School was canceled today.... college. This is one of the most pathetic excuses for a snow day ever. We got 1-2" from 4-6 pm yesterday. Then it just sort of rained ice all night. (It was frozen, but it wasn't snow). The roads are clear. WTF.

Now, tomorrow. When the Snowtastrophe hits. 2-4" this after noon. 7-11" over night. Aww Hell Yeah.

Ambitwistor: I was interested in statistics of how frequently these terms were used (reasons for their usage aside). I tried playing around with this in Google Books Ngram Viewer:

So, something else we can blame the Limeys for, then, huh? ;)

ALERT: Poe's Law in effect for this thread over the next 8 hours. Troll cautiously.

It's going to be 72 on Saturday in the Bay area. I blame Jerry Brown.

man I love GW threads... It's like poking a stick in fire ant mound and watching the resulting panic.

I especially like how Al'g GW map showed Cuba under water but Washington high and dry - I couldn't see the 4,000-foot levee in the picture, but maybe it was transparent.

Maybe you should start issuing fatwahs against anyone who diagrees with global warming - that approach seems to work for Islamic Radicals

ThisNameSux: The mass hysteria over this snowstorm has gone to 11 around the Metro Detroit area. I'm arguing with my boss right now because he wants to cancel both shifts of production tomorrow and make up for it on Saturday. Given the choice, the guys would much rather deal with the snow than give up a Saturday. Farking ridiculous how people are panicking around here. The people stocking up on groceries like there's a giant meteor heading for earth need to be slapped.

Yeah, your boss just called. He's gonna need you to go ahead and come in on Sunday too...

Do the needful: So for the billions of years before we showed up with our Hummers and Suburbans and Expeditions, how much of these "greenhouse gasses" were spewed out by volcanoes?

Why is that relevant to anything?

Volcanoes have increased the Earth's greenhouse gas content in the past. It also got warmer. What's your point?

Again, to be so arrogant as to believe that you can even come close to changing the climate is sad.

It has nothing to do with arrogance. It's just physics. Physics doesn't care whether you think humans are arrogant or not. Physics says that greenhouse gases are strong infrared absorbers and retain some of the heat that would otherwise escape to space. You can both measure and calculate the absorption effect. I'm sorry you can't seem to accept that greenhouse gases exist, but they do.

Explain this. I joked above about everyone turning on their suv's and running them wide open to clear up this cold spell. You and I know that we could run every engine on the planet all day long at top speed putting out the maximum amount of heat. And we couldn't change the temperature of the climate one iota.

From the warm engines, or from their greenhouse gas emissions?

All of humanity's industrial waste heat warms the climate by about a hundredth of a degree. Greenhouse gases are far more effective warming agents than that.

Yet the sun pops up every morning, and hits us with so much energy that on a normal day around here, the temperature rises anywhere from 20 to 30 degrees or more.

Again ... so what? Greenhouse gases can certainly add a few degrees on top of that. In fact, before humans added CO2, natural greenhouse gases already warmed the climate about 30 degrees (Celsius) over what the climate would otherwise be.

Go ahead and explain how we can even come close to affecting the forces we can't even fathom being exerted on this planet by mother nature.

What's so hard to fathom?

You have nothing but proof by incredulity. "I don't believe humans can affect nature, therefore humans can't affect nature." (You'd think you'd realize how ridiculous this logic is in the face of global pollution, species extinction, etc., but apparently your nonsensical arguments are selectively applied.)

If you want to know whether greenhouse gases are capable of altering the climate, you need to sit down and either measure or calculate how strong the effect is. When you do, you'll have your answer. Others already have.

What gets me is that 24 hours after the storm, the only three states that will be completely back to normal are Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Michigan. Everyone else will be all "OMG, State of Emergency, Help us Obama!!"

We were supposed to get 2-4 inches of snow with an inch of ice on top. Instead, it's drizzling. Just regular old drizzle. Take your exaggerated forecast elsewhere, meteorolo-jerk.

DERP!!! Earth is so biggy and powerfulmighty humans could never ever in hundreds of years fark up the ecosystem or affect something as mightybigstrong as the weather! ONLY JEEBUS CAN DO THAT AND THE RA THE SUNGOD! OH AND THOR AND HIS DADDY ODIN! OH AND VISHNU...
/never count out Vishnu!
/grow up

Land Ark: Without getting into the whole which is right and which is wrong,
the odd part of this whole debate is the strikingly similar path believers in Climate Change are taking and believers in Religion took.

One of the hallmarks of scientific illiteracy is conflating mainstream science with religion. You can see this all the time in evolution discussions, where people who accept the overwhelming evidence of evolution through natural selection are accused of having religious faith in their "theory", having "dogma", etc.

Protip: If you don't want to look stupid, don't do this.

