Hey Al, did you read this cooling for 10 YEARS! Where the hell have you been? In a cave?
Winter arrived in Beijing yesterday (Dec. 21) with the highest temperature of the day down to minus 8.8 ?. Media reports say it was “the coldest day in December in the last 57 years.”
The Midwest and the East of the U.S. will barely have time to dig out from the snow and ice that blasted the regions on Friday before the next system moves through by Sunday.
The extreme arctic air, being pushed to the south and east by strong winds behind the storm will pave the way for the third storm in the train that is adding to the winter woes in the Northwest.
The Severe Weather Center lists the storm- and cold-related watches, warnings and advisories in effect through the weekend across the northern tier of the country.
One result of many from this cold wave — car accidents, a bus nearly went off a cliff in Seattle due to icy conditions; a jet airliner slid off an icy runway and crashed in a ravine.
Continental passengers on a flight from Denver, Colorado to Houston,Texas had to flee their burning airliner, sprawled in a smoke-filled ravine off a runway with the fuselage partially buckled and one engine and part of its landing gear ripped off.
There was no official word yet Sunday on the possible cause of the crash of Continental Flight 1404 at Denver International Airport.
The entire right side of the Boeing 737 was burned in the Saturday evening accident and melted plastic from overhead compartments dripped onto the seats.
Some 40 people suffered injuries including broken bones. The conditions of two people who had been in critical condition at the University of Colorado Hospital in Denver were upgraded Sunday, one to serious and one to fair, spokeswoman Tonya Ewers said.
Dr. Jay Lehr, an expert on environmental policy, told “Lou Dobbs Tonight” (Dec. 18) viewers you can detect subtle patterns over recorded history, but that dates back to the 13th Century.
“If we go back really, in recorded human history, in the 13th Century, we were probably 7 degrees Fahrenheit warmer than we are now and it was a very prosperous time for mankind,” Lehr said. “If go back to the Revolutionary War 300 years ago, it was very, very cold. We’ve been warming out of that cold spell from the Revolutionary War period and now we’re back into a cooling cycle.”
Lehr suggested the earth is presently entering a cooling cycle – a result of nature, not man.
“The last 10 years have been quite cool,” Lehr continued. “And right now, I think we’re going into cooling rather than warming and that should be a much greater concern for humankind. But, all we can do is adapt. It is the sun that does it, not man.”
Lehr is a senior fellow and science director of The Heartland Institute, an organization that will be holding the 2009 International Conference on Climate Change in New York March 8-10.
Another CNN meteorologist attacked the concept that man is somehow responsible for changes in climate last year. Rob Marciano charged Al Gore’s 2006 movie, “An Inconvenient Truth,” had some inaccuracies.
“There are definitely some inaccuracies,” Marciano said during the Oct. 4, 2007 broadcast of CNN’s “American Morning.” “The biggest thing I have a problem with is this implication that Katrina was caused by global warming.”
Marciano also said that, “global warming does not conclusively cause stronger hurricanes like we’ve seen,” pointing out that “by the end of this century we might get about a 5 percent increase.”
His comments drew a strong response and he recanted the next day saying “the globe is getting warmer and humans are the likely the main cause of it.”
