Scotland ‘snow-free’ for fourth time in six years

The "case" is settled, by the way. It's only special interest groups with a financial incentive in the status quo that try to muddy the water with disinfo and make it seem otherwise. Those, and people who don't want to believe it's happening because it's uncomfortable.

That added energy is changing the climate but it does not just mean that everything gets evenly warmer. The added energy means that some places get warmer than other. The differences mean that some areas get dryer and some get wetter.

Those increased differences in temperature and moisture result in storms and other weather events that have more energy and cause more problems. The large scale weather events like the Jet Stream or El Niño become more erratic . You get bigger storms, bigger floods. Sometimes you get bigger dumps of snow with the greater moisture. Some places get less moisture and are warmer for years at a time and fall into drought.

Those erratic weather and climate changes cause problems for humans, animals, and plants. More food sources underproduce or are destroyed. Hunger drives people to migrate. That causes disruptions in neighboring nations. Politics becomes more strident and antagonistic. Small wars eventually break out.

Yes, the messaging has changed a little over the years. That is partially as scientists have studied this more and learned more about both the primary and secondary effects of climate change. The media simplifying it so the public can understand has adjusted the terms they use as our understand realizes that this is not just a matter of simple warming but of a complicated system getting more unstable.

> First it was everything will get hotter, then it was the climate will change, now it’s weather events will get more spectacular.

The problem was thinking people cared about the first two. They’re both true but only “every few years a natural disaster will wipe a town off the map” seems to get people interested.

Probably not much if the premise is true. In which case bringing up such news basically invites those knee-jerk responses like “but it snowed massively at N event, thus climate change is expected variance and false”

> Attributing one thing to climate change is difficult.

Yes. A pattern of things, on the other hand ...

However when a snow free Scotland changes from being once every 50 years to every other year, that's a strong correlation with climate change.

> "Since the late 1970's there has been a significant reduction in the average number of days with snow lying, based on a sample of climatological stations at altitudes between 100m and 400m. The average rate of change has been 12 days per decade, which has been associated with changes in mean temperature during the winter months. The average number of days with snow lying across Scotland as a whole during the winter (November to April) is reduced by 9 days for every 1.0oC increase in mean temperature."

That's from a paper published in 2000, which is useful to look at because it makes projections for avg time periods (30-yr means) centered on 2020, 2050, and 2080.

These projections from 2000 are kind of interesting. We don't seem to be in the absolute worst-case projection (current snow loss in the Alps appears to be 77%, not 100%, for example [1]):

> "Whetton et al. (1996) have used GCM’s to simulate changes in snow cover in the Australian Alps using a mass balance approach (snowfall less ablation). They conclude that in a worst-case scenario, all snow will have disappeared from the Alps by the 2020’s. Barringer (1996) translates snow cover into altitude of snowlines which, under a best case scenario, retreat upwards at the rate of 10m per decade, rising to 52m per decade in a worst case scenario. Hantel et al. (2000) translate incremental temperature changes into numbers of snow days which, at lower altitudes, would mean a reduction of 31 days in winter and 42 days in spring for a temperature increase of 1oC."

[0] CLIMATE CHANGE AND CHANGING PATTERNS OF SNOWFALL IN SCOTLAND J Harrison, S Winterbottom - 2000

[1] https://news.yahoo.com/alps-getting-greener-thats-not-184713...

What (if anything) to do about this reality is a matter of debate, but there's no mistake that steady global warming is taking place, fairly in line with projections dating back several decades at least.

There has been a noticeable change in climate over that time period which would make me more likely to agree with the data being presented here is meaningful.

This title is pretty terrible when you consider the article.

The Sphinx, in the Cairngorms, which is historically the longest-lasting patch of snow in the UK, has melted. The Sphinx, on remote Braeriach, a 1,296m (4,252ft) Munro, has melted away more frequently in the last 18 years. According to records, it previously melted fully in 1933, 1959, 1996, 2003, 2006, 2017, 2018, 2021 and now 2022. Before 1933, it is thought to have last melted completely in the 1700s.

The Scottish Mountaineering Club began noting the fortunes of the patch in the 1840s and more recently scientists and ecologists have gathered information.

