Lake Aussenalster in Hamburg, Germany rarely freezes over enough to allow tens of thousands to go skating on it. The ice has to be at leat 18 cm thick before officials declare it safe to walk on. The last time that happened was in 1997. This weekend it was thick enough to do so again.
This of course is because of galloping global warming. I have to point out that it hasn’t frozen completely solid – but solid enough for officials to give the green light for people to walk on without risk. Does anyone have the data on the years it has been officially opened?
H/t: mwhite
This BBC video contains pictures from Romania, the frozen Danube, and the Hamburg AlstereisvergnĂĽgen. Not too exciting, just a lot of people skating around. This year they have erected the booths not on the ice but on the shore for safety reasons. It always depends on the weather forecasts; mild weather is oncoming.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-17001103
I could not find historic recordings of the years the Alster was frozen, or the ice thickness.
Some dates can be found in the text here, but not a complete list.
http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alstereisvergn%C3%BCgen
Thanks for the link Dirk
Weather extremes 34 years ago in the old global cooling days…
“February 1978 was especially variable. At the start of the month the temperature was near zero, and then dropped to 21 below on 19 February, which led to a 20 cm thick ice cover on the Alstereisdecke. A week later the temperature rose to + 15 C.[9]”
Imagine the kooks if that happened today!
Is that famous ice race on the Dutch canals going ahead this year? [Saw something in a newspaper but couldn’t read it – it was not mine!]
Love the Germans, they wait for official permission, in England – we’d have had the usual drownings by now……….”just testing”.
Elfstedentocht has been called off; report from 8 hours ago:
http://www.sport1.de/de/wintersport/win_eisschnelllauf/newspage_518336.html
Appreciate it Dirk, now I know.
What the Global Warming Cause sorely needs in these times is a rallying theme song, an anthem – preferably one that covers all the post-warming eventualities (and it should be instantly familiar to anyone).
Luckily there is one – Stephen Foster wrote it a Long Time Ago:
“It rained all night the day I left
The weather it was dry
The sun so hot, I froze to death
Susannah, don’t you cry.
“Oh, Susannah,
Oh don’t you cry for me
For I come from Alabama
With a banjo on my knee.”
(It premiered, as far as anyone knows, on Sept, 11 [sic], 1847, in Pittsburgh. The connotations it evokes in style & the place names are deeply evocative of a, well, less-carbon-intensive lifestyle.)
Perfect! The IPCC song! 🙂
What would make it truly Great Anthem is the fact, as with other such, time has rendered most of the original lyrics unsingable in civilized company – you might actually face legal consequences if you did. (Just check out the 2nd & 3rd stanzas of the original text version). The same goes, of course, for the Deutschlandlied (it always comes as a surprise to the rest of the world that the “uber alles” part has been dropped for a long time), the Marseillaise (“Marchons, marchons! / Qu’un sang impur / Abreuve nos sillons!” is not quite PC) and the Star Spangled Banner (the bit about “their blood has washed out / Their foul footsteps’ pollution” was also deleted long ago from the sung version).
Here’s an old Australian poem that makes many people’s politically-correct hair stand on end:
http://www.poetrylibrary.edu.au/poets/lawson-henry/australian-engineers-0108057
My favourite stanza (already non-PC):
Boys who are slight and quiet, but boys who are strong and true,
Dreaming of great inventions; always of something new;
With brains untrammelled by training, but quick where reason directs,
Boys with imagination and unclouded intellects.
Of course, once you realize that “the hireling and slave” are in the pay of Big Oil, and that the “foul footsteps” (“pollution”, get it?) means the CO2 footprint…
O/T: http://www.faz.net/aktuell/wirtschaft/skysails-entlaesst-halbe-belegschaft-der-zugdrachen-zieht-nicht-11645727.html
Innumerate eco-kooks and loss-leaders “Skysails” succeed in shedding half their workforce. (Sincere sympathies for those 40 now no longer enjoying the green economy.)
The company actually managed to sell ten sails so far, but hasn’t yet installed all of them. When they first began spruiking their colourful kerchiefs on a string as a viable method of maritime propulsion, I took a closer look and ALL the alarm bells rang loudly.
Big on claims. MEGA on P.R.; small on proving any actual performance benefits. A tiny “demonstration” freighter disappeared from the P.R. engine before reaching its destination. “Benefits” which are likely only be realized by changing the ship’s routes to be close to the trade winds, travelling further, taking longer and …. losing customers because one fails to reliably deliver on schedule and the costs are higher if you try to keep up; and if you don’t.
Just because it “works” doesn’t mean that it’s useful.