Thread by @unseen1_unseen

1. This article👇👇 is an example of fake news. The report they cite does not say what the article says it says. Don't confuse the two. One is an article written by fake news the other is a report done by researchers.

cnbc.com/2019/03/20/cli…

2. I just read the abstract of the report. I'm not paying $7 to make a point. The abstract states that they broke up the conterminous United States into 4km wide sections(in this case they call them pixels since I guess they are using old pictures vs current data to compare)

3. The article never mentions this fact but it is very important to understand exactly what the abstract of the report is really saying. Let's dig deeper.

4. The abstract also uses a term snow water equivalent (SWE) not just snow. It doesn't explain what the difference is between SWE and snow. However, I took the time to look it up and it's another important point.

5. SWE is the amount of water contained within the snowpack. It's not snow depth. It can be thought of as the depth of water that would theoretically result if you melted the entire snowpack. To determine snow depth from SWE or the reverse u need to know the density of the snow.

6. Again the article never mentions any of this. It's very important to understand what the article does state about the report. It says "the amount of SNOW in the west has seen an avg drop of 41% since the early 1980's". And "As a result, the snow season shrunk by 34 days"

7. Both of these statements in the article are false. That isn't what the abstract says at all. Let's dig a bit deeper and see exactly what the abstract says....

8. The abstract clearly states they are using SWE not snow depth and are talking about snow MASS which means they are using density of the snow + volume. The abstract also clearly states that SWE remains UNCERTAIN due to lack of points of measurements and coarse resolution.

9. So right off the bat the article is completely wrong. They state "the amount of snow in Western US has seen an avg 41% drop". The abstract is not talking about snow but snow mass measured via SWE. But it's worse than that. Let's dig deeper.

10. Let's look at the percentage the article cites. 41%. That's a lot of decrease! 41% decrease of the snow mass in the western US?!? Holy hell Batman! Global warming is going to kill us all!🤕🤕 Too bad that isn't what the abstract says.

11. What the abstract says is that in 13% of the pixels a 41% decrease was seen since 1982. Now we don't know what it was before 1982 so we don't know if this is a repeating cycle or what. But regardless it's not a 41%drop in snow in Western US since 1982 as the article pretends.

12. The abstract even is nice enough to define the size ofwhat 13% of the pixels would be. (About the size of South Carolina). To understand this better, Colorado is a little more than 3 times the size of SC. So basically snow mass decreased by 41% around the edges.

13. Wait it gets better. The article cites that the snow season has shrunk by 34 days. Wow the western US lost an entire month of winter. Global warming is going to kill us! Be afraid! Except the abstract doesn't say that.

14. What the abstract says is that in 9% (size of VA) the snow season was shortened by 34 days on AVG. Again it's on the edges and what we should see during a interglacial warming period as the ice and snow retreats. Also remember we have no idea what is normal before 1982.

15. So the entire premise of the article is a lie. The amount of snow in the western US has not decreased by 41% and the western US has not had 34 days less of the snow season.

16. The article goes on to explain how businesses could be impacted and are handling this false data. (side note this is why most experts are always wrong. They base their actions and predictions are false facts without bothering to read the actual studies or do own research).

17. Sadly this classic example of fake news isn't a one off but is seen in almost every news article. They are full of lies and incomplete "facts". Those lies and "facts" are accepted as real and get reposted in further articles. Tracking down the source of the mistake isn't done

18. Finally, I wouldn't put much trust in the report, itself, since the researchers don't know that Virginia (which they cite is the size of 9% of the pixels) is larger than South Carolina (which they claim is 13% of the pixels) if they got that basic fact wrong... well🤔🤔