Take a look:

According to SnowCrystals.com,

“Some of the stranger ice formations you’re likely to find in the woods are called “frost flowers” or “feather frost”.  A typical example looks like a small puff-ball of cotton candy, a few inches across, made up of clusters of thin, curved ice filaments.
Frost flowers usually grows on a piece of water-logged wood.  It’s something of a rare find, meaning that conditions have to be just so before it will form.
Not much has been written on this unusual phenomenon, and to my knowledge it has never been reproduced in a controlled laboratory environment.  It appears that the ice filaments are essentially pushed out from pores in the wood as they freeze.
It’s something of a misnomer to call this frost, by the way, since it freezes from liquid water, not water vapor.”

Thanks to David for making these pictures available, and to Dennis for sending them.

(Cancelled November Global Warming Meeting Rescheduled)

WHAT: The much talked about Oregon Chapter of the American Meteorological Society (AMS) meeting on anthropogenic (human caused) global warming has been rescheduled! Come take a look at the science, both the logic and the evidence. Is human caused global warming the greatest scientific myth of our generation?

WHEN: Wednesday, January 25^th 2012 from 7-9 PM. Please plan to arrive early. A large turnout is expected. There will be a no-host social hour in the Shilo restaurant from 5-7pm. Come eat dinner and/or have a beverage. Catch up with friends and colleagues!

WHERE: Portland Airport Shilo Inn Convention Center Ballroom 11707 NE Airport Way, Portland, OR 97220. Hotel directions: http://www.shiloinns.com/hotel_details.asp?PI=PASOR

COST: Free and open to the general public. Media is also welcome. Please re-forward this communication to all those who may have originally received it in November.

GUEST SPEAKERS: Former Oregon State Climatologist George Taylor, Meteorologist Chuck Wiese and Physicist Gordon Fulks, PhD.

AGENDA: Come hear Mr. Taylor, Mr. Wiese and Dr. Fulks explore what they consider to be the many problems with the theory of catastrophic human-caused climate change. They will also present their own forecasts for the next decade, century, millennium and beyond. There will also be a public Q & A session at the conclusion of the meeting.

DISCOUNTED HOTEL ROOM RATES: The Oregon AMS negotiated discounted hotel room rates for our out-of-town guests. If you are in need of overnight accommodations, please e-mail hotel catering director Jessica Waters at: jessica.waters@shiloinns.com

CONTACT: Oregon AMS President, Steve Pierce at: stevejpierce@comcast.net or

503-504-2075. Oregon AMS web site: http://www.ametsoc.org/chapters/oregon

DISCLAIMER: The Oregon Chapter of the American Meteorological Society has no formal position on the subject matter of climate change. Our society is committed to our mission statement which reads: The purpose of this society shall be to advance professional ideals in the science of meteorology and to promote the development, exchange, and application of meteorological knowledge. To that end, we are planning to host a future meeting with the opposing side of this subject matter. Please stay tuned for additional details.

Terence Corcoran: Collapse Of The Green-Energy Bubble

Financial Post, 15 December 2011

German solar insolvency is latest sign of collapse of the green-energy bubble.

The parallel-energy universe known as renewables, a place where dollars and economic theory know no bounds and make no sense, looks increasingly like a bubble set to collapse. Or, as I wrote here back in March of 2010: “That eerie hissing you hear may well be the air beginning to seep out of the green energy bubble. The sound is similar to the pfffffft and sshhhhsssssp noises we heard in the early days of the dot-com bubble collapse or the subprime mortgage meltdown.”

News that the pioneer German solar power company Solon filed for creditor protection Tuesday suggests last year’s seep of air out of the jolly green subsidy giant has become a great vacuum blowout. The various corporate-welfare seekers that have been straddling the renewable sector will not give up easily or gracefully, but the hot-air balloon that is green-energy economics is rapidly losing the ga-ga popular support it has had for the past decade.

The loss of political backing, massive overexpansion under the subsidy push, plus the realization that renewable energy comes with bazillion-dollar costs to consumers and/or taxpayers, all spell trouble for solar, wind, biofuels and other green-energy sources.

