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2006 Was the Warmest Year Ever
kpw10 writes "Dr. Jeff Masters from Wunderground has a great summary of this year's rather abnormal weather (his blog is the best source on the net for in-depth weather analysis). The post discusses some of the cyclical climate forces at work this year and compares this year's record temperatures to records from the past. There are some interesting differences, particularly in the extent of the northern hemisphere seeing record highs this year." From the article: "December's weather in the Northeast U.S. may have been a case of the weather dice coming up thirteen — weather not seen on the planet since before the Ice Age began, 118,000 years ago. The weather dice will start rolling an increasing number of thirteens in coming years, and an ice-free Arctic Ocean in summertime by 2040 is a very real possibility..." Here is the The National Climatic Data Center's report announcing the entry of 2006 into the record books.
are either closed or operating at significantly reduced loads. Hell, some of the places in Austria are suggesting hiking trips instead of skiing this year. Here in Bavaria, we had(so I'm told) one of the coldest winters in the past 20 years last year, and this year I have only had to deal with frost twice(which is nice because I am on a bike)
Meanwhile Colorado seems to be getting more snow than the rest of the world combined(I'm only being a tad dramatic there). They probably have the best skiing in the world this year, but the airports are always closed so nobody can get there!
Monstar L
You know, Michigan's upper peninsula. "Normally" we get about 200" of snow in a winter season. So far this season we've had one major snow storm, leaving us with approximiately 18". That's all. In December 2005, 77.5" fell. I would be surprised if we got a 1/10 of that in 2006.
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If it wasnt for Global Dimming http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_dimming this would be worse. However, since particulate pollution is being cut more than C02 global dimming is falling behind global warming.
Not for me: 2006 UK Temperatures or for some time 1998 Temps
There may be a trend there.......
Unfortunately I couldn't find the wind speed data for this year but that seems to be significantly higher than usual.
Hmmmmmm
Temperature in the UK has apparently been tracked for 350 years and last year had the highest average temperature of those 350 years.
This just shows that people don'r really understand what global warming means. Sure, temperatures are going to be one or two degrees higher ON AVERAGE, but that does not mean warmer winters and hotter summers in general. It means that the system as a whole will have more energy, so weather phenomena will be more intensive and fluctuations will have higer amplitude. Think of more powerful storms, more destructive hurricanes, etc. Cold winter 2005 and warmest year 2006 is a nice example of such fluctuation.
i want to remark that we have better technology now, so China needn't pollute as much as we did, and go straight to windpower/solarpower instead of using coal.
Yes, I'm left. You have a problem with that?
You mean the model in which when you heat up water the solubility of CO2 decreases, so warmer temperatures would cause CO2 levels to increase?
Or the one in which CO2 increases cause a greenhouse effect so increasing CO2 levels cause warmer temperatures?
January is the coldest month in Finland. Usually we have had snow cover by November/December. This year, there has been one freak snowstorm in the beginning of November, and right now it's raining outside. No snow cover for two winter months. Not your typical winter in Finland where temperatures in January can be -20 to -30 degrees Centigrade.
Disclaimer: I know weather does not equal climate.
My other SIG is a Sauer.
Eh, no, sorry, not quite. All that Kyoto buys is more coal-powered plants for third world nations. If anything Kyoto is more likely to harm the environment, and is, in any event, more of a wealth redistribution scheme than it is an environmental management plan.
It's also funny to note that the country which "hates the worlds children" has made bigger strides in combating GHG emissions than several Kyoto signatories.
But hey, who needs facts and logic when you can get all your opinions from the "down with HaliBusHitler" maniacs, eh?
Coincidentally, Kyoto has not been ratified by the same country where "lower taxes!," i.e., lower taxes for me and higher taxes for my children, is the one political rallying cry that always works.
Why the party that campaigns on lowering taxes and refusing to ratify Kyoto hates the world's children has yet to be determined.
