Snow covering the UK, satellite photo January 2010
Not one of them seems to realise that the only thing that has ever stopped the UK (and other nations around the North Atlantic) from having the same winters as Moscow (at a similar latitude) is the twin effects of the oceanic Gulf Stream (North Atlantic Conveyor) and the atmospheric Jet Stream over Europe, both bringing warm water and warm air currents from subtropical areas of the North Atlantic.
The current winter whiteout is because the Jet Stream has shifted south. Shifts in air currents are a predicted effect of global warming, and since these currents help distribute equatorial heat to the poles, it is totally consistent with the science of global warming that changes in these air currents will lead to less effective thermal redistribution and thus colder winters at higher latitudes.
THE GLOBAL OCEAN CONVEYOR—The global ocean circulation system, often called the Ocean Conveyor, transports heat throughout the planet. White sections represent warm surface currents. Purple sections represent deep cold currents. (Illustration by Jayne Doucette, WHOI)
This winter will seem mild in comparison. And while Eurasia and North America freeze, the tropics will bake in drought. Climate chaos, not just climate change, will be what we have then.
Categories: culture wars, Science
So that’s why I haven’t been writing much lately 
Webcomic OTD: Beliefs vs Evidence 
Cosmos Wars 
“Post-secular”? 
Hoyden About Town 
No excuse for this cluelessness. The basic concepts, though in Frankenscience form, made it into a disaster movie, they are not exactly arcane fields of knowledge.
Oh, that movie! That Frankenscience was most enjoyably bad, actually. Except for the misinforming part.
Not to mention the fact that if you look at the average temperatures for Britain over the last 15 years, they are WAY WARMER than they were 50 or 100 years ago, when a winter this cold would not have been nearly so remarkable.
I am deeply tired of the “so much for global warming!” jokes every time it snows. This IS an effect of GW, you idiots!
The same shifting oceanic current in the 1300s caused the mini ice age in Europe, while simultaneously causing unprecedented drought in South America, leading to the disappearance of Mayan cultutre. When the White conquerors got off the ship at Jamestwon and stretched their legs, they were doing so in the middle of the worst drought that region had suffered in hundreds of years (in fact, if the dendrology research is to be trusted, ever). When the climate warms, weather stops moving.
Sometimes, I’m okay with humanity disappearing. Even me – I’ll gladly take the hit if it means we stop crapping where we sleep.
Yes, they are saying the coldest winter since 1982, so not excessively cold at all really. One foul wind no more makes a winter, than one swallow makes a summer, nor yet one chill winter make a global climate conspiracy – Dikkens, the well known Dutch author : )
su: “the coldest winter since 1982″
And even with that bringing down the average considerably the Met Office is predicting that we could still have one of the warmest years on record in the UK. I expect that will get quietly ignored by these people if it happens.
This video from Auntie Beeb does a good job of explaining the weather/climate difference and pointing out that while there are cold pockets over the UK and China at the moment, for much of the rest of the Northern Hemisphere it is unseasonably warm.
(Of course, down here in Australia we’re currently having a heatwave in our southernmost states and a bushfire alert at the Catastrophic danger level. This time of year such heatwaves have become expected whereas when I was growing up they were only one year in five. But I bet if there’s a sudden cold snap in a few weeks due to a flux in the Antarctic winds then we’ll have smug gits like Cardinal Pell repeating nonsense they’ve said in previous years.)
Good ole Andy Bolt down here in Melbourne has just been telling us that the cold northern winter proves there’s no global warming. Meanwhile we have just suffered the hottest night ever. It did not drop below 32 C overnight. At midnight it was 37. And another 40C day on the way…
The denialists are amusing in a bleak sort of way. Whenever there’s a cold spell it proves there’s no global warming. Whenever there’s a hot spell it’s just the weather and proves nothing. Cognitive dissonance I think it’s called.
Exactly, planina lesik. There’s also the crop of them saying that those who accept the science on global warming hate (!) Canada (Finland, Russia, Siberia) because we just don’t like the idea that they will have lovely warm weather and become the breadbaskets of the world.
That’s the exact opposite of what is predicted to happen to high latitude territories when the Global Ocean Conveyor shuts down. The current breadbaskets will become deserts, and the higher latitudes will have even shorter growing seasons than they currently do and longer, bleaker winters, because the warm water and warm air will all stay in the equatorial/tropical band instead of circulating up to the poles. Doubters in the US can’t just rely on moving north to save themselves from the consequences of sticking their heads in the sand.
Reminds me of the 2nd Pokemon movie! In the original, the weather was messed up because the deep-sea current stopped flowing (due to people messing with the legendary bird Pokemon) but in the American dub, as I recall, the weather was messed up because a big scary deep-sea current was *created*! Because we don’t need no stinkin’ currents! It made the ending not make sense.
Shifts in air currents are a predicted effect of global warming, and since these currents help distribute equatorial heat to the poles, it is totally consistent with the science of global warming that changes in these air currents will lead to less effective thermal redistribution and thus colder winters at higher latitudes.
If they think this is counterintuitive, wait until the Gulf Stream shifts and/or shuts down.
I remember first seeing this prediction twenty years ago, so it’s not like it’s some “new dodge” either.