Also at risk of taking a hit, internationally and in Canada, are some of the venture capitalists and financial heavyweights who have been riding the global climate-change scare for every dollar of subsidy they can get out of it. News reports note that Solon, which has been slashing costs and staff for months, faced a bank deadline and now needs creditor protection on a $375-million loan from Deutsche Bank AG, the global banking giant. Deutsche Bank in recent years promoted green energy as a hot product, launching an international campaign warning of pending climate catastrophe if governments didn’t provide feed-in tariffs and other subsidies and guarantees to renewable-energy firms, to which Deutsche Bank would lend money.

At this date, it’s almost impossible to keep track of all the solar companies in trouble or bankrupt or that obviously just wouldn’t be in business if they were not backed by taxpayers. Keeping track of the money is also a problem. The most famous pre-Solon solar burnout was Solyndra, the U.S. operation that crashed after receiving US$535-million in U.S. government support. Dozens of other failures and troubled enterprises exist.

In the state of Oregon, the notorious Shepherds Flat wind farm, the largest in the world, two weeks ago received a positive credit rating from Fitch, but with negative outlook, on $1.2-billion in loans. These loans were singled out in a memo from former presidential economic advisor Larry Summers last year. The Shepherds Flat project calls for $1.9-billion in General Electric turbines to be installed, with $1.2-billion in subsidies and loan guarantees. Fitch says the operation is “bankruptcy remote,” since the government guarantees the loans. But it attached a negative watch because the U.S. government is on negative watch.

Fitch didn’t say that the U.S. government is on negative watch because of spending on such things as wind and renewable energy. Since enaction as part of the 2009 Obama stimulus program, renewable power has cost $9.6-billion, which Time magazine says is three times what Congress had expected.

In Washington on Wednesday, renewable-energy lobbyists — wind, biofuels, solar — appeared before the Senate finance committee, pressing for an extension of subsidies to their industries. Biodiesel relies on a $1-per-gallon tax credit, which expires Dec. 31. With ethanol supports set to expire at the same time, it is expected biodiesel will face the same fate. A tax credit for wind, equal to 2.2¢ per kilowatt hour of electricity, is set to expire at the end of next year.

The subsidized industries are making the usual arguments that their operations create jobs and provide clean energy. The slow wind-down of Kyoto and the long outlook for Durban climate policy adds to the sense that being green is no longer easy.

The economic case for these jobs is undermined by numerous reports and studies that show the cost of the tax breaks and subsidies destroys at least as many jobs as are gained. A U.S. House of Representatives committee report (dominated by Republicans) warned that the United States “is sacrificing domestic carbon-based resources upon the altar of an ill-fated ‘green energy’ experiment” that misdirected billions toward industries destined for failure.

In Ontario, home of billion-dollar feed-in-tariff subsidies, the government appears set to reduce the value of those tariffs on future contracts. A recent report from the Auditor-General of the province painted a grim picture of a government frittering away billions of taxpayer and ratepayer dollars to produce electricity the province doesn’t need.

Cutbacks in subsidies are inevitable. Fearing such a move, the major beneficiaries of the tariffs — 13.5¢ a kWh on wind, up to 80¢ for solar — have mounted a campaign attacking their industrial opponents. Through their lobby organization, the Ontario Sustainable Energy Association, the renewable firms last week attacked nuclear power producers for their subsidies.

A great mud-slinging battle among subsidy-seeking corporations creates an unedifying vision. But that’s what you’ve got to do when your bubble’s bursting and you’re losing support and logic as an industry.

Interesting!  The Sacramento, CA, all time high sea level pressure was also a real oldie
in Feb 17, 1883, at 30.74 inches.  Early yesterday it peaked at 30.32 inches and we had
peak wind gusts of around 40 mph from the north.  As you know from the news, it
really hit the south.  Mammoth Pass in the southern Sierra at around 9300 feet
dropped 30 degrees from 45 F at noon Wed to 16 by 6 p.m. with the winds at

Feb 1, 1880

http://www.fas.org/irp/agency/dod/dsb/climate.pdf

Deforestation, considered by scientists to contribute significantly to global warming, has been shown by a Yale-led team to actually cool the local climate in northern latitudes, according to a paper published today in Nature.

“If you cut trees in the boreal region, north of 45 degrees latitude, you have a net cooling effect,” said Xuhui Lee, the study’s principal investigator and professor of meteorology at the Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies. “You release carbon into the atmosphere by cutting down trees, but you increase the albedo effect—the reflection of sunlight.”

