Sunday night and it was time for the green doomster to send the children to bed with tears in their eyes with his improbable and unprovable tales of climate Armageddon. This week, Sir David Attenborough suggested that climate change was making “hugely destructive” snow avalanches “more and more unpredictable”. There is of course no way to prove such vague speculation, and curiously missing was any mention that recent snow avalanches have been falling in number across both the North American Rockies and the European Alps.
Filming Frozen Planet II in the Canadian Rockies, Attenborough prefaced his climate change claims with spectacular footage captured by a racing drone of an avalanche tumbling down a mountain at over 100mph. Cue up-tempo, stirring music as Sir David explained that in just two minutes, up to one million tonnes of snow hurtle down the mountainside. Of course, slides of any nature, snow or rock, can be unpredictable and have the potential to be hugely destructive. The climate has a part to play in such natural events, but to blame it all on humans burning fossil fuel is unprovable and beyond any credible scientific investigation. It is just Sir David’s scripted opinion, and it is aired to promote a command-and-control Net Zero agenda. As Sir David executive producer Mark Brownlow recently admitted: “Environmental storytelling is much more engrained in this series.”
Back in the scientific world, five geologists working out of the Snow and Avalanche Lab at Montana State University, reported last year that they had found a decline of 14% in large magnitude avalanche probability from 1950-2017 in the U.S. northern Rocky mountains. This was noted to equate to a 2% reduction each decade. Unsurprisingly, the scientists said that large magnitude avalanche years were characterised by stormy winters and large snowfalls. If climate change is reducing snow at higher levels, it is reasonable to assume that avalanche activity becomes a little more predictable, not less.
Over in the European Alps and Tatras Mountains, the Climate Change Post reports from various studies that over past decades “there has been a decrease in avalanche mass and run-out distance”. There is said to have been a decrease of avalanche numbers below 2,000 metres, although an increase above. Using IPCC climate models that show less snow, an overall 20-30% decrease of natural avalanche activity in the French Alps is forecast for the middle and end of the 21st century, compared to a 1960-1990 reference period.
Interestingly, as with many natural disasters, the death toll from avalanches over recent decades has more or less stabilised. A group of Alpine geographers found that over the last four decades about 100 people lost their lives in the Alps every year. However the number of people who have lost their lives in what are described as ‘controlled settlements’ has decreased significantly since the 1970s. The number of fatalities in ‘uncontrolled settlements’, mostly recreational accidents, almost doubled between 1960-1980, but has remained relatively stable since then, despite a strong increase in winter skiers.
Attenborough, and other political climate change promoters, cannot have it both ways. If massive human-caused global warming is on its way, this will lead to less snow. Scientific investigation has confirmed that avalanche activity is lower during periods of low snowfall, and it is reasonable to state they become more predictable, not less. But is there less snow around? Maybe a bit less in the recent past, with a small bout of natural warming that seems to have run out of steam since the turn of the century. The European Geosciences Union published an extensive paper last year looking at long-term Alpine snow trends and found “some recovery” after the poor snow years during the 1980s and early 1990s.
The Rutgers graph puts snow cover in the northern hemisphere on a wider timeframe. It is difficult to see much change over the last 50 years. Snow avalanches will continue to be unpredictable, and their overwhelming force will always have the ability to terrify humans – particularly if you use them to sell a controlling political agenda.
Chris Morrison is the Daily Sceptic’s Environment Editor.
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And down here in Australia, Mt Hotham in Victoria has just reached -7 degrees overnight, a record low for the state in the month of November.
In Central West NSW we had snow last week, and tomorrow’s maximum is 11 degrees.
Remember we’re nearing summer.
For the media luvvies, record cold is also due to burning fossil fuels, and can be prevented by signing up to whatever Klaus Schwab and the UN tells us to.
