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Historic Heat In North America Turns Winter To Summer
An anonymous reader writes "A huge, lingering ridge of high pressure over the eastern half of the United States brought summer-like temperatures to North America in March 2012. The warm weather shattered records across the central and eastern United States and much of Canada. From the article: 'Records are not only being broken across the country, they're being broken in unusual ways. Chicago, for example, saw temperatures above 26.6Celsius (80Fahrenheit) every day between March 14-18, breaking records on all five days. For context, the National Weather Service noted that Chicago typically averages only one day in the eighties each in April. And only once in 140 years of weather observations has April produced as many 80Fahrenheit days as this March.'"
So it has happened before. And on geological time scales, that was, like, just ten minutes ago.
If only we had some sort of theory that could explain this inexplicable change in weather patterns.
The headline is a bit sensational for what was essentially a heat wave.
Yeah it might be newsworthy that there were record highs, but the seasons haven't suddenly reversed themselves.
Finally all of those CFC's I've been spraying have paid off. Its too bitter cold in Chicago anyway.
Well, the scientific consensus is that global warming is happening and that man is contributing toward it.
Not all theories and consequent predictions are correct and complete - in most areas of science this is accepted calmly and rationally, but in this one it's suddenly proof that the whole premise is wrong. Kinda like saying evolution is a crock of shit just because one piece of fossil evidence isn't fully explained by a previous assumption. Not that I've ever seen global-warming deniers as any more rational than evolution-deniers, but they tend to find it hard to see themselves that way.
It's becoming more and more clear that we're in for a rough ride - and we're all to blame.
The sad truth is that those who are least responsible will suffer the most.
Pain is merely failure leaving the body
And in the southern Hemisphere, We've had one of the coldest and wettest summers on record in New Zealand.
But you only hear about climate change when people are hot.....
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Drink Coffee - Do Stupid Things Faster And With More Energy!
you can all blame the ring leader of the Weather Underground, Punxsutawney Phil, for spreading propaganda that would deceive you into thinking winter was staying another 6 weeks. it's eco-psycho-terrorism! in our soil!
insensitive clod overlords obligatory xkcd car analogy russian reversals whoosh pedant fanbois ftfy in 3...2...1..PROFIT
As a San Francisco resident, I'm confused by your comparison to California weather. You mean it's not cold and foggy in Ottawa?
There's no -1 for "I don't get it."
It's effing cold in Seattle. Snowing every other day it seems. I want to be warm and dry.
Strange things are afoot at the Circle-K.
I'm from Rochester, NY and I was in Boston last weekend; it's particularly warm in both places.
this is almost surreal
It's around St. Patrick's Day, so the green is fitting
normally Rochester March heat wave means 50
we didn't set our clocks ahead an hour, we set them ahead an entire season
In the words of Monty Python, this is getting silly.
I listen to both RIAA and non-RIAA stuff if I like the music, tangential business/politics nonwithstanding.
Back in October, I was writing 'HAPPY HALLOWEEN!' in the snow, having a chuckle. I stopped laughing when a storm blew in so fierce, so heavy, that it took out the entire Western MA. area's electricity. We were without power for a week, almost exactly. The snow was already heavy, but the fact that trees still had leaves on their branches added to the weight. Entire limbs--or just entire trees were everywhere. It was a spooky time, and it's only getting spookier. I should NOT be sweltering at work while wearing shorts, which is how it went yesterday. Anyone saying "so what, it's a heatwave" doesn't come from New England. We're used to crazy-assed weather, but this has got us all stumped.
You want to know how to help your kids? LEAVE THEM THE F*&K ALONE. --George Carlin
I think they also discovered the source of all that heat to be the white-hot star at the center of the Solar System... !
Cue the deniers.
Fact is this is La Nina in action.
Sorry. Hot chicks trump cold Kiwis any day of the year.
How come Slashdot never gets Slashdotted?