You seem to be suffering from a rectal-cranial inversion, let me fix that. In 1998 the US Senate(the branch of the US govt. that ratifies treaties) voted 95-0 against the treaty. Now in case you don't know there are only 100 senators in the US senate. So before you go think one party or another voted against the Kyoto treaty, actually it was both. How you managed to achieve rectal-cranial inversion has yet to be determined, but hopefully this little factoid will help reduce its occurance in the future.
ENSO is the El Nino Southern Oscillation. If you'd like to simulate global warming and El Nino / La Nina cycles yourself you can do some of the experiments discussed in the article. The EdGCM project has wrapped a NASA global climate model (GCM) in a GUI (OS X and Win). You can add CO2 or turn the sun down by a few percent all with a checkbox and a slider. Supercomputers and advanced FORTRAN programmers are no longer necessary to run your own GCM.
Disclaimer: I'm the project developer.
Space and Computers.
It was not globally the warmest year ever.
It may have been, in North America, the warmest year, by a small amount, for a couple hundred years. Its a bit different. We have also the Holcene Warm Period, and the Medieval Warm Period to worry about, before pronouncing last year the warmest ever.
Global warming may or may not be happening, but headlines like this do not help convince anyone.
"The Southern Hemisphere, in particular, does not seem to be warming noticeably."
I am sitting naked in my spare room in Melbourne Australia, it is about 2:30AM and simply too hot and muggy too sleep, there is the smell of smoke from extreme bushfires that started two months early this year. Tasmania has had to import electricity from the mainland due to a lack of water in their hydro scheme, 62% of our grain harvest (~17,000,000 tons) has been lost,....oh fuck it, it's too hot to argue with an AC ludite.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
Are you fucking stupid? All those things you learned about *ARE* real. It's just that the economic benefit of ignoring them made them seem ignorable.
If there is no livable earth what good is economic prosperity? Further, how do expect to keep up economic prosperity in the conditions that will be the result of climate change (flooding, drought, monster storms, etc.)? The consumer culture that drives the modern world economy will absolutely fall apart. No one's gonna be buying luxury cars, computers, iPhones, etc. when he/she is up to his/her neck in a flood.
What's right is not always profitable, and what's profitable is not always right. Grow up and think outside your own piggy bank.
P.S. Though reductions of CO2 emissions could very well hurt developed nations, it will have a similar, though less obvious, effect on developing ones. Instead of bringing quality of life down, it will keep them where they are: without the cheap energy they need to develop. If this is bad, it's going to hurt everyone.
That may be true. However, it was the left that caused the global warming, not the right. It was the left (not the right) that vociferously attacked and destroyed the nuclear power industry, which was (and is) the only viable competitor to coal-burning. Since coal-burning emits far more C02 than SUVs, I'm quite sure that the left is responsible for global warming. Indeed, if Greenpeace and UCS (Union of concerned "scientists") had never existed then the global warming problem would be far less severe than it is.
Note that France decided to ignore Greenpeace (largely because they have no domestic fossil fuels) and they built only nuclear power plants. As a result, their C02 emissions are 85% lower than ours, per capita. Of course, they drive less too, which is a contributing factor, however their lack of coal-burning plants is the largest factor.
We must all hope that China ignores Greenpeace and follows the path that France has laid down. Only in that way can China be prevented from becoming an ecological disaster.
That's a preposterous conspiracy theory. Bear in mind that the nuclear power industry is owned by large multinational corporations and that has not allowed them to save the environment from Greenpeace.
There is no more time to waste trying to convince Greenpeace and similar organizations that modern civilization could not be sustained by the combination of windmills and gathering leaves. Already, Greenpeace and the left have done incalculable damage to the environment. They have drastically increased C02 emissions and have endangered us all.
Greenpeace and similar organizations publish "facts" about nuclear power that are off by a factor of a billion or more. I am not exaggerating. Several "facts" put forth by Greenpeace and other organizations (like the amount of uranium fuel remaining on Earth, or the health effects of small doses of radiation) are off by a factor of a billion or more. If the right-wingers wished to reach the same level of absurdity and crude scientific denial, they would have to claim that the Earth is only 4 years old.
Unfortunately, few people read the Investors Business Daily. On the other hand, Greenpeace goes door-to-door in its quest to destroy the environment.