If you don't believe

Any individual's "belief" in mainstream climate dynamics is irrelevant as to the attribution and potential amelioration of anthropogenic climate change. (Obviously, collectively, a refusal to accept the reality can obviously complicate steps to address the problem.)

you will die a horrible horrible death and the earth will be a barren wasteland.

Most if not all people reading this thread will die due to things entirely unrelated to climate change. The earth will be a barren wasteland due to, if nothing sooner, the expansion of the sun.

Neither of these two facts have any bearing on the attribution and potential amelioration of anthropogenic climate change.

Everyone believes, I can't believe you don't. It is so obvious, look at what has been written by the wise men.

Conflating the "wise men" of a bronze age society and their superstitions with the accumulated evidence from observational, paleoclimatic, and state of the art modeling studies by the international scientific community over the 20th and 21st centuries makes you sound like a thunderous idiot.

If you don't believe, I cannot be associated with you. You are obviously an uneducated and uncivilized person.

Interestingly, understanding/acceptance of the mainstream scientific opinion tracks well with education levels among true independents and Democrats/liberals, but not for Republicans/conservatives. There are some interesting ideological and media consumption behavioral reasons for this.

Soon there will be a wave of believers crossing the globe killing the non-believers.

what is this i don't even

Our weather people are honest in MN.

Up in North Chicagoland right now, light snow coming down. Enjoying the brief respite, and taking bets on when our bosses will let us all go home.

Manager just got my phone number for emergency contact.

Thinking of my buddies in Champaign who are right down the center of that thing - it's about to hit them hard in an hour or so.

Which reminds me, I need to sharpen my snowboard.

Razorwolf: It's not global warming anymore. No one was buying that. It's global climate change. Now it's impossible to be wrong.

Unless it starts getting hot again...then either one applies. But yeh, this crazy climate changing is crazy.

Ambitwistor: If you want to know whether greenhouse gases are capable of altering the climate, you need to sit down and either measure or calculate how strong the effect is. When you do, you'll have your answer. Others already have.

The problem you have is there is no recorded history of levels of gasses and or temperatures except for the last few hundred years give or take a few. But yet you try and scale that out to the billions this planet has been around. Sure you can get some gas levels or deduce temperatures by digging up core samples, but that's again a minor fraction of the whole area of the planet, yet someone will pull up a chunk of ice from a 6" diameter core pulled from Antarctica and proudly proclaim that the entire planet had the same air quality as whatever is frozen in the particular block of ice. You claim I have only proof by incredulity, and I say your "scientific" proof is incredulous.

Vodka Zombie: I love it. Here we are in the 21st Century, and people still can't grasp simple freakin' physics.

No, they grasp it. The deniers are just lying. They'll be dead when the shiat his the fan. So, why should they change?'

Meanness and mendacity are better explanations than stupidity.

ThisNameSux: The mass hysteria over this snowstorm has gone to 11 around the Metro Detroit area. I'm arguing with my boss right now because he wants to cancel both shifts of production tomorrow and make up for it on Saturday. Given the choice, the guys would much rather deal with the snow than give up a Saturday. Farking ridiculous how people are panicking around here. The people stocking up on groceries like there's a giant meteor heading for earth need to be slapped.

Tell me about it. I think the WDIV weather folks are exploding with delight over this, along with their on-air graphics department.

Me, I'm gonna stock up on some whiskey; tomorrow I'll chuck snowballs at the geese that're still around.

There are no circumstances that don't support the theory of global warming. Get with the program.

You know what...It usually is the religious retards that try to deny science, or learning about our adverse effects to everything around us. I honestly hope you guys prove me wrong and I can be up at the pearly gates when St. Peter asks you guys..."Why when people warned you to take care of the planet God gave you didn't you?"
What will your answer be then?! "I thought Jeebus was gonna save us. I didn't know God gave us free will to take care of ourselves and the planet and all humanity. That's not what the bible says... Oh wait...IT DOES.
hypocrites make me sick. Has nothing to do with believing in an all powerful sky wizard. It's that you act like idiots.

lordaction: Don't you idiots get it? Warming causes freezing temperatures! When they said 10 years ago there would be no more snow and were wrong - it just proves that the global warming is worse then we thought. We can't talk about it anymore. Gore said the debate is over. Science is all about making a decision and not discussing it anymore. We used computer simulations to prove global warming. Computer simulations are never wrong..EVER. You people hate science.

+ 1! Well said.

haresy: Tell me about it. I think the WDIV weather folks are exploding with delight over this, along with their on-air graphics department.

They were in a Meijer parking lot last night interviewing people stocking up on food. Somebody I work with said they were at the grocery store last night and the meat section was empty.

LouDobbsAwaaaay: stlbluez: ... having no sense of humor.

