Minus 29 in the Hart this morning.

Minus 21 in Westwood. Where do they get this “bone-chilling minus 24” from? That’s not even 10 below on the Fahrenheit scale, the one we grew up with. We considered that, the ideal winter temperature.

Could use some global warming…right about now..

northman…LOL I agree!! Where is all of that global warming that all the fuss is about?? I am doing my part…warming up my truck for 30 minutes!! LOL

-24 Vanway

Still can’t complain, Brooks, Alberta hit -42 early this morning
http://www.theweathernetwork.com/news/articles/western-canada-well-into-the-deep-freeze/17527/

-42 …. now we are talking serious cold ….

I am not complaining either, why is it that when, what use to be, normal winter finally shows up they call it a “cold snap”? This is normal winter weather for a change people, a cold snap or “arctic express” is something that pushes the temperatures down into the mid -30s.

This is the first time in years that it feels like a “normal” winter… yet again, I say it is too bad this won’t last through January and February… the above freezing temperatures and rain will be here again within the next couple of weeks.

Define normal?

I think it’s called a cold snap because it is a noticeable deviation from what is currently considered “normal”. -24 in early December may have been common 20-30 years ago in PG, but it’s not really the norm now. I guess it all depends on how far back one wants to go to compare to “normal” weather. There are people that have been born and living in PG for quite some time that would not associate with the “normal” weather than People#1 is referring to.

For what it’s worth, I always found that -15 to the low -20’s was the worst. It seemed like it was cold enough to feel it all the time. -30 and colder was definitely cold, but after a few minutes everything just went numb so it didn’t really have that lasting feeling, at least to me it didn’t. It usually wasn’t snowy or windy at those temps either, so everything just felt “calm” if that makes any sense.

Weather can be very deceiving. I used to laugh at Eastern Canada when they would complain about winters, having been a proud PG boy who had to endure -39 walking to school. That was, until the first winter here where it was -20 with a steady 40-50 KM/H blowing and ice pellets smashing into your face that felt like getting hit with mini paint balls, LOL.

OMG, reading NMG’s comment makes me feel old :-( Thanks a lot… now I’m depressed….

Exactly seamut! What is normal in the grand scheme of things? Normal since we started keeping records? That is a grain of sand of time compared to the age of the planet! Normal was a whole lot warmer a few million years ago. But you don’t have to go back that far to see that we were warmer. We are coming out of a little ice age, maybe a little faster because of man made co2 maybe not.

http://joannenova.com.au/2010/02/the-big-picture-65-million-years-of-temperature-swings/

“OMG, reading NMG’s comment makes me feel old :-( Thanks a lot… now I’m depressed….”

=================================

Sorry. If it makes you feel any better, I can recall those really cold PG winters as well. Heck, I may have even used the “when I was a kid . . .” line a few times, LOL ;)

“That was, until the first winter here where it was -20 with a steady 40-50 KM/H blowing and ice pellets smashing into your face that felt like getting hit with mini paint balls”
hahahaha – thanks for that NMG, I feel better about the day. Guess I will head outside now, Ive been putting it off.

In the 80s we called it a cold snap too. Would last less than a week and then we would go sliding off Carney or make snowman a week later because every cold snap seemed to end with a dump of snow and a heat wave. Can’t make a snowman at -10 or -20.
In Calgary of the late 70s we would have Chinook winds that melted all the accumulation in a day or two and winter had to start again, everybody would be out in tshirts in the middle of December. Stampede Wrestling and Skinny Minnie Miller were the things to watch until the cold snap was over, where’s my remote…?

Seamut asks us to define normal. We seamut normal winters use to keep glaciers wold wide looking like the old photos in the attached link.

Above normal winter weather has made the glacier look like the newer photos in that attached link. Is that clear enough for you?

http://sploid.gizmodo.com/shocking-before-and-after-photos-show-the-effects-of-cl-1476315647/@barrett

Credit goes to ewitt.

damit… “well” and “world”

Glaciers have been receding since the last ice age. We have about 13000 years of un recorded ice advance and retreat to compare against our measly 100 years of accurate record keeping. No alarm bells going off here. Prince George was once under 1km of ice at one time.

I have reviewed and examined you comment for any possible errors northman, none were found.