Lee and a team of researchers from 20 other institutions found that surface temperatures in open areas were cooler because snow cover reflected the sun’s rays back into outer space, while nearby forested areas absorbed the sun’s heat. At night, without the albedo effect, open land continued to cool faster than forests, which force warm turbulent air from aloft to the ground.

“People are debating whether afforestation is a good idea in high latitudes,” said Lee. “If you plant trees you sequester carbon, which is a benefit to the climate system. At the same time, if you plant trees you warm the landscape because trees are darker compared to other vegetation types. So they absorb solar radiation.”

The researchers calculated that north of Minnesota, or 45 degrees latitude, the temperature decreased by an average of 1.5 degrees Fahrenheit.On the other hand, deforestation south of North Carolina, or 35 degrees latitude, appeared to cause warming. In addition, Lee said that “statistically insignificant” cooling occurred between these two latitudes.

The researchers collected temperature data from a network of weather stations in forests from Florida to Manitoba and compared results with nearby stations situated in open grassy areas that were used as a proxy for deforested land.

“The cooling effect is linear with latitude, so the farther north you go the cooler you get with deforestation,” said Lee.

David Hollinger, a scientist with the USDA Forest Service and study co-author, said, “Another way to look at the results is that the climate cooling benefits of planting forests is compounded as you move toward the tropics.”

The researchers call for new climate-monitoring strategies. “Because surface station observations are made in grassy fields with biophysical properties of cleared land, they do not accurately represent the state of climate for 30 percent of the terrestrial surface covered by forests,” the study says.

More information: “Observed Increase in Local Cooling Effect of Deforestation at Higher Latitudes,” Nature (2011)

Thanks to the Global Warming Policy Forundation ( http://www.thegwpf.org/) for notifying us about the article.

The storm formed off the coast and deepened (strengthened) rapidly as it moved toward land. As it reached the coast, the storm’s central pressure dropped to 956 millibars, which is REALLY low! And the lower the central air pressure, the stronger the winds.

Steve Pierce of the American Meteorological Society (Portland chapter) said,

“Violent winds of 90-120mph struck the coastline and 70-90mph struck the Willamette Valley at just after midnight on the morning of the 14th and continued into the post-dawn hours, before finally relenting. The storm made landfall on the coast of Vancouver Island in British Columbia, Canada. Twelve people lost their lives as a result of the storm, the third highest behind the Columbus Day Storm of 1962 and the Great Coastal Gale of December 2007.”

Pierce went on to say,

“The average return cycle for a storm of this magnitude is about once every 15-ish years. The last notable storm of similar size and path struck on December 12th 1995. Using this methodology, Oregon and Washington are overdue for another “BIG” windstorm.”

Wolf Read, acknowledged to be the Northwest’s premier expert on wind storms, said,

“A gale swept the San Francisco Bay Area, the Sacramento Valley, and northward, hitting typically sheltered places like Medford, then roaring across Oregon, Washington and into British Columbia. The 1981 storm had a broader reach than the 1962 event [the Columbus Day storm]: high-wind criteria gusts extended east of the Cascade Mountains.” In contrast, the 1962 event was strictly a “west side” storm.

Read goes on to say:

“According to the National Climatic Data Center’s Storm Data publication for November 1981, the two storms were responsible for at least 12 deaths in Oregon and Washington combined, tens of millions of dollars in damage to the two states, and power was terminated to hundreds of thousands of customers. Timber losses were high, but not as extensive as the Columbus Day storm–not even close, in fact. The Evergreen Point Floating Bridge (Hwy 520) suffered about $300,000 in damage as waves, swept by 75 mph wind gusts, slammed into the structure. According to insurance companies, the focus of damage occurred between Salem and Olympia and out to the coast.”

This year, I believe conditions are ripe for strong storms. Whether any of them rise to the level of the Friday the 13th event (or even the Columbus Day storm) remains to be seen. But I wouldn’t be surprised if we get one or more strong storms. In fact, it’s probably best to expect such storms, to prepare for them properly: by wind-proofing your home where possible, and by planning for contingencies in the event of the inevitable power failures that occur following “big blows.”

Maybe, just maybe, this winter will be “unforgettable.”