It can’t be true..! Antarctic’s population of Polar Bears has been decimated, just like penguins in the Arctic. Its proof of Man made Climate Change. Irrefutable proof…
<sarc>
For a moment I thought you were being serious, because, as we know, warmer than average temperatures are proof of global warming, and colder than average temperatures are proof of climate change.
Now you know that’s not true. They heard Al Gore saying that the Arctic would be ice free in the summer by 2012, so they all swam north in the Great Polar Bear Migration filmed by the BBC and David Attenborough. They just wanted a suntan and some vitamin D to ward off ursine covid.
Wonder when they will wise up and all migrate to Hawaii?
You may remember a few years ago when the Climate-tards boarded a ship and sailed into the melting Antarctic ice sheets…and got stuck. A 2nd ship to rescue them the same. It took a 3rd and helipcopters to rescued the idiots who lost no time in saying that due to warming their models predicted more ice….when in fact they were looking for the opposite.
There is no ‘science’ to this scam. The Arctic was to be gone in 2014. Greenland ice cores reveal that the current sheets are the most in 400 years. Antarctica expands. Attenfraud and friends will drop charges into crevices at the poles or in glaciers, remote detonate them and then declare that they are melting or calving. Fraud is now ‘the science’. Or maybe it is the $2 Trillion money sloshing around.
Climate change – like Rona,a cult of absolute stupid and corruption.
Had to look up ‘Rona’, hadn’t heard the term before. Quite true though. In the seventies the ‘scientists’ were saying we would be 6 feet under ice and snow by now and starving in our millions.
We are witnessing the birth of a new religion and I very much fear that no amount of facts or reasoning will deter those who are determined to impose this new religion on us.
It follows a familiar path building on the ideas left by the religions that have preceded it.
At the heart of this new faith is the notion that the human being is a flawed creature. We destroy the planet, we carry diseases that we spread to each other, we are bigots by nature that oppress each other.
But salvation is at hand if we openly accept our impurity and our inherent flaws and are prepared to change our ways.
As with other religions, those in authority and power seize control of the religion and use it as a means of controlling the population, imposing on it a series of behaviours and rites dictated by them.
I can imagine now better than ever what it must have been like to be part of some primitive society living a free life and then have some group of people come along, tell you are a sinner, that every Sunday you have to go and listen to a man tell you how to save yourself, that instead of choosing a partner with which to create a family as you might have done earlier, you now had to follow a special ritual that allowed you to do that. Your offspring also had to follow a series of rituals to make sure they were properly imbued with the ideas of the religion.
It’s probably an uncomfortable comparison for those who have religious faith. But the parallels are undeniable.
…and then the man in the pulpit puts your money in his pocket…
Sounds very much the same.
And molests your children.
Actually, now you mention it…
We need to have the courage to voice our convictions in a non-confrontational way, not stay quiet. Little things like using cash I find helps boost morale.
And ofcourse in all religions you must give “offerings”. Except in our religion we decide for ourselves what we put in the collection plate. But with the globalist religion the government decides for us what ges in the plate, and we are not even allowed to not attend the church of global warming, because if we don’t attend our money still goes in the collection plate anyway. Climate Change then is a compulsory religion where even the heretics must contribute.
Maybe now. I don’t think adherence to religion was very optional in many places in the past, say, Spain in the 16th century, or in some places in the present like Saudi Arabia or Iran.
I don’t think what you said should be uncomfortable for those who have the right kind of religious faith, because there is good religious faith and there is bad religious faith.
The parallels (at least to Christianity) are even stronger than you’ve stated.
We used to live in paradise, the Garden of Eden or some pre-industrial society that was magically in tune with nature.
We desired knowledge, either by eating the fruit of the tree of knowledge or through the enlightenment and the industrial revolution.
This led to our fall from grace and the end of paradise on Earth.
A select few have be vouchsafed knowledge that can lead to our salvation, either the true followers of Christ or scientists with their “all knowing” computer models and the eco-zealots of extinction rebellion, JSO etc.
