Hey, let’s see what new pot of foolishness they’ve got cooking over at Newsbusters:
Will Media Ignore Harsh Winter of 2008 to Preserve Global Warming Myth?
By Noel Sheppard | February 25, 2008 – 12:43 ETAs people that actually pay attention to weather are aware, the winter in the Northern Hemisphere this year is following the same pattern as last year’s extraordinarily frigid conditions in the Southern Hemisphere.
In fact, all kinds of cold and snow-related records are occurring all over the supposedly warming planet this winter despite continued claims by climate alarmists that the world will come to an end if we all don’t immediately reduce our emissions of that awful — naturally occurring and necessary for most life on earth! — gas, carbon dioxide.
Makes one wonder how climate alarmists will spin the winter of 2008 so as to keep alive their precious global warming myth. Fortunately, as NewsBusters has reported for many months, foreign press outlets are much more honest with their citizens than America’s, as observed in this fabulous article in the Canadian National Post Monday[.]
Huh. That doesn’t seem quite right. Let’s look at the fabulous article — or, rather, opinion column — in Canada’s right-wing National Post:
Forget global warming: Welcome to the new Ice Age
Lorne Gunter, National Post
Published: Monday, February 25, 2008Snow cover over North America and much of Siberia, Mongolia and China is greater than at any time since 1966.
The U.S. National Climatic Data Center (NCDC) reported that many American cities and towns suffered record cold temperatures in January and early February. According to the NCDC, the average temperature in January “was -0.3 F cooler than the 1901-2000 (20th century) average.”
[…]
And remember the Arctic Sea ice? The ice we were told so hysterically last fall had melted to its “lowest levels on record? Never mind that those records only date back as far as 1972 and that there is anthropological and geological evidence of much greater melts in the past.
The ice is back.
Gilles Langis, a senior forecaster with the Canadian Ice Service in Ottawa, says the Arctic winter has been so severe the ice has not only recovered, it is actually 10 to 20 cm thicker in many places than at this time last year.
OK, so one winter does not a climate make. It would be premature to claim an Ice Age is looming just because we have had one of our most brutal winters in decades.
But if environmentalists and environment reporters can run around shrieking about the manmade destruction of the natural order every time a robin shows up on Georgian Bay two weeks early, then it is at least fair game to use this winter’s weather stories to wonder whether the alarmist are being a tad premature.
Hmm. Okay, let’s look at the report by the National Climatic Data Center.
Damn, wait a second: Sheppard only linked to Gunter, and Gunter didn’t link to the report. What shall we do?
[Zeerp] “Hello, dum-dums.”
Oh Great Gazoogle, just like Noel Sheppard of Newsbusters, we are apparently confounded in the task of checking and citing this source without a link. How can we… Oh wait, what’s this?
Climate of 2007 – in Historical Perspective
Annual Report
National Climatic Data Center
15 January 2008The year 2007 the 10th warmest year for the contiguous U.S., since national records began in 1895, according to preliminary data from NOAA’s National Climatic Data Center in Asheville, N.C. The year was marked by exceptional drought in the U.S. Southeast and the West, which helped fuel another extremely active wildfire season. The year also brought outbreaks of cold air, and killer heat waves and floods. Meanwhile, the global surface temperature for 2007 was the fifth warmest since records began in 1880.
[…]
The greatest warming has taken place in high latitude regions of the Northern Hemisphere. Anomalous warmth in 2007 contributed to the lowest Arctic sea ice extent since satellite records began in 1979, surpassing the previous record low set in 2005 by a remarkable 23 percent. According to the National Snow and Ice Data Center, this is part of a continuing trend in end-of-summer Arctic sea ice extent reductions of approximately 10 percent per decade since 1979.
Analysis:
Note: With Sheppard, as with John Hinderaker, ‘mistakes’ and points of ignorance nearly always work in his argument’s favor. Thus, ‘stupid’ and ‘shrewd’ may enjoy a complex and non-exclusive relationship. Gunter, we don’t know about — but a conservative has to be pretty slovenly indeed, in this Internet age of ours, to write a column pretending that a publicly-viewable document says the opposite of what it actually says, while not even bothering to confound the issue, attack the messenger, or twist common English terms of fact into tortured balloon-animals.
It’s almost charming in its naiveté. We sort of like the guy.
Add’l note: His sea ice quote comes from here, btw. Here’s what the guy actually said:
The cold is also making the ice thicker in some areas, compared to recorded thicknesses last year, Lagnis added.
“The ice is about 10 to 20 centimetres thicker than last year, so that’s a significant increase,” he said.
If temperatures remain cold this winter, Lagnis said winter sea ice coverage will continue to expand.
But he added that it’s too soon to say what impact this winter will have on the Arctic summer sea ice, which reached its lowest coverage ever recorded in the summer of 2007.
Maybe Gunter belongs in the Stupid quadrant after all; the distinction between ‘summer’ and ‘winter’ seems genuinely to be confounding him.
Update: Yes, no, I’m sorry; we were wrong. He’s actually Stupid and Feckless.
This is the National Climatic Data Center document he used as his source. Yes, that’s the entire thing.
Our analysis is ruined, alas, due to experimenter error. We’ll try again soon with better methodology, including appropriate positive and negative controls.
[Great thanx to J— and Sagra]