It's really about the longest lasting patch of snow in Scotland melting. I guess that is where they get "Scotland is snow free". And the mountaineering club has been making observations since 1840.

So this is really around 180 years of observations. All the melts since they started observations occurred in the last 89 years and the period between melts has been getting shorter and shorter.

If that's not data, what is it?

Being Human v3.2 - released this fall. Be sure to pick up a copy.

Stay a few years, you'll see it yourself.

I don't know, we could already be stuck in a positive feedback loop with no hope of reversing the trend until the pendulum swings back in another 10k years. That's the difficulty with climate science, there are so many variables and the system is so complex that analysis is extremely difficult.

EDIT: Just to be clear, I'm not saying we can't do ANY analysis or that we can't see the larger trends... just that the devil is in the details and we can't predict exactly what's going to happen or when.

There are large costs associated with changing what we're doing and in absence of being able to actually control the climate, those resources would be better spent on dealing with the outcome.

If you're standing downhill from an avalanche that you set off when you clapped your hands, making sure no one claps will not be your chief concern.

How exactly is the climate worse today? The planet is greener than ever. Warming isn't intrinsically bad, as people are more likely to die from cold rather than heat.

I mean, we probably can't prevent it getting worse because of the 10-20 year lead time on CO2/temperature, we're locked in to that.

But if we act immediately now, we can reduce the rate at which things continue to get worse in a couple of decades time.

And even if the situation is runaway, that would reduce how rapidly things run out of control.

Efforts to do that are probably going to have a much bigger effect than a lot of adaptations people are talking about, since some of the changes we're in for are so vast that there isn't going to be much avoiding them.

To adapt you can do it locally.

And, right, global warming needs to be evaluated by the average of a lot of credible, accurate measurements of temperature with thermometers or, now, with satellites. A satellite in a polar orbit might be able to get a good estimate of average global temperature.

But what the article has is some pictures of some snow in some place in Scotland.

And I should add, with temperatures over time, there will be a probability distribution with long tails of events that do occur but have low probability. Soooo, each year we can look around the world and see some events from one of the long tails, maybe in Scotland, Alaska, Brazil, Nevada, .... Those events are to be expected and are not good evidence of anything about global warming. Or maybe with a lot of global warming, some snow in Scotland would melt. But that some snow in Scotland melted is very weak or no good evidence of global warming.

I see a lot of that, e.g., a claim that the cruise ship season is now longer because of fewer ice bergs because of global warming.

And for each hurricane or tornado, I see claims that those events are evidence of climate change and, thus, a "climate crisis".

But here is what I do not see, have so far never seen, have looked and can't find -- reports of average global temperatures, over time with good details on how the measurements were made, who made them, where the details are that I can look up and check, from credible sources.

Here is some more that I do see:

(1) There was Al Gore's movie. He showed a graph of temperature and CO2 concentrations from 800,000 years of ice core data. He said that we should notice that the temperature and CO2 "went up and down together". Yup, they did. From that he concluded that CO2 caused the warming in the 800,000 year ice or data.

But, directly from the Gore's graph:

(A) When temperatures started to increase, CO2 concentrations were low, not high. So, something made the temperatures go up, but it wasn't high CO2 concentrations.

(B) CO2 concentrations did go up but about 800 years AFTER the temperatures went up. So, a good guess is that the CO2 went up because the higher temperatures, from whatever cause, at least initially NOT CO2, caused more biological activity.

(C) Some thousands of years later, temperatures fell and we got a lot of ice. When the temperatures started down, CO2 concentrations were high, not low. Something made the temperatures fall, but it wasn't low CO2.

One could argue from Gore's graph that CO2 caused cooling. His graph certainly does not support a claim that CO2 caused warming. Looks to me like Gore was not able to read his graph.

Yes, CO2 is a greenhouse gas. Its absorption spectrum is at

https://webbook.nist.gov/cgi/cbook.cgi?ID=C124389&Units=SI&T...

So, CO2 absorbs in three narrow bands out in the infrared. The standard explanation is that the bands are for bending, stretching, and twisting of the molecule.