Yup and when the earth was formed approximately 4.5 billion years ago, the atmosphere contain very little oxygen and had toxic gases making the earth inhospitable for human and other forms of life.

I see your point clearly now northman, earth’s climate has always been changing, yet that change has always been gradual and naturally occurring, except for the odd massive asteroid impact thought to cause the extinction of the dinosaurs.

What make this current spat of climate change so different is that it is occurring so rapidly and it is not a natural change, it is caused by human activity. This has never, in the 4.5 billion year history of the world, ever happened before. Never has any inhabitant on this planet ever caused climate to change, yet scientific fact states that this is what is happening. Kapeesh?

Gas for thought. Man’s C02 is only 3% of total atmospheric c02. So how much effect does mans c02 contribution have compared to natural? Don’t forget the logarithmic effect.

Lots of records broken in this “cold snap” and broken by wide margins. This seems to be a trend worldwide the last few years.

On a slightly different note, all backcountry users that aren’t familiar with how avalanches occur, from here on in we need to pay closer attention. The colder days & nights have left layers of surface hoar (depth hoar if the snowpack isn’t deep enough). These crystals do not bond well with the snow that accumulates on top of them creating weak layers within the snowpack. Enough snow & the right trigger…Be safe. Cheers.

http://www.blm.gov/pgdata/etc/medialib/blm/ak/aktest/features/avalanche_2013.Par.69335.Image.800.600.1.gif

They say we have had single cell organisms on earth for 3.5 Billion years now. Multi-cell organisms first appeared around 600 million years ago… and the climate made changes to accomodate. Humans around 200,000 years ago through many ice ages, mass extinctions, and global melt.

The amazing thing is that throughout this all Earth has nurtured the advancement of life every step of the way, always providing what was needed to increase the complexity of life leading up to humanity today. Even though the sun has changed its intensity widely as much as 60% just in the small fraction of time we have been able to measure it… yet mother Earth is able to regulate enough to maintain liquid water and an atmosphere required to sustain life as we know it for hundreds of millions of years now.

Some of what we do surely effects the atmosphere, but more and more humans are learning that the original assumptions are rarely so cut and dry as the CO2 theory in itself.

Clearly we have a lot to learn about how our planet self regulates, lucky for our species we have one thing that sets us apart from all the other hundreds of millions of other species we have shared this planet with. Our species for the first time we know of on this planet has the ability to not only collectively learn, but also the ability to communicate it in a way that increasing sees our collective knowledge saved to be built upon by successive generations… and this the result of a world building in complexity; and thus through humanity has the ultimate complexity to save itself or destroy itself from threats we may have yet to learn about, but when we do learn of these threats we have the capacity to take all that we as a species have learned about nature and take the short cut to solutions through applying our collective knowledge.

Maybe it is the destiny of humanity to face these issues like climate change, cold winters, and challenges to our survival and use them to make us stronger and more able to control our environment so we can spread our knowledge and complexity throughout the universe… maybe Charles Darwin is right and we are just an accumulation of chance and our time is soon to run out… or maybe our planet does have its own ways and means to self regulate that we are not fully aware of and in due time earth will do as earth will do?

I read earlier in the week that NASA is now studying warp drive technology that bends space time so as to achieve speeds faster than the speed of light through a warp bubble. They say if they can make the warp theory a reality we could travel to our nearest stars in the same time it took the Apollo missions to travel to the moon on the same amount of energy the Voyager missions used to reach the edge of our solar system. Soon man could be traveling the stars and all a result of our primitive ancestors passing on the collective human knowledge from starting a fire and the wheel, down through generations to warp drive and seeding the universe… that is if we don’t first go extinct ourselves from a Fukushima nuclear die off and global ice age.

Time Will Tell

People: “What make this current spat of climate change so different is that it is occurring so rapidly and it is not a natural change, it is caused by human activity. This has never, in the 4.5 billion year history of the world, ever happened before.”

I have to call BS on this. Unless you’ve been around for 4.5 Billion years…

@Eagleone states; “but when we do learn of these threats we have the capacity to take all that we as a species have learned about nature and take the short cut to solutions through applying our collective knowledge.”