Climate change isn't about winter and summer both getting warmer. The climate changes hourly. It has daily patterns, it has seasonal patterns and it has yearly patterns. Our knowledge of patterns beyond yearly is limited by the available data.
These patterns rely on restoring forces within our environment, energy storages and releases through matter within the globe, and energy gains and losses through our atmosphere. It has been hypothesised that a significant change in any of these mechanisms will cause a change in the mean, and variation, of our climate, which will impact all of those patterns. It has been documented that a significant change is being made through accelerated releasing of energy from matter through burning fossil fuels and modifications to our atmosphere.
To suppose that "climate change" is a sensationalist explanation for warmer variations to seasonal patterns is misguided and misinformed. To suppose the modifications we have caused in these mechanisms cannot result in colder and wetter variations in the climate suggests there have been some theoretical and experimental breakthroughs in atmosphere, chemical and physical science that I have not been made aware of. Please forward me to the relevant literature.
Hardly a transition from winter to summer. It certainly wasn't much of a winter this year (at least in the continental U.S.), as in early January it reached nearly 60 degrees F in Wisconsin.
The fact is that we humans live on very short timescales, and we cannot even begin to comprehend the changes that have occurred in the Earth's climate over millions of years. In the early Eocene there were rainforests at the latitude of northern North America. Antarctica has glaciated, unglaciated, and glaciated again. The Earth's climate has been at times much colder than now, and at times much hotter than now. At some times such as the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum the climate has changed significantly over short periods of time, perhaps by the release of methane into the atmosphere from clathrates.
There are 7 billion humans on this planet and we have extensively modified its land surface and atmosphere. I'm not sure any of us will live to see changes much more severe than some relatively unusual weather, but I believe that the Earth's climate will be transitioning into a new stable state. Maybe not if we change all our habits right this second, but that's not going to happen. Perhaps it will eventually be like the early Eocene, or maybe not. Psychologically, humans will not change their habits without indisputable proof that their habits are highly detrimental to their well-being. This is very difficult in this case because the climate changes over time spans much longer than a human lifetime. All I can really say is that people should think of the future as much as they can... but it happens to be a nice day outside, you might as well go out and enjoy it while it lasts.
Guess you weren't watching Fox.
I explicitly release the above into the public domain.
It's a troll story. Cue the hot debate in 3.. 2.. 1..
And yet last year saw some of the coldest temperatures we've had in a very long time. But I didn't see people screaming OMG GLOBAL FREEZING!!1!!1! back then.
That's because the people who understand global warming are smart enough to know that a single season doesn't mean anything on its own. It's the deniers who, every goddamned winter, come out of the woodwork with their childlike taunts: "If the Earth's getting warmer, then why is it currently cold outside!?"
Isn't it funny that this winter they all seem to understand that one point doesn't make a line? Sadly, I'm sure that by next year they will have forgotten all about this, and will point to the first snowflake as proof that the Earth is unchanged.
... there goes Winter Wrap-Up. Cross that holiday off the list...
I was surprised, for a minute, to see all these Slashdotters sarcastically pretending this is proof of global climate change, or forgoing the sarcasm and outright denying it entirely. Then I remembered that, despite Slashdot readers being generally accepting of, and, in many cases, even excited about science, they also tend to be generally libertarian in their politics, which means denying ideas widely held by entire scientific and academic communities if it might lead to more gub'mint.
Weather and climate are not the same words.
Think
G
It's the deniers who, every goddamned winter, come out of the woodwork with their childlike taunts: "If the Earth's getting warmer, then why is it currently cold outside!?"
And the warmists, who every time a cyclone hits, come out crying that it wouldn't have happened, if only you'd let them tax you more for your sinful energy consumption.
Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean there isn't an invisible demon about to eat your face
The original source of this article, which was copied verbatim, is NASA Earth Observatory. Give credit where credit is due.
If Slashdot covering a weather story isn't a climate-scale outlier, I don't know what is.
Here's another strange fact: on March 18 the low temperature in Rochester MN exceeded the previous record high for that date.