But CO2 is transparent to visible light -- exhale or pop open a brewski and observe that the CO2 does not cast a shadow. So, the common claim repeated by the newsies that CO2 absorbs sunlight is not really correct. Instead, of course, the sunlight warms the surface which as in Planck's black body radiation theory radiates, and radiates mostly out in the infrared. There CO2 absorbs in the three narrow bands. Then, of course, maybe soon the molecule's energy level falls back and the infrared is radiated again. Or the more rapidly vibrating CO2 molecule bumps into some other molecule and creates some warming. Then ..., the effect on global temperature is not easy to calculate.

(2) We had the Medieval Warm period. There are no credible claims that the cause was CO2 from humans. So, global temperatures go up and down for reasons other than CO2 from humans or CO2 at all.

(3) For 100+ years, we had the Little Ice Age. At least much of Europe and the US were significantly colder. Something caused the lower temperatures, but it wasn't lower CO2.

(4) It is not clear when we came out of the Little Ice Age. Maybe that was 1890, 1900, 1910, 1920 -- tough to know. We can guess that the Little Ice Age cooled the oceans, and they are deep, often 3-7 miles deep, and, we can guess, can take a long time to warm up. In the early 1900s, there was some warming. CO2 does not look like the cause. Pulling out of the last of the Little Ice Age looks like a better explanation.

(5) We had some cooling from 1945 to 1970. Then we also had, although I'd like to see the actual numbers, often missing in this whole subject, more CO2 from WWII and the postwar economic boom. So, here we had some cooling, while we had more CO2. Again we could argue that CO2 can cause cooling. Again, just from the observational data, it is tough to argue that CO2 can cause warming.

Net: So far from the more credible observational data, (1)-(5) above, I see no credible evidence that CO2 from any source, humans or otherwise, has ever caused significant warming.

(6) There were some dozens of studies, maybe attempts at serious work, to calculate, model, whatever, to estimate the effect of CO2 on global temperatures. The studies are summarized in the now apparently well known, maybe famous, graph at

http://www.energyadvocate.com/gc1.jpg

Results: All of the studies that predicted significant warming were proved wrong: The times of the predicted warming came and went years ago with no credible evidence of the predicted warming.

A lot of the models were junk. I question the credibility, even the honesty, of the models of the effects of CO2.

Net, so far I see no credible evidence that CO2 from human sources has had, is having, or will have a significant effect on global temperatures. No, none, nichts, nil, nada, zip, zilch, zero. The alarmists have shouted "wolf" way too often and now have no credibility. Good science can predict and find the Higgs Boson as predicted, but the alarmists are just unable and/or unwilling competently to model the effects of CO2.

Instead of good science, credible evidence, a "climate crisis", I see a hoax and a scam, a global political movement after money and power. That is a MUCH more credible explanation than any science about CO2.

So, back to the snows of Scotland: This time it was Scotland. Next time it might be some part of the Grand Tetons, something in New Zealand, .... It's a big world. If look carefully, each year should be able to find somewhere a rare event out in the tail of the probability distribution. So, here, that upset some people, I merely asked for temperature measured with a thermometer! That is, I want to see global temperatures measured with thermometers or maybe some accurate satellites and not with just pictures from some valley in Scotland.

From page 76 of

Susan Milbrath, 'Star Gods of the Maya: Astronomy in Art, Folklore, and Calendars (The Linda Schele Series in Maya and Pre-Columbian Studies)', ISBN-13 978-0292752269, University of Texas Press, 2000.

there is

"Indeed, blood sacrifice is required for the sun to move, according to Aztec cosmology (Durian 1971:179; Sahaguin

Sooooo, they killed people, poured their blood on a rock, and wonder of wonders, the sun kept moving across the sky.

If we cut way back on CO2, we can expect, wonder of wonders, we won't get the predicted Hudson River water level rising to cover the NYC West Side Highway.

There are some people who really like to push the claim of a "climate crisis".

The UN and their IPCC supported efforts to transfer big bucks from the rich countries to the poor ones.

People selling solar panels and wind turbines got a lot of business.

People selling electric cars got a lot of subsidies.

A lot of newsies got a lot of shocking headlines, fears of disasters, standard in the news business, eyeballs, and ad revenue.

Some politicians got a lot of power and some constituents eager to make political donations.

And some Maya High Priests got power?

