LED traffic lights are great and a prime example of green technology – they last longer, don’t need a lot of service, use less electricity, and can be somewhat easier to see. However, all of these benefits can come at a cost. High energy efficiency is a great thing, but it can sometimes turn against you – during snow storms, if the lights get covered by snow (during heavy winds, for example), the LEDs don’t heat up enough to melt it. (more…)

I admit, I wouldn’t know a snowman from a snowwoman unless s/he pulled up his/her skirt and showed me his carrot in a very strategic place.

Nevertheless, the snow people were out in Helsinki protesting the warming up of the climate.

I reckon if i were made of snow, i’d want the world to stay cooler, too, wouldn’t you?

But, for what it’s worth, it’s hard to get all riled up when it’s Frosty telling you to chill, no?

Here’s what you look like when all is well.

Here is what happens when you start to melt.

The end result … you need someone to dress you.

Yeah, indeed. The world needs us to take care of it.

Temperatures have dipped to Arctic levels in Minneapolis. A snowstorm followed. People died from exposure. Even Kansas (you’re not in Kansas anymore) and Missouri dropped to single digits (-15Cish). At one place, Hallock, wind chill was -58 below.

I have been in the bitter cold before, changed a tire at -25C and saw ice sculptures in Northern China at the same temperatures. Seems to me that at some point, cold is just cold.

Still, the weather service says that skin left out in -40F for 10 minutes will freeze. That can’t be fun.

Snow storms are rocking the MidWest as well.

Meanwhile, where I live in sunny Northern California, we had record highs in San Francisco and Oakland for the day BEFORE the sun came up.

My bet is that my midwestern far neighbors are wondering – “Where’s global warming when you need it?”

The very fact that 46,000 cruise ship passengers have been able to make their way to Antarctica – places which would have been inaccessible 20 years ago, are good examples of the effects of global warming at the South Pole.

While the world still argues about how real or unreal the threat of global warming is, the effects though are giving definitive proofs. With shrinking icebergs, cracked ice caps and collapsing sheets of ice, it’s a fact that Antarctica is becoming a warmer place. And while that might be a great thing for tourists come every summer, it could mean disaster for the planet in the long run.

Kayaker Jon Bowermaster led his team of 12 men across 500 miles around the northern Antarctic Peninsula for five weeks and found the dangerous effects of global warming loom large. The region has gotten 5 degrees hotter than it was in 1945 with average temperatures always on the rise each year.

However, the greatest threat in the region is that during summers it rains more frequently now. The rain melts the snow at a rapid pace and leaves creatures like the Penguins and Seals wet and shivering in the Antarctic cold. They believe that the excessive and unseasonal rain in Antarctica is causing both its topography and its creatures more harm than the rising temperatures.

If the trend continues, then very soon we could find the rate of melting ice caps increase to a point where every coastal city on the planet is under serious and immediate threat. Yet, much of the world still ironically debates global warming in its well furnished boardrooms. Doesn’t sound fun anymore, is it?

Image copyright to 1, 2, 3, 4

Global cooling in Kenya? Well, it’s definitely not getting warmer everywhere!

There was a hailstorm in Kenya, about 220km from Nairobi. The heavy hailstorm fell on a deforested hillside in Gikingi Village. Snow followed to children’s delight and snowmen were … well, nothing about the snowmen. Not enough of the white stuff. But perhaps for the first time ever, Kenyans discovered what a cold drink tastes like, no?

“I have not seen such a thing ever since I was born,” said one resident of Nyahururu.

“The hailstones falling on the ground joined together to form expansive sheets of ice or snow flakes occupying a large area, 30 acres,” Kenya’s Meteorological Department said.

There’s got to be a scientist, sophisticated or otherwise reading GP who can explain to me in terms I can understand (remember, I am slow) how snow or in that case ice, can fall in Kenya which sits just 1 degree south of the equator.

Even if I don’t get an explanation, Kenyans had a treat for a day. Now where’s Santa in the middle of summer when you need him?

Sources: 1, 2

An Ohio State University researcher claimed that Mt Kilimanjaro will lose its snow cap between 2015-2020. He made is guesstimate based on photos taken in 1912 and 2001. At that time, Mt. Kilimanjaro had lost 82% of its snow cap/ice cover.

“The sky is falling in Africa, the sky is falling in Africa!” was the alarmists’ cry.

Turns out that according to an English University study that the claim may not be accurate after all. A Portsmouth University group climbed the mountain and analyzed the ice, the rate at which the snow cap is/was melting and came to a different conclusion.

First – the temperature on top of the mountain was considerably below zero degree centigrade.

Second – the snow on top of Africa’s highest mountain peak is bound to change due to climatic changes

Third – the snow cap is still big enough to sustain the current erosion at the present rate.

So now, what are global warming alarmists going to point at?

source