I've seen this one bandied about quite a bit lately. New marching orders from Rush or Glen? Thinking "snow means no global warmings LOL!!!11!!1" is stupid doesn't mean you lack a sense of humor. It means you don't think something that is offensively stupid is funny.

I don't think bone-through-the-nose Obama was funny either. Doesn't mean I lack a sense of humor.

I think it means you take internet forums and debates too seriously. You must be a hit at parties.

Still stuck in Illinois for another couple days - people here are freaking out, using words like Snowmageddon, Snowpocalypse, etc. Local grocery stores are sold out of bottled water, eggs and milk.

I'm from Utah - we would call this current storm "good for ski resorts" and hunker down, giving the snow crews an extra 30-45 minutes to clear the freeways before we try to get out there.

Illinois has jack for snow crews, and half the time I don't see them hit the streets until after the snow has stopped, and the normal traffic has done most of the work for them.

Cant wait to get to Texas next week...

I thought the other 1/4 was covered by Fred Smoot.

Do the needful: The problem you have is there is no recorded history of levels of gasses and or temperatures except for the last few hundred years give or take a few.

That's wrong (and you admit this below). We have direct samples of greenhouse gases going back a million years trapped in ancient ice. We can infer the temperatures from past climates as well, from oxygen isotopes and other proxies. In fact, we can go much further back in time than that, albeit with somewhat less accuracy. How do you think we know that the dinosaurs lived in a much warmer climate?

But suppose you were right, and we didn't have any information about conditions more than a hundred years in the past. How does that make the greenhouse effect go away? Again, it's just physics. It's a direct prediction of quantum mechanics, its strength is calculable, and it's been measured.

But yet you try and scale that out to the billions this planet has been around.

I didn't mention scaling anything out.

Sure you can get some gas levels or deduce temperatures by digging up core samples, but that's again a minor fraction of the whole area of the planet, yet someone will pull up a chunk of ice from a 6" diameter core pulled from Antarctica and proudly proclaim that the entire planet had the same air quality as whatever is frozen in the particular block of ice.

Gases such as carbon dioxide are well mixed in the atmosphere, and so you will record the pattern of changes pretty much anywhere. In fact, you do, if you compare Greenland and Antarctic ice cores, deep sea cores and terrestrial samples, etc. Temperature changes do vary by location (e.g., polar amplification), but that's not a flaw, that's a feature: it tells us how climate changed in different locations.

And, again, what is the relevance to the overall question? Whether we have data from one location or many locations is irrelevant to the basic physics of the greenhouse effect, which unquestionably exists.

I mean, really, what are you claiming here? That quantum mechanics is wrong? That the spectral absorption features of greenhouse gases have been measured? Which part of the science are you preferring to ignore, exactly?

You claim I have only proof by incredulity, and I say your "scientific" proof is incredulous.

Yeah, well, you don't appear to know much about the scientific evidence, and don't appear to care to.

Only 66 here today. Thank goodness back in the 70's tomorrow.

Jon Snow: When will you people stop repeating this bullshiat talking point?

Venn diagrams are beyond the comprehension of your target audience.

/just sayin

RobFMJ: I'm sitting here in Louisiana in 70 degree weather, so I'm getting a kick out of this thread

/actually kinda bummed that I don't get a snow day

Your bummed. I live in Canada and I haven't been tubing all winter.

Water vapor, the most significant greenhouse gas, comes from natural sources and is responsible for roughly 95% of the greenhouse effect, fact...

Also they claimed in the 70's we were headed for an Ice Age that was supposed to happen by now, so no I don't believe in scary talk about global whatever...

The planet is going into extinction mode, bee's, fish and birds...

WE ALL GONNA DIE!
/Enjoy The Ride as Bill Hicks would say...
//Denis Leary go ahead and steal that too...

ThisNameSux: haresy: Tell me about it. I think the WDIV weather folks are exploding with delight over this, along with their on-air graphics department.

They were in a Meijer parking lot last night interviewing people stocking up on food. Somebody I work with said they were at the grocery store last night and the meat section was empty.

Ye gods. Maybe they'll Darwin themselves by doing a live outdoor report tonight just to get that extra ratings boost.

bareknucklejones: DERP!!! Earth is so biggy and powerfulmighty humans could never ever in hundreds of years fark up the ecosystem or affect something as mightybigstrong as the weather! ONLY JEEBUS CAN DO THAT AND THE RA THE SUNGOD! OH AND THOR AND HIS DADDY ODIN! OH AND VISHNU...
/never count out Vishnu!
/grow up

So I ctrl-F'ed, and you are the first person to even mention JEEBUS, or FSM, or whatever you want to call it. There's your DERP.

Ambitwistor: Yeah, well, you don't appear to know much about the scientific evidence, and don't appear to care to.