Then why is it that we continuously vote in a government that believes there is no climate change and global warming? If we cannot even acknowledge that climate change / global warming is the biggest threat to the existence of life (including humans) on this planet, what chance do we have to change and adapt?

Science is about discovering facts and truths, and science is tell us that our use of fossil fuels is warming our planet’s climate. So what do we do? We allow the the very same industry (Oil & Gas), responsible for warming our planet, to take over our government so they can speed up and expand extraction of fossil fuels. How insane is that???

Sorry Eagleone, you think far too highly about the collective intellect of humans, we are nothing more than a pod of pilot whales beaching ourselves on Florida’s shoreline.

As for JB’s comment… well… I rest my case about the lack of human collective knowledge!

Oh and by the way Eagleone, it was a complete and utter pleasure reading your comment. Is was one of the most profound, intelligent, and poignant comments I have had the pleasure to read on this discussion board.

You have a beautiful mind!

That is funny, kick him in the gonads about his views and then compliment him on his beautiful mind

So you are describing two people exchanging ideas as them kicking each other in the gonads?

You have an ugly mind!

People: “As for JB’s comment… well… I rest my case about the lack of human collective knowledge!”

^^^ The textbook definition of a weak comeback.

Sweet oneliner People#1, beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

You are incorrect insofar as you do not listen to what the collaborators and climate scientists are telling you about natural climate, your hatred of the government and ‘big oil’ clouds your vision.
Even the David Suzuki Foundation wants society to return to a balance in ghg emissions. If zero emissions is a balance then we are totally helically wrapped around a nail, luckily for the people of this planet that is not the case.

The IPCC (your favorite society) charts and graphs show us this balance is about 17 billion tonnes of manmade ghgs give or take but could be more, they are not sure, but they are pretty sure. Anyhow, if this is the case; how can we have been affecting the climate until about 1975 while our global emissions were below this number? And yet we are told by the very same IPCC ‘scientists’ and collaborators that since the 1850’s man has been warming the planet up – this by the very same people that tell us we have to return to a global balance in order to halt climate change.

Oh, almost forgot, it was a complete and utter pleasure to read your comments on how the earth was formed and how asteroids killed the dinosaurs.

Bestest of buds?

Sigh… just show us which way to the beach and we will follow you.

“Lake Chad, once one of the African continent’s largest bodies of fresh water, has dramatically decreased in size due to climate change and human demand for water. Once a great lake close in surface area to North America’s Lake Erie, Lake Chad is now a ghost of its former self.”

http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/IOTD/view.php?id=1240

So no comment, we are in agreement then that 17 billion tonnes is the ‘magic’ number which the IPCC themselves stated and backed up by skeptical science guys here…

http://www.skepticalscience.com/human-co2-smaller-than-natural-emissions.htm

The real chart is here but you have to convert GtC to billions of tonnes and the first chart does that for you

http://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_data/ar4/wg1/en/figure-7-3.html

That means any ‘warming’ that occurred prior to 1980 was completely natural, also any co2 increase during that time was completely natural in origin, correct? And if so, the 64 million dollar question is what caused the increase in co2 accumulations and temperatures to that date? Perhaps we don’t quite give the sun its due.

Well People#1 you are probably right about the political equation… at this point in time. But even if so, if we look at the long term trend of humanity then there is hope for continuous learning that can curve us on the right path, humanity is very adaptable and communication like this is how solutions are advanced.

I think we could agree its hard to convince people to pay carbon taxes willingly and make any sacrifices on energy, when we see an expansion of exports to countries that don’t pay carbon taxes, and totally negate any savings that could be made… then it comes down to quality of life concerns for the vast majority living pay check to pay check… and thus we may well be looking for a beach.

It would be great if sometime in our lives one could drive down the road in a hydrogen-electric powered automobile, fueling up with water collecting warp minutes on our rewards card. Maybe all that is required is the idea, and then who knows?

The early human explores burnt Australia from one end to the other when they first arrived causing all the large mammals in Australia to go extinct and leaving their calling card in a layer of soot that covers much of the globe… forever altering the climate and landscape of the entire continent. One would assume the use of fire in eons past also contributed to global CO2 concentrations as well. They say if the peat moss in the arctic ever thaws out again, which it has in the past, then it would release more CO2 than humans have in all of our history. So its a complex equation for sure.