I'm working on an essay linking this event to anthropogenic climate change ("global warming") which will appear on Planet3.0.
(For what it's worth I might as well submit a Slashdot story when it's up. Hose my host - see if I care.)
mt
The degree to which we've had a warm dry winter and a hot spring is only represented by 2 years in the last 140 or so. While this pattern may be more common, it usually isn't this amplified. If this year plays out like the two analogs we should have a milder may. In any case I'd look for the trough in the Midwest to end up as a cutoff low over the east and bring a little relief.
In fact, Europe was extremely cold this winter, and there was a lot of snow (as in meters of snow, something that happens once every 50 years). And last year there was an extremely cold winter in North America.
Exactly like science warns, extreme events are more extreme, and predictability is lost.
new sig
There are summers in New Zealand??? Lived there four years (Nelson "sunshine capital") and weather was horrible year round, kinda Scotland...
So, does this mean I can go hiking next week? (without causing my death)
How about the paths up Mount Moosilauke and Mount Jefferson? How about the trails up to the ridges of Franconia Notch? Ice all melted? Slush gone yet? What kind of temperatures would I get ON TOP (not in the valley) at those locations?
Whaaaaaa?
The last 10 years contain most of the hottest years on record.
Not summer: spring. 80F is spring weather. Summer weather is 90-103F.
And yet last year saw some of the coldest temperatures we've had in a very long time. But I didn't see people screaming OMG GLOBAL FREEZING!!1!!1! back then.
Several years ago, when the changes were starting to get wide attention, people realized that it was extreme weather on both ends and changed the description from "warming" to "climate change". We've had several unusual winters, it's obvious that the phenomenon is not limited to higher temperatures.
And last year I do remember news stories on the unusual winter where people questioned if the global climate change was responsible.
The root of the problem is that global average temperatures are increasing, but since that also contributes to unusual cold snaps then it doesn't help the discussion to call it global warming if every idiot who gets cold uses that as evidence that global warming is not happening. Extreme weather changes on both ends are both symptoms of global warming. You only need to look at a graph of global average temperature over a long period to figure out that it is currently spiking.
"Our two-party system is like a bowl of shit looking at itself in a mirror." - Lewis Black
A co-worker recently observed that people are sweating in their shorts and t-shirts while running next to the still partially frozen Ottawa canal.
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And the warmists, who every time a cyclone hits, come out crying that it wouldn't have happened, if only you'd let them tax you more for your sinful energy consumption.
I'm sorry. Was that parody? My sarcasm meter doesn't work well in the heat.
La Nina does not affect the Great Lakes region. It is a west coast phenomenon, and corresponds to a LOWER than usual ocean temperature at a distance pretty far south from the US coast.
During a period of La Niña, the sea surface temperature across the equatorial Eastern Central Pacific Ocean will be lower than normal by 3–5 C. ... In the United States, an episode of La Niña is defined as a period of at least 5 months of La Niña conditions.
As for Global Warming, I think statistics and physics have proven quite nicely much of these climate change theories are on the right track. The planet is getting warmer overall - it's a fact. That's not to say the ice caps will melt and New York will be underwater next week, or the movie 2012 will come to pass. It just means the atmosphere surrounding the planet earth is getting hotter. Make of this what you will.
You can call others deniers, but to deny proven scientific fact and then tell someone else they're denying the truth is just silly.
I don't, however, believe there is anything we can do about it at this point. Might as well hang on and invest in a good air conditioner...and then heater when we inevitably dip back into an ice age.
If the only way you can accept an assertion is by faith, then you are conceding that it can't be taken on its own merits
So what you're saying is that if you throw away the data that shows warming, there's no data that shows warming? Because you believe the data has been fudged, it's necessary to fudge the data back to the "true" numbers?
The punchline is "...science!"
I believe it's referred to as loading the dice, where climate change isn't necessarily responsible, but will probably make some of the odd/extreme weather patterns come around more often than normal.