We are facing the end of days which will see the 4 horsemen of the apocalypse:-
famine, pestilence, war and death as described in the Book of Revelations.
Alternatively climate change will lead to mass crop failure (famine) the spread of diseases such as malaria (pestilence) societal breakdown and competition for scarce resources (war) and the population being reduced to 1 billion or less (death).
The only difference is that environmentalisms preaches that the end days can be avoided and salvation can be had in this world, whereas Christianity preaches that the end times are inevitable and salvation can only be found in the next world/afterlife.
I can actually remember the first Earth Day in 1970….we did a project at school!!
https://notalotofpeopleknowthat.wordpress.com/2020/04/23/happy-earth-day-none-of-the-eco-doomsday-predictions-have-come-true/
Happy Earth Day! None Of The Eco-Doomsday Predictions Have Come True
Plus ca change!!
This is surely “conspiracy theory” and cherry picking of data. Because I have seen for myself on the SKY NEWS Daily Climate show the little digital thermometer at the back of the presenter ticking up up up up up slowly ticking upwards as we face this apocalypse and viewers can see the “global temperature” on their TV set steadily climbing. We must act now and save our grandchildren. We must spend one and a half trillion on Net Zero. We must get rid of affordable energy and replace it with unaffordable energy. We must pay a trillion to poor countries to help them do eh do eh. , well I am not sure what exactly they are going to do with that money, but we must give them it anyway and only then will the planets thermometer on SKY NEWS start to slow down and we will have saved the planet.
What is perhaps disappointing is that so few of the Nett Zero-ers have realised that if we are nett zero, we reduce CO2 emissions by about a sixth of China’s annual rise, or Indias annual rise. As China and India are promising little and doing less, anything we ‘save’ is pointless as whatever was going to happen if we didn’t get to Nett Zero is still going to happen, with or without our ‘contribution’.
Indeed no-one seems to ask the question, if we are all to die in a fiery famine in 20 years time, why do half the world not seem to care. Do they know something we don’t..?
If something is “pointless” and will have no effect on global climate then why do it? ————-The answer is very simple. It is not and has never been about the climate. It is about the worlds wealth and resources. The climate is just the excuse for the eco socialism
Well, earlier this year, Queen Elizabeth sat on her own, mourning the death of her husband.
Meanwhile, back in Downing Street, Boris, Carrion and a host of Civil “Servants” were partying.
Someone knew that all the restrictions and shroud waving were bollox. Now, would that be our beloved Queen, or our Beloved Leaders?
Zero Covid, Zero Carbon.
Two cheeks of the same gargantuan, flabby, stinking arse.
Very good article – thank you.
They told us we were facing a climate apocalypse. They didn’t tell us it was going to be a cold one.
I’m wouldn’t be in the least surprised if climate alarmists sounded the alarm bells because they couldn’t find any polar bears in the antarctic…
Oh I see that point has been covered already…oh well. In that case, they might get upset to find absolutely no evidence of penguins in the arctic!
Grand solar minimum will occur from 2025 to 2053, this will create cooling of ~1C average for the planet. The first effects will begin to be felt after the solar maximum of solar cycle 25 which is expected in mid-2025. So far cycle 25 is fairly weak, the weakest since the early 20th century. Cycle 26 looks likely to be weaker still.
Wrap up warm!
12,000 years ago, North America was under hundreds of feet of ice and sea levels were 350 feet lower than they are today. Without any help from humans it warmed up a whole bunch which allowed humans to thrive. What actually causes the Earth to get warmer and colder? The distance from the sun as its orbit changes. Yes, it will get very cold again and there is nothing humans can do about it. It is pretty silly to believe humans can alter climate to any significant degree… Even if you believe the alarmists, they are talking about a sea rise of 4 to 12 feet at most and temperature increases of less than 10 degrees… that’s nothing. We will be happy to be starting from there when we go into the next ice age.