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April 21, 2010

The Amazing Disappearance of Winter due to Global Warming

Andrew Thomas
In an urgent call to the media by the Union of Concerned Scientists (composed primarily of "citizen scientists", i.e., political activists dedicated to promoting the Obama agenda on energy and nuclear disarmament) it was breathlessly announced that spring has arrived ten days earlier this year due to global warming.  This was a stunning revelation to me, as I thought the seasons were caused by the Earth's tilt toward the Sun.  I was intrigued by the premise that this group of obviously qualified authorities might believe that global warming has caused the Earth's axis to shift to the point that spring comes ten days early.

But alas, that wasn't the case.  In an April 20 Reuters article on this proclamation, it was revealed that the winter season is apparently shrinking due to "spring creep".  Oddly, there was no mention of a corresponding "summer creep", which logically should occur if the world is getting warmer.  However, these are activist scientists, not logisticians.

As explained by one Concerned Scientist:

Ecological mismatches can be fatal when some species adapt to early warmth and others don't, according to Jake Weltzin of the U.S. Geological Survey.

Weltzin described a series of mysterious miscarriages by mares in the U.S. southeast that were caused by caterpillars that contained a chemical that made the pregnant horses miscarry.

Normally, the caterpillars would have been consumed by migrating birds, leaving none to fall from trees into the mares' grassy pastures. But the birds' migration was late, letting the caterpillars fall from trees and into the grass the mares were eating, Weltzin said.

After a little research, I found that Mr. Weltzin has made similar proclamations over the past decade or so.  In fact, last spring he was quoted in a Seattle Times article stating the following:

The birds used to arrive in Europe and nest in time for their chicks to take advantage of a seasonal caterpillar explosion. But the caterpillars now peak 16 days earlier. As a result, chicks are starving and some flycatcher populations have plummeted 90 percent.

"These mismatches in timing could be happening all over," said Jake Weltzin...

Mismatches, indeed.  Are birds migrating later or caterpillars peaking earlier due to global warming?  The narrative seems to creep like the spring.

More amazingly, the same 2009 article reported that spring "is about a week earlier than it was 50 years ago." Does that mean that winter is shrinking by three days each year?  If true, by my calculation winter should disappear entirely by 2037.

Wow, that closely matches up with the IPCC scientists' report that the Himalayan glaciers will disappear by then.  Oh, but that was revealed in the Climategate scandal to be "voodoo science", conjured up to inflame the public with fear in order to promote a global warming political agenda.  I'm sure the Concerned Scientists Union report is completely different.

Andrew Thomas blogs at darkangelpolitics.com

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