Environment Canada produces charts showing “snow cover” and “snow water equivalent”.
Snow water equivalent: current amount of water stored by the seasonal snowpack.
Snow water equivalent is looking very normal and bodes well for rivers and streams and dams that rely on snow melt later in the year.
Ok. Technically Sewage Sludge is a phrase.
The other day I was talking about cofiring. And I discovered that one of the fuels they cofire alongside coal is sewage sludge.
What is sludge?
Up to 95 percent is water. But it starts as wastewater, which is a mix of food, paper, diapers, plant mater, feces, condoms, sanitary napkins, paints, pesticides, bacteria, pathogens, pharmaceuticals, sand, metal particles, road salt, insects and gases.
I think I would prefer 100% coal.
One of the stupidest lines ever to come out of the AGW cult
NSIDC news release.
“Antarctic sea ice extent continues to make headlines because it has grown even as much of the globe, and Antarctica itself, is warming. Arctic sea ice, in contrast, is showing a marked decline. Warmer air and ocean waters are bathing both poles, so why does the Antarctic sea ice trend resist decline?“
First, Antarctic Sea Ice is NOT resisting decline. Antarctic Sea Ice set records in 2012, 2013 and 2014 for most ice ever. There is no decline! And it is not resisting. It is exuberantly going in the opposite direction!
Second, the oceans around Antarctica are not warming. and neither is the actual land according to UAH. Click twice for big versions.
They also said:
Despite what some might think, high ice extent in Antarctica does not balance out low ice extent in the Arctic.
It does if you know what the AMO is.When the AMO is negative arctic ice is high and antarctic low. When the AMO goes positive the opposite occurs.
It is no surprise that the crossover point in the graph below is right when the AMO turned positive (around 1996).
Good news on the climate front!
The doom and gloom surrounding global warming tends to offer a depressing picture of the future, but there may be a small glimmer of hope.
Scientists have discovered climate change may actually be making wine taste better.
They have found the conditions typically associated with high-quality wines have altered in recent years as temperatures have risen, resulting in consistently better vintages.
I usually laugh at these stories when they show the opposite. So I’m going to highlight 2 things.
CO2 is never mentioned in the story. Yet its easy to find research showing higher CO2 increases grape yields.
Their “temperature reconstruction” splices 100 years of thermometer data onto 300 years of tree ring data (which they claim tells you what the temperature and precipitation is).Thats pretty bogus “science”.
Lets say its March 7th 2016 9am in Germany and there is about 70GW of demand to keep the country functioning and you are a greenie looking forward to a day when there is no more nuclear or CO2 producing power plants..
Ooops. 0.03GW from solar. 1.09GW from wind. 10.7GW from nuclear. 51.5GW from CO2 producing power plants (gas, coal, biomass, oil)
There have been many online articles predicting Arctic Sea Ice doom in the last week.
My favorite quote is: “Scientists warn that the area covered by this winter’s Arctic sea ice could turn out to be the lowest ever measured.”
Total nonsense. In fact, as of day 83 Arctic Sea Ice extent is higher than it was in 2005, 2006, 2007, 2011 and 2015.
The record that may be set (maybe not since there is still a week or so to go before day 90 which is the latest maximum) is lowest maximum.
The record may be broken by 20,000 sq km. Out of 14,000,000 sq km. 0.14%
And MASIE (a different method) has 2016’s maximum 400,000 sq km HIGHER than 2006. (MASIE only goes back to 2006)
| Year | Min | Max | day of Max | day of Min |
| 2012 | 3368882.08 | 15821891.32 | 82 | 264 |
| 2008 | 4223400.12 | 15661926.25 | 72 | 265 |
| 2014 | 5066134.38 | 15523208.18 | 73 | 262 |
| 2013 | 4677324.53 | 15505010.03 | 73 | 260 |
| 2010 | 4716943.6 | 15,396,877.99 | 77 | 266 |
| 2009 | 4871392.35 | 15,326,130.68 | 62 | 254 |
| 2011 | 4302977.96 | 15,110,021.96 | 67 | 257 |
| 2016 | 13095244.88 | 15,077,599.37 | 61 | |
| 2015 | 4442258.23 | 14,910,198.98 | 62 | 260 |
| 2007 | 3986945.93 | 14,907,125.15 | 73 | 261 |
| 2006 | 5640540.95 | 14,663,037.37 | 69 | 267 |
NSIDC/NOAA data graph.
I’ve posted articles in the past linking the clean air legislation in the west with more sunshine and therefore more warming. Here is a paper arguing the opposite: the lack of clean air in China is cooling the globe.
China is responsible for just 10 per cent of man-made global warming, despite emitting more than one quarter of the world’s greenhouse gases, a new study claims.
The study found sulphate and nitrate aerosols emitted by burning fossil fuels had a cooling effect that offset much of the warming caused by greenhouse gas emissions of carbon dioxide, methane and black carbon.
As a result, while China’s consumption of fossil fuels and its carbon emissions had increased significantly over the past decades, a corresponding increase in aerosol emissions meant its contribution to man-made climate change had remained largely unchanged since the pre-industrial period.
The findings suggest that China’s severe smog could have a “silver lining” in cooling the globe, and the study said that a campaign to clear the air could actually increase the country’s contribution to man-made warming.
The study was led by Professor Li Bengang at Peking University and published in Nature.
sunshine hours 