There are still places where there are outside rinks in Canada, SirCharles, but not many in the more civilized areas. There has not been a backyard rink anywhere within quite a few miles of me this year and they have been getting fewerer year by year.

Hogsback's talk of electricity is hogwash and is common among the denialists here. There has been some increase for natural reasons. I assume that he is from Ontario from what he says. There, the government is following the German model of feed in tariffs that have seen a great reduction in electricity prices.

As it will here, eventually.

Originally Posted by Agnotologist

\There, the government is following the German model of feed in tariffs that have seen a great reduction in electricity prices.

As it will here, eventually.

You haven't a clue what you are talking about.
Domestic prices are way up - the government had to put a 10% 'rebate' in place on electricity bills to stay in power - paid from tax revenues (or more accurately on top of the $250 Billion debt the province is in).
The government itself predicts a 46% rise over the next 5 years - thought to be rather optimistic.
Seniors and low income families are suffering and you are cheerleading.
And you feel qualified to call me a denier?

Originally Posted by Hogsback

Don't worry about Canada.
The last thing we need is your help and religious ramblings.
My kids have been skating on outdoor rinks several times a week up until last week.

In a country where the October snow lasts until March and it regularly goes well below -20 my heating bills have been coming down sharply as the shale gas supply has kicked in.
Electricity cost has gone up thanks to the ridiculous feed in tariffs for wind and solar, but the upcoming budget looks set to sharply reduce them. Reality is starting to hit home. This fairweather political project is coming to an end, and I'm very confident we won't be shivering in the dark anytime soon - unlike anyone foolish enough to go along with your doomsday cult.

The paper says that the average ice hockey season is now starting 10 days later that in the 1950 - 1990 period, and that is statisticially significant. So "October" is a bit too rough a measurement. The effect is particularly observed in the Prairies and South West Canada.

If "reality" happens to be short term "lower electricity prices" with no horizon to the malignant effect of dumping more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, then I would say the Age of Stupid has dawned in Canada. You or your children will be paying sooner or later, maybe not in fuel bills, but in costs to health, cleanup and weather damage.

Nordhaus Sets the Record Straight - Climate Mitigation Saves Money

You won't be shivering in the dark ever, if you supported a rational move away from combustion of fossil fuels to renewable energy sources, which over time with cost less at the net level.

Originally Posted by Cassandra Syndrome

Don't forget its an illusionary 2D map of the world. The North and South latitudes are falsely large.





Map projection - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

We are aware that the earth is a sphere, and that the Mercator Projection inflates distances the farther you get from the equator, since it is a projection of the surface of a sphere onto a flat plane.



But a sphere has two hemispheres, in this case Northern & Southern. So if those warm areas in the Northern Hemisphere are smaller than they appear on the map, then so also are those cold areas around Antarctica.

Like I said in the post, it has been the 13th warmest winter ever, so when the gridded average of temperatures are taken all around the globe, it still adds up to a warming planet.

Originally Posted by Euromerican

BTW- hasn't it always changed? And for the better?

The last time the human race saw temperatures like this (the period known as the Eemian), Florida was under several feet of water.

"Climate's changed before" they keep telling us, as if it happens every few years.

The implication is that the human race had lived through many and varied major climate changes.

If fact, that is not true. The human race has seen only two Ice Ages, this being the second interglacial period. And it is only in this current interglacial period that the human race has expanded in numbers to dominate the planet with its agriculture and industry.

Yes, the human race has seen relatively small regional temperature changes like the "Little Ice Age" but these have been minor and irrelevant to the major shifts in climate during the earth's past.

During the last Eemian interglacial (120,000 years ago), the average global temperature may have been warmed up to 1C more than the 20th century. But, sea level was some 10ft higher, and only small populations of hunter-gathering homo sapiens lived at that time. The Eeman is the second peak from the right in the graphic below.

The upper part shows human advances in this interglacial, such as agriculture and stable civilizations.



We've been through climate changes before

Originally Posted by SirCharles

Well, Trollo. They should have asked Wattsupwiththat or the Heartland Institute first. I forgot about that...

It is amazing you aren't even embarrassed by the fact that you boldly promoted the lobbying activity of a company as some sort of evidence that you Warmy Alarmist Hypoethesis is founded on fact not fiction.

Originally Posted by owedtojoy

There is NO contradiction between satellite temperature measurements and ground-based observations.

You could at least be honest enough to say that.

Oh but there is.



Look at the difference in slope of the graph from Surface data above Vs UAH Satellite Data below since 1979!





I don't know what planet you reside in but you do not make sense to me.

You should also add that satellites do not measure temperature directly, but measure microwave emissions from oxygen molecules in the atmosphere. I though you should be aware of that, especially as you come along here regularly pouring scorn on fancy-shmancy ideas like microwave and IR emissions.

I find the above point rather meaningless. So silly, to the point of wondering whether you have any formal scientific backround at all. You're just like the Mary Robinson's the John Gibbons's or Frank McDonald's of this world.

The UAH Microwave Sounding Unit is referenced against a Pt100 (Platinum Resistance) Thermometer residing on the Satellite.

But what is "Temperature" at all?

It is but a change in electrical resistance on a piece of platinum! Or a change in Potential Difference between two metals of a Thermocouple or the change in density in a capillary containing alcohol or mercury.

