Russian Troups taking a factory in Stalingrad in winter
In a very readable article here:
http://notrickszone.com/2010/12/01/global-warming-meets-its-stalingrad-cold-of-the-century/
P. Gosselin does a great job of pointing out that the folks in Germany, too, are rediscovering what ‘freeze the balls off a brass monkey’ means… He goes on to draw a parallel with the time Germany discovered what Russian Cold meant in that little ‘dust up’ they had with Russia at Stalingrad… (No doubt a powerful metaphor in Germany).
Global Warming Meets Its Stalingrad – “Cold Of The Century”
By P Gosselin on 1. Dezember 2010
The homeless are freezing to death, schools are closing, air traffic is paralyzed, flights cancelled, temperatures plummeting to -20°C, winds up to 60 km/hr making windchill feel like -40°C, autobahns and motorways are blocked by drifting snow, motorists stranded, trains are disrupted – that’s the ugly winter reality today in Germany. We’ve been seeing similar headlines in the UK and throughout all of Scandinavia. Global warming has met its Stalingrad.
And it gets better from there…
Well worth a read…
And while we’re on the subject, Verity Jones has a great little “rant by proxy” at her site:
http://diggingintheclay.wordpress.com/2010/12/01/when-enough-is-enough/
where she picks up a rant from Bishop Hill and runs with it. Don’t know if the original has the “imagery” she has, though… “A picture is worth 1000 words”; or maybe more in this case….
Musings from the Chiefio 
Russia faced at least three very cold periods during WWII, William Mandel (1950) observed: „In fact much lower temperatures were experienced in the winter campaigns around Leningrad during the Soviet-Finnish fighting of 1939-40, around Moscow and Leningrad in 1941-42, and around Stalingrad in 1942-43”; (in: Journal of the Arctic Institut of North America, Vol. 3, No.1, pp.54ff).
What was the role of the war in this to happen? I attribute these events and the extreme cold European winter 1939/40, 1949/41, and 1941/42 mainly to the naval war activities, discussed e.g. here: http://climate-ocean.com/ and http://www.oceanclimate.de/ .
@arndB:
I’ve heard the claim that war activities caused the cold. Don’t know what to make of it, though. If I get a chance I’ll take a look at the write-up.
I’m more inclined to think that there are just random fluctuations that make Europe cold from time to time, though. Like now, and like when Napoleon had that little experiment in Russian Winter Camping ;-)
But the warming currents off of England / Scandinavia are fickle little things, and I can see where they might be sensitive to all the stuff that was going on near them, then…
I just wish I had a couple of more lifetimes to explore all the interesting bits folks keep turning up ;-)
# E.M.Smith said: “I just wish I had a couple of more lifetimes to explore all the interesting bits folks keep turning up” .
I appreciate your interest, and I am prepared and willing to support your endeavour as much as possible. However, kindly keep in mind that many are involved in the climate change matter to do some historical work to show that the branch of atmospheric science is objectively incapable of doing a minimum of a professional job,
___they can not define CLIMATE (see: http://www.whatisclimate.com/ );
___they have not explained why the early Arctic warming from 1919-1939 happened,
http://www.arctic-warming.com/ most recently http://diggingintheclay.wordpress.com/2010/11/20/did-the-previous-arctic-warming-start-in-1910-or-in-1919/ (only about 3 pages)
and
___they have not been interested, or shown any capability to explain many extraordinary meteorological events occurring during WWII including the commencement of the Global Cooling from 1940 to the mid 1970s, http://climate-ocean.com/ , respectively see a short papers at : http://www.oceanclimate.de/
___concerning Winter 1939/40 (2008, about 12 pages): “The Extreme Winter 1939/40”, or
___concerning the three first WWII war winters (2010) : “The Arctic European winters 1939/40 to 1941/42 caused by naval war? “
Or concerning the
___Winter 1940/41 (2010) 2 pages: http://www.what-is-climate.com/ ; Short version: http://www.1ocean-1climate.com/.
IMO each of the mentioned topic has the potential to demonstrate the weakness of atmospheric science.
Thanks again for your interest, and kindly do not hesitate to involve me in a more detailed discussion.
Best regards Arnd Bernaerts
Always thought wars were a bunch of “hot” air (wellllllllll… CO2 and other gases that you didn’t want to breathe too much of too fast). Anyway, the point I’m making is that warfare causes a lot of pollution of the air and it always seemed it would cause “temps to rise” if the AGW Mob were right.
I can buy that modern gunpowder/explosives warfare can have local effects upon weather but given how insignificant even large inputs (i.e. all of the world’s current industrial activity) appear I have an extremely difficult time believing that there is any causal connection between such mechanized warfare and larger climatic trends. That seems to be engaging in exactly the sort of correlative thinking that we so often criticize when put forward by the AGW folks.
@Soronel Haetir: the only way I can see it (at least right now) would be if an already sensitive part of the system (like where the Gulf Stream is being steered one side of an island or the other by minor changes) could be shifted a tiny bit by another leverage, such as an oil film on the water surface shifting evaporation.
So on one side you reduce evaporation, the surface water stays a bit warmer and thus “in the way” while on the other side it cools and sinks, providing a bit of ‘suction’ compared to the first, and the Gulf Stream gets shifted just enough to flip which side of the island it runs on.
Other than something like that, I can’t see how it would work… but I’m willing to look at it.
# Soronel Haetir, 03 December 09:00am said:
___“I have an extremely difficult time believing that there is any causal connection between such mechanized warfare and larger climatic trends.”
It seems it is time to know, whether naval war (or e.g. mechanized warfare) has caused weather modification, small climate changes, or larger climatic trends, for which a reliable answer can be expected from the extreme war winters in Europe 1939/40, 1940/41, and 1941/42. Once it could be established that naval war contributed to these winters in Europe (minor, small, or big), the role of the North-Atlantic Battle 1942-1945 on the initiation of the global cooling (about 1940 to 1970) would inevitable become a serious issues.