Will caring one way or the other make any difference?
I don't think so and Jimmy crack corn, I don't care.

FlashHarry: zomega: Up in North Chicagoland right now, light snow coming down.

are o'hare and midway closed?

Almost, not quite, as of last report.


The airlines serving O'Hare International Airport have preemptively canceled more than 1,100 flights, the Chicago Department of Aviation said today. Forty-five minute delays were reported.

At Midway Airport, airlines preemptively canceled more than 100 flights so far today.

Airlines at both O'Hare and Midway were expecting to cancel additional flights throughout the day.

Ambitwistor: I mean, really, what are you claiming here? That quantum mechanics is wrong? That the spectral absorption features of greenhouse gases have been measured? Which part of the science are you preferring to ignore, exactly?

[snip]

Yeah, well, you don't appear to know much about the scientific evidence, and don't appear to care to.

There's a comic back up at the top about using a stick to disprove GW. It then jokes about using the same stick to prove the earth is flat. Now at one time, that was accepted belief. Science changes. But yet the science you are using to "prove" this is irrefutable. And because you say it, I am supposed to believe it. See the point here. What you call science, I don't. We are never going to agree on this, so it's futile to keep this up, unless you just want to. We both knew that going in. Someone please post the 'arguing on the internet' pic. Unfortunately my work is calling, and I can't keep screwing around on here.

Do the needful: disprove GW. It then jokes about using the same stick to prove the earth is flat. Now at one time, that was accepted belief. Science changes. But yet the science you are using to "prove" this is irrefutable. And because you say it, I am supposed to believe it. See the point here. What you call



Done

Low federal funding + short tenure tracks + desperate graduate students + PI's struggling to keep their laboratories = Global Warming


Don't believe me? Go to google or PubMed and type in "scientific misconduct"

and don't don't give me that peer review bullshiat.......peer reviews are not going to catch falsified data.

Why the hell is half the quote cut off?

dlewis6: The funny thing is that the only people smart enough to believe in global warming are the only people dumb enough to get trolled by this headline.

It hard to tell. It maybe trolling but some people in fark are really retarded enough to believe the crap they sprouted. Though what do I know. I don't even have a GED in law and I certainly can suffer from wife like typing and falling for BEVETs nonsense every time.

When the whole Al Gore Inconvient Truth came out, I was told that we are in a warming trend due to man made events. Ice Caps were melting. Polar bears are dying and we would experince a gradual warming trend.

Winters have only gotten colder and everything I was told was going to happen over the next several years didn't.

Except there seems to be a bunch of farking whinning a holes telling me I don't understand.

FlashHarry: neongoats: Hint: snow and ice in the middle of farking winter isn't proof, evidence, or anything against global warming.

People that say otherwise are farking stupid, and shouldn't reproduce. Just sayin.

THIS

Because my great great great great grandchildren will never be able to adapt to a world where the global average temperature has increased over CENTURIES by an astounding 6 farking degrees Celsius. That is six, not a puny 2-3 but SIX mother farkin' huge degrees! We're talking Celsius here not that wimpy Farenheit! Celsius degrees are much bigger and metricky and scary!

Meh, the planet will be just as inhabitable.

dlewis6: The funny thing is that the only people smart enough to believe in global warming are the only people dumb enough to get trolled by this headline.


+1!

Do the needful: Again, to be so arrogant as to believe that you can even come close to changing the climate is sad.


Do you think that if we set off every nuke on the planet the climate would come close to changing?

FlightFollower: LostInTO: 12349876: The old adage, "it's too cold to snow", has some truth to it, and there is research supporting the idea that the average climate in the U.S. is colder than optimal to support the heaviest snowstorms. For example, Changnon et al. (2006) found that for the contiguous U.S. between 1900 - 2001, 61% - 80% of all heavy snowstorms of 6+ inches occurred during winters with above normal temperatures. The authors also found that 61% - 85% of all heavy snowstorms of 6+ inches occurred during winters that were wetter than average. The authors conclude, "a future with wetter and warmer winters, which is one outcome expected (National Assessment Synthesis Team 2001), will bring more heavy snowstorms of 6+ inches than in 1901 - 2000." The authors found that over the U.S. as a whole, there had been a slight but significant increase in heavy snowstorms of 6+ inches than in 1901 - 2000. If the climate continues to warm, we should expect an increase in heavy snow events for a few decades, until the climate grows so warm that we pass the point where winter temperatures are at the optimum for heavy snow events.

/from Jeff Masters at Weather Underground

Sounds about right. Here in Toronto Canada, we are only getting about 30 cm of snow(No idea how many inches that is). The US mid western states have been hammered with snow this year, and we have barely recieved any.

Come to Canada for less snow you Mid Western Eskimo's or build a better igloo.

Thats not real Canada

This.