NewsBusters -- too stupid to understand temperature
February 12, 2010 5:02 pm ET by Simon Maloy
A while back, I expressed some entirely warranted exasperation that conservatives like the bias sleuths at NewsBusters continually use isolated weather events, like snowstorms in winter, as evidence that global warming is bunk. At the time, I surmised that the problem was that certain conservatives are "too abysmally thick to grasp even the basic idea of latitude."
Turns out I was being too generous.
NewsBuster Mark Finkelstein went after the New York Times this morning for reporting of the record snowfalls on the east coast:
But Dr. Masters also said that government and academic studies had consistently predicted an increasing frequency of just these kinds of record-setting storms, because warmer air carries more moisture.
Finkelstein was incredulous at the bit about warmer air carrying more moisture:
So more snow fell from Philly to DC because the temperatures were warmer than normal during the blizzards? That got me wondering: just what were the temperatures in DC on the snow days, and how do they compare to the norm? And guess what?
[...]
Bottom line: the temperature was colder than average on every one of the snow days. On average the snow days were about eight degrees colder than normal.
To spin these facts as proof that the blizzards are evidence of global warming because "warm air holds more moisture" is bunk.
This is so dumb it's actually frightening, so I'll try to explain it in a way that even a NewsBuster can understand.
Assume for the moment that there are basically two types of air -- warmer air, and colder air. Warmer air tends to have higher moisture content, as the New York Times reported. When a mass of warmer, wetter air meets a mass of colder, drier air, the warmer air is typically pushed up over the cold air, where it condenses, forming precipitation (that's a fancy science word for rain, snow, sleet, etc.). Once that precipitation gets heavy enough, it falls, and if the colder air beneath it -- the air that determines the temperature at the surface -- is below freezing, it falls as snow. It's basic meteorology, and it's all right here for your perusal.
The scientist cited in the Times did not say that more snow fell "because the temperatures were warmer than normal during the blizzards." He said that the warmer air that condensed to form the precipitation contained more moisture than normal -- hence, more snow. This was obvious to anyone who had paid attention in fourth-grade science.
But, of course, Finkelstein's inept turn as weatherman was enthusiastically endorsed by Rush Limbaugh and Finkelstein's colleague Noel Sheppard, whose serial climate change idiocy is becoming tiresome.
If conservatives want us to believe they know better than the climatologists, they should start by at least getting temperature down pat.
So its getting warmer, man, if this snow is from getting warmer, then bring on the cooling.
Washington DC temps in Feb are 5.5 degrees F below normal.
Well, that was yesterday, I am now in Orlando, and look, temps here are 20 degrees below
normal.
If you call this warming, then clearly, your theory is most certainly a hoax.
> Here's a copy of my response to your post of this chart on another page. It still applies.<
Still up to your old, tired, worn out, arguments.
I see your antarctic ice, and raise you arctic ice.
http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/
http://nsidc.org/sotc/sea_ice.html
Aw heck, I'll throw in the argument that you are pointing out ice "extent" and not thickness.
http://www.skepticalscience.com/antarctica-gaining-ice.htm
And, a little bit more info:
http://www.cnn.com/2009/WORLD/asiapcf/01/21/eco.warmingantarctic/index.html#cnnSTCText
So, I call your hand. Got anything that's not old, tire and worn out.
Give it up. We've seen your hand before.
Just how gullible do you libs think we are?
I'm not attacking. I'm a semi-frequent contributor. Meaning I read and contribute to the comments enough to know the general back and forth, and to know who some of the trolls are, but not enough to know more than one or two specific persons and how they usually behave.
I guess Dr. Masters is just another elitist over-educated Obamabot.
I wanna get all my scientific insights from Mark Finkelstein!
Permafrost regions are thawing in high northern latitudes, causing buildings to sink, roads to crumble, and a variety of other troubles for human infrastructure. The great ice sheets are retreating. The Greenland ice sheet melting began to accelerate in the 1990s. Now the margin of the entire ice mass is melting even in its northernmost reaches. The West Antarctic ice sheet has begun extensive melting, mostly since 2000, and the rate of melting has increased since then.
Sea level is rising, and the rate of rise has accelerated over the last century. A tide gauge on a concrete, open-ocean pier in Duck, N.C., indicates the sea level is now rising at a 1 1/2-foot-per-century rate. In the Pacific, atoll nations such as Tuvalu already are being abandoned because of the rising sea. Soon the Maldives must follow.
The summer sea-ice cover of the Arctic Ocean is shrinking and thinning, and may disappear altogether.
So, one can argue for hours regarding whether this year was warmer or colder than last. It really doesn’t matter. We should be reading the planet, not thermometers. The Earth is clearly warming and sea level is clearly rising.
~
gpp has an education?
How can anybody expect to come to an agreement on anything regarding climate change and passing bills on it (i.e. cap and trade) when these nutjobs are spewing their simplistic paranoia, which is basically "its snowing, so what happened to global warming?" It's such an idiotic argument that you can't progress with the facts because all the simple minded people eat it up.