Does it really matter how the microwave unit on the satellite identifies the temperature of the atmosphere? The key point is that it does, and it does so accurately.

Originally Posted by Hogsback

You haven't a clue what you are talking about.
Domestic prices are way up - the government had to put a 10% 'rebate' in place on electricity bills to stay in power - paid from tax revenues (or more accurately on top of the $250 Billion debt the province is in).
The government itself predicts a 46% rise over the next 5 years - thought to be rather optimistic.
Seniors and low income families are suffering and you are cheerleading.
And you feel qualified to call me a denier?

Originally Posted by Hogsback

You haven't a clue what you are talking about.
Domestic prices are way up - the government had to put a 10% 'rebate' in place on electricity bills to stay in power - paid from tax revenues (or more accurately on top of the $250 Billion debt the province is in).
The government itself predicts a 46% rise over the next 5 years - thought to be rather optimistic.
Seniors and low income families are suffering and you are cheerleading.
And you feel qualified to call me a denier?

You might, if you want to contribute to this forum, understand from the beginning that superficiality will not get you very far. Things are far more complex than you imagine. Electricity prices are one factor and you should follow how feed in works. The increase over the next five years is expected, partly, because of the transfer to a more sustainable source of renewable energy. You fail to add that the forecast is for a decline in prices after that as the transference matures.

Your concern over Ontario's debt would be more credible if you looked at the much broader context. Ontario's debt to GDP ratio was declining and slightly below the provincial average until the huge stimulus investments. Even there, looking at provincial debt in isolationis not very instructive. Many economists are more concerned about the position of the Western provinces that, because of their resource windfalls, are at the very low end in that ratio. In both B.C. and Alberta, personal (household) debt to income has reached alarming levels and that is in large part a consequence of the policies that have led to low provincial debt. That is sending money to foreign investors rather than investing in their own people and the economy.

They are living in a fools paradise.

Further, a considerable part of Ontario's deficit is incurred because of the unequal burden of national financing where Ontario sends several billion dollars more annually to Ottawa than it receives in federal services. A form of equalization transfer that is not considered in equalization transfers. Add to that the disastrous effects on Ontario's manufacturing of the petrodollar.

Life ain't so simple.

Originally Posted by Destiny's Soldier

Oh but there is.

Look at the difference in slope of the graph from Surface data above Vs UAH Satellite Data below since 1979!

I don't know what planet you reside in but you do not make sense to me.

I find the above point rather meaningless. So silly, to the point of wondering whether you have any formal scientific backround at all. You're just like the Mary Robinson's the John Gibbons's or Frank McDonald's of this world.

The UAH Microwave Sounding Unit is referenced against a Pt100 (Platinum Resistance) Thermometer residing on the Satellite.

But what is "Temperature" at all?

It is but a change in electrical resistance on a piece of platinum! Or a change in Potential Difference between two metals of a Thermocouple or the change in density in a capillary containing alcohol or mercury.

Does it really matter how the microwave unit on the satellite identifies the temperature of the atmosphere? The key point is that it does, and it does so accurately.

You should take away a key learning from this .... two charts that have different y-axes and x-axes may be the same and look completely different.

Spencer's chart has stretched the x-axis and compressed the y-axis to make the change look small. The GISS chart starts in 1880 and the UAH chart starts in 1980, so the GISS chart takes in a much larger change. These charts also have different average period for calculating departures (anomalies).

You should have gone to the Wood for Trees sites, where the two charts start at 1979, the y-axis is standardised, and the offsets are aligned. The chart shows two surface-based measurements, and two satellite-based.

http://woodfortrees.org/



You say the "platinum resistance thermometers" are accurate. Of course, but a satellite cannot use the thermometers you use in a lab. For one thing, it may be 1,000 miles or more away from the object whose temperature it is measuring. So please explain how it can work without picking up some form of electromagnetic radiation?

Ok, ok, here is the answer:

Measurement

Satellites do not measure temperature. They measure radiances in various wavelength bands, which must then be mathematically inverted to obtain indirect inferences of temperature.[1][2] The resulting temperature profiles depend on details of the methods that are used to obtain temperatures from radiances. As a result, different groups that have analyzed the satellite data have produced differing temperature datasets. Among these are the UAH dataset prepared at the University of Alabama in Huntsville and the RSS dataset prepared by Remote Sensing Systems. The satellite series is not fully homogeneous - it is constructed from a series of satellites with similar but not identical instrumentation. The sensors deteriorate over time, and corrections are necessary for orbital drift and decay. Particularly large differences between reconstructed temperature series occur at the few times when there is little temporal overlap between successive satellites, making intercalibration difficult

Satellite temperature measurements - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

As you can see, this is not an easy process and plenty of adjustments are required, more so than for surface-based measurements. For many years, Spencer's data was completely wrong!!

BTW, temperature has a fairly precise physical definition. The temperature of a piece of matter can be taken as proportional to the average kinetic energy of its constituent particles. The scales may be arbitrary, but all physical calculations must use a scale (usually the Kelvin) that starts at an absolute 0 point.

At least another week of this is predicted with possible highs of up to 22. Records for several days. This Global cooling is great. Time to sharpen the skates: not. My grandkids have not been able to skate outdoors even once this winter.

and it is like that for much of Southern Ontario and contiguous areas of the USA.