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Weather and Traveling | Musings from the Chiefio

Snow closed I-70 between Silverthorne and the Eisenhower tunnel, pictured here, on Thursday morning, May 30, 2013. (Colorado Department of Transportation)

Wind Speeds over China: AR5 Climate Models vs. Real-World Data

In the blunt but true words of the three researchers, "all models exhibit lower interannual variability than reanalysis data and observations, and none of the models reproduce the recent decline in wind speed that is manifest in the near-surface observations [italics added]." Progress, therefore, in this specific area of climate model development subsequent to the prior IPCC report could well be described as pitiful ... because there simply was no progress.

Meteorological Society prez: Can’t ‘cherry pick the data’ — then proceeds to cherry pick the data | JunkScience.com

But, of course, climate change began before even 1970. The ongoing warming seems to have started around 1650, as shown in the graph below from the first IPCC report:

Would you believe ski areas plead for effort to combat climate change

[Joseph D'Aleo] Never mind that this November to April period for the hemisphere ranked #1 all-time for snow extent beating out 1977/78.
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And for the winters (December to February), the ranking is 1977/78 #1, 2009/10 #2, 2010/11 #3, 2012/13 #4, 2007/08 #5. Spot a trend?
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As a former major ski area PR person wrote me this am:

Doesn’t surprise. There are certainly people in the industry who buy the nonsense; these include Austen Schendler at Aspen, and Aspen management (who apparently aren’t bothered by their well-heeled clientele’s tendency to park their private jets at the local airport and run their APUs nonstop for the weekend), and the editor and publishers of the industry’s leading trade magazine (they ARE nice people, I’d add, even if they refuse to get it). And there are those who have made heavy investment in wind or other alternative energy - Jiminy Peak in Massachusetts has gotten lots of nice ink for its windmill, and Killington boasted this winter that the K1 gondola is powered by cows (methane credits). However, the bulk of the industry is, I suspect, quietly skeptical of the AGW premise and is simply going along to get along. A fair percentage of ski industry’s clientele is sufficiently ignorant to buy into the theory, and the industry would prefer not to risk pissing them off. I rather suspect the industry would be delighted to see AGW get the knockout punch it so richly deserves - this stuff is a PITA - but believes it has other battles to fight that are more important than this one.