cycle. Rising concentrations of carbon dioxide are making the oceans more acidic.

Professor’s Kramm’s Response: The fourth argument of these 255 scientists sounds like chatting about possible injuries while playing soccer. It is based on pure speculation because the arguments (I) to (III) are irrelevant. Speculation is not covered by any scientific standard.

The 255 Scientists Stated: (V) The combination of these complex climate changes threatens coastal communities and cities, our food and water supplies, marine and freshwater ecosystems, forests, high mountain environments, and far more.

Professor Kramm’s Response: If the arguments (I) to (III) are irrelevant, the fifth argument of these 255 scientists is based on pure speculation, too.

Professor Kramm Continues: It seems that some further explanations are indispensable. The projecting of the climate using GCMs (Global circulation models) does not fit scientific standards because any numerical result requires its verification by observation. In addition, as argued by Kramm and Dlugi (2009), the inherent uncertainty prevents that climate is predictable with a sufficient degree of accuracy. In their conclusion Kramm and Dlugi stated: “It is not surprising to us that the National Science Foundation (NSF) recently announced solicitation 09-568, Climate Process and Modeling Teams (CPT), where the key aim of the CPT concept is to speed development of global coupled climate models and reduce uncertainties in climate models by bringing together theoreticians, field observationalists, process modelers and the large modeling centers to concentrate on the scientific problems facing climate models today.”

Since any change can only be identified with respect to a reference state, climate change can only be identified on the basis of, at least, two non-overlapping climate periods. According to the recommendations of the international meteorological conferences held in1935 and 1957, a climate period should comprise 30 years for statistically describing the weather pattern on a long-term scale. Consequently, at least, 60 years are required to identify climate change.

See post here.

See more on this letter and the use of a photoshop image of polar bears on an ice block in this Roger Pielke Jr. post Revkin, Gleick and Olson on the Gang Who Couldn’t Shoot Straight here.

Photos Show Ash Cloud Stretching From Iceland to Western Europe, Flights Delayed Again

NASA Earth Observatory

Update: Here is the image of May 7, 2009 (below, enlarged here). Volcanic ash from last month’s Iceland eruption has doubled back southward, delaying most of today’s transatlantic flights between Europe and the U.S. and shutting airports in Portugal and Spain. A massive 1,200-mile long ash cloud is hovering over Europe from Iceland to northern Spain, Europe’s flight control agency said today. To get around the cloud, transatlantic flights have to be rerouted northward over Greenland, or southward over Spain—adding at least an hour to flight times in both directions.

After more than a week of relatively subdued activity in late April, Iceland’s Eyjafjallajokull Volcano began a fresh round of explosive ash eruptions in the first week of May. On the morning of May 6, 2010, the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) on NASA’s Terra satellite captured this view of a thick plume of ash blowing east and then south from the volcano. Clouds bracket the edges of the scene, but the dark blue waters of the Atlantic Ocean show in the middle, and above them, a rippling, brownish-yellow river of ash.

Ash clouds like this are impressive to see, and they can have a dramatic influence on air quality and vegetation, including crops. In Iceland, the ash from Eyjafjallajokull has settled thickly on the ground, posing a threat to livestock and wildlife. The risk of engine damage due to ash has grounded European air traffic repeatedly.

Despite their dramatic appearance, however, these ash plumes are insignificant when it comes to long-term affects on global climate. What matters most to the climate isn’t even visible in images like this. For an eruption to have an influence on global climate, the event must be explosive enough to push sulfur dioxide into the stratosphere, which is above the altitude where rain and snow occur.

Sulfur dioxide turns into tiny droplets of sulfuric acid. These light-colored droplets cool the Earth by reflecting sunlight back to space. Because it doesn’t rain in the stratosphere, the droplets can linger for months or years. Massive eruptions can cool the global average surface temperature by several degrees for several years.

In most cases, though, high-latitude eruptions have little influence on global climate even when they are explosive enough to inject sulfur dioxide into the stratosphere; the reflective particles rarely have a chance to spread around the globe. Stratospheric air generally rises above tropical latitudes, spreads toward the poles, and then sinks back toward the lower atmosphere at high latitudes.

This circulation pattern means that stratospheric particles from eruptions in the tropics have a better chance of spreading all around the world, while particles from high-latitude eruptions are more likely to quickly sink back to lower altitudes. When they re-enter the troposphere, they are rapidly washed out of the atmosphere by rain and snow. Eyjafjallajokull’s high-latitude location means that its eruption probably won’t influence the global climate significantly.

ICECAP NOTE: It is true that tropical volcanism has more global impact as the ash and aerosols travel north and south and affect most of the globe while high latitude volcanoes find ash and gases limited more to the higher latitudes and tend to have effects that don’t last as long. But research by Oman (2005) showed northern hemispheric high latitude volcanoes influence the Arctic and North Atlantic Oscillations which can have a profound effect on the climate as we saw last summer and then this past winter with Redoubt and Sarychev and may this summer and next winter with Eyjafjallajokull, especially if the eruptions continue and become stronger and if it excites nearby larger Katla into action as past eruptions have. The stratosphere is lower in the polar regions than in the tropics where eruptions need to get well above 55,000 feet to have long term impact. In the polar regions a 30,000-40,000 foot ash and aerosol cloud can have impact. Some of the biggest eruptions in April and again May 6th reached above 30,000 feet. Read more on high latitude volcanoes here.

By the way the strong blocking led to a warm end of winter and early spring in eastern North America with a predominantly easterly flow and maritime air and early demise of snowcover in eastern Canada and northern New England which normally keeps the region chilly in the early spring. However there was that major late April snow in northern New England and snow last week as some cold air made its way south out of central Canada. And a record late snow in northeast Spain and parts of France last week. Snow fell the last few days across the northern tier states in the United States. This is the picture from northern Wisconsin from this morning.

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