The predicted "hockey stick"!!!! Where's the hockey stick????? There's zero credibility.

Right, I conclude that the "climate crisis" is not about CO2 at all, or temperature, but about money and power. Me, nope, I don't like it.

http://ocp.ldeo.columbia.edu/res/div/ocp/gs/

I haven't checked, but I also don't doubt it. The point is that it's unlikely to have been this specific event. There has likely been many similar events in the past, for example when some of the rivers dried up, there were warnings from people hundreds of years ago carved into the stones.

> As for checking snow in Scotland its pretty easy, there's a limited number of places of "perpetual snow".

This may not have always been common knowledge, or if it was, something not of interest or worthy of daily check-ups.

> EDIT: Not that "checking on snow in the past was harder" helps your argument in any way. If it was harder to check for snow a couple of hundred years ago then that makes it more likely that all snow _hadn't_ melted which is teh opposite of what you need to argue to argue against global warming.

It was harder not only because of environment, but also because there was no interest in modern global warming back then, there was not the investment to pay people to investigate it.

Lastly, I'm not arguing against global warming. I'm arguing that we should be more careful about attributing every single abnormal environment change to it.

I agree, and I don't think we know enough.

> The point isn’t just that Scotland is snow-free with record-breaking heat this year, but that it has been increasingly snow-free and hotter in recent times.

I agree that snow coverage has seen a trend of reduction, my point is this specific event has happened before, and we should be careful about how we handle that.

> Has NZ been getting colder at the same time rest of the world is heating up, or did they just have one colder winter than normal?

It was one unusually cold winter at the same time as a heatwave in the UK.

Not just Scotland. I travelled in the Loire valley (France) recently and was struck by how dead many of the small villages and towns were.

Of course, if you get the answer wrong in the other direction, then you get local populations swamped by incomers, with affordable local housing replaced by multiple AirBNBs (e.g. parts of the SW of England).

The actual wilder parts, like the Cairngorms, were never populated because you can't survive there. The clearances happened in areas that are still populated today, and had some degree of arable/pastoral activity.

Fair enough point on population. But I still believe that resources and even interest in recording such things may not have existed then.

In the 1700's the landowner was either likely well educated and living elsewhere, or poor and not able to read and write. The people spending the majority of their time in remote areas probably didn't have the resources to keep accurate records.

My point is, we are treating this really old data as if it is a ground truth. We need to take greater care.

Famous in the 1700's? I believe the Scottish life was a lot more humble than it is now. I imagine these all-year snow locations would be more remote, harder to access and not a leisurely walk.

> The thing is: we can't "measure" the global climate.

Surely we can? It shouldn't be too difficult to have many weather stations around the world to make such measurements. Even satellite data could be quite accurate.

> And they speak a very clear message, which to no suprise follows the raise of CO2 in the atmosphere.

I'm not sure there is a clear message. I remember reading a while back of the effect of methane vs carbon dioxide on global warming, and methane by tonne was exceptionally worse. Maybe we should be concentrating efforts on ozone?

In Canada for example, we are constantly told by our state funded media that hurricane Fiona was climate change. When the weather is atypical it is climate change. Absolutely zero care is given to the people who understand that atypical weather happens nearly every year if not every year. This is causing distrust.

We also have our PM. A man elected by name and haircut. He has done some good, but he has also publicly praised China's system of governance as being admirable[1].

Between these three points, people have reasons to be a sceptic. Climate change is also not the only topic like this in Canada and this problem isn't only in Canada.

[1]https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/justin-trudeau-s-fool...

The UK does get wild fires. They are mostly controlled for the most part due to the great efforts of the forestry commission.

> WTF is wrong with people here are you guys so brainwashed by all the propaganda from oil and gas companies that you need to qualify every data point about global warming as maybe.

No, we need to be careful about pointing at specific data points and shouting "SEE!", because if it turns out not to be related, you hurt your argument.

> In the last year we have got a huge number of data points from around the world showing effects of global warming but each article on hackernews about it top comment is a qualifying statement.

There is no problem with caution, and no problem with honest good faith discussion.

> Stop being ostriches and burying your head in the sand.

Every generation believes in some disaster within their lifetime. This mostly affects young people, and then they grow older and see things don't actually really change so much.