Couldn't this be, you know, weather?
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
Means extreme weather patterns become more likely. This includes more extreme temp fluctuations while the global overall mean just inches by a fraction of a degree per year.
All well established and advertised for the last twenty years. People pointing to super cold, wet winter in NZ are just emphasizing this, while kidding themselves into thinking it somehow contradicts the climate change trend.
I'm quite certain that once the future history of global warming will be written it'll emphasize that it shows humanity at it's smartest and most stupid at the same time.
At least it seems to me that way.
When I was young, we had a mild Spring from about March to about May, a fairly hot and mostly dry summer between June and August, wet, foggy and generally unpleasant Autumn from September to November and fairly cold and snowy winters from December to February. That was pretty reliable and generally quite ok.
Today we have freeze-your-toes-to-the-floor-when-you-dare-to-get-up Winters from about November to March and then it changes within a week or so to sweltering-hot-unbearable-heat from April to September, with October being the joker for really funky, crazy weather where it snows in the morning, the sun frying your brain during noon and hail hitting you on your way home from work.
So yes, I can somehow see a change in the climate. It gets more extreme and crazier. Not necessarily hotter. Just way less pleasant in either way.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
All this is due to the choice of my parents to spend their first winter in Arizona rather than stay in North Dakota as they have hitherto always done.
Statistical error. Just like the bums that froze to death.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
The weather has been fantastic here. I've logged many hours on my motorcycle and have a decent tan going already.
It's been a money saver too commuting to work. If this is global climate change I'm begging all of you to rip out your catalytic converters and turn up the heat :) .
_ _ _ Go for the eyes Boo! GO FOR THE EYES!
By definition, this is "weather", not "climate", it only lasts a week.
Climate change is defined by decades at a very minimum. Climate change is this:
http://www.ec.gc.ca/adsc-cmda/default.asp?lang=en&n=8C03D32A-1
Environment Canada takes readings every day, in hundreds of locations outside urban heat islands, and averages them across a whole season to get an average temperature. And then it graphs that number for every year since 1945. While even that graph swings wildly up and down from year to year and even has warmer and colder decades, the regression across almost 70 years shows a steady upward trend. It's most dramatic for our winter (2.8C) but all the seasons have shown statistically significant increases.
I was a huge skeptic until about 2004, but this and several papers I managed to puzzle my way through, plus the book "The Ice Chronicles", finally brought me around by about 2006.
Yes, there are Snowmaggedons. And there are these. And when you add them all up, the warmer spells are getting a little more frequent and the colder spells a little less so. Over decades. That's climate.
Google image search: "global warming cartoon"
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Several years ago, when the changes were starting to get wide attention, people realized that it was extreme weather on both ends and changed the description from "warming" to "climate change".
While I agree with most of your points, I thought I'd point out that this is a common misconception. In fact, both terms came into usage at about the same time (http://www.nasa.gov/topics/earth/features/climate_by_any_other_name.html ). Climate change refers to all effects of the changing climate (ocean acidification, droughts, floods, changes in short term weather events, long term temperature changes, etc.). Global warming only refers to the general trend in surface temperature. So global warming is, and always has been, just a subset of climate change.
1816, the Year Without a Summer. And now this is the Year Without a Winter.
That's a sheep shot, you insensitive clod!
We may be at the top of the curve, if the total solar irradiance is levelling off from its recent decade-highs. http://lasp.colorado.edu/sorce/data/tsi_data.htm Then again, the total solar irradiance hasn't been levelling for enough time to draw that conclusion, the sun may just continue to keep getting hotter and hotter, as it has the past 50 years. Which will lead to more and more air conditioning, which is peak energy demand, creating carbon. So both sides will be right, it will be caused by natural forces and man made forces, and we'll all be happy in our sweatdeathbeds.
Gently reply
Don't be silly, it won't be 200F in July.
If it was as much above normal in July, as it is currently in March here in Chicago, the daily high would be 127, with an overnight low of 94.
Fