Wednesday, April 2, 2014

Global Warming causes record cold

Because Science®!  2cents emails to point out that Chicago just had the coldest winter ever recorded:
An over a century-old record falls.
The average temperature for December 2013 to March 2014 period in  Chicago was only 22.0°F, 10 degrees below freezing, beating the old record set in the winter of 1903-04. It even beat the harsh winters of 1977/78 which were some of the worst ever.
While stories rage in the media about how global warming is a threat to mankind and nobody will be left untouched by it, the National Weather Service in Chicago issued this statement today.
Click through for the whole shadenfreudtastic NWS bulletin.  It's worth it.

In other climate news, it seems that Global Warming causes most MSNBC viewers to not think that Global Warming is very serious, because Science®!
While we are on the subject of weepy Bill’s MSNBC article, I note there is a poll at the bottom of it asking this:

Do you see climate change as a threat to your life or well-being?

And here is the poll result as of  about 10:30PM PDT Tuesday evening.

MSNBC_poll

No: 2,718 votes Yes: 947 votes I am not sure: 91 votes
Even the moonbats aren't buying the scare.  Maybe because nobody is buying it, and for quite good reason:
The latest report from the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is due out next week. If the leaked draft is reflected in the published report, it will constitute the formal moving on of the debate from the past, futile focus upon "mitigation" to a new debate about resilience and adaptation.
Good idea, that.  Because the alternative is, well, absurd:
So the mitigation deal has become this: Accept enormous inconvenience, placing authoritarian control into the hands of global agencies, at huge costs that in some cases exceed 17 times the benefits even on the Government's own evaluation criteria, with a global cost of 2 per cent of GDP at the low end and the risk that the cost will be vastly greater, and do all of this for an entire century, and then maybe – just maybe – we might save between one and ten months of global GDP growth.

Can anyone seriously claim, with a straight face, that that should be regarded as an attractive deal or that the public is suffering from a psychological disorder if it resists mitigation policies?
Err, because Science®?  Get offa my lawn, warming boy.

3 comments:

MDC708 said...

My favorite rationalization is that the Arctic ice melting is causing the Arctic Ocean to warm up. That "bubble of heat" is pushing the jet stream south, temporarily causing colder winters. Once the "bubble of heat" gets large enough it will push the jet stream so far south that it will cook us all.

JD(not the one with the picture) said...

Yu r jist 2 dum 2 unnerstan CLIMATE CHANGE!!!! Wen their r glazers 1 mile thik over Chicago, yu will still b 2 dum!!! Evil meenie DENIER!

Gwen Patton, NG3P said...

@MDC708, the phase change of ice into water absorbs heat. It does not emit it. It takes almost 16 times the energy to change 0C ice into 0C water as it does to raise -10C ice to 0C ice. The amount of energy required to raise the same sample from 0C to 100C is only 1.25X as great as the energy to raise 0C ice to 0C water.

Shifting the PHASE of a substance -- changing its state, such as solid to liquid, or liquid to gas -- is nearly always a change that absorbs heat, it doesn't release it. When you melt water from 0C ice to 0C water, it take 8350 joules per 25 GRAMS of ice. The water is not "warm" at that point, it is still at 0 degrees C, it has just changed state. To "warm" the water you need to continue adding energy to raise the temp from zero.

For a 25g sample, to raise the temp from 0C to 100C -- the point at which it can boil -- requires 10,450 joules of energy. But that isn't to MAKE it boil, because boiling is another phase change, to steam. To take 100C water to 100C steam is another 56,425 joules of heat, roughly 5 times the amount needed to bring it from the freezing point to the boiling point.

Want to see the math? Sure: http://chemistry.about.com/od/workedchemistryproblems/a/Heat-Capacity-Phase-Change-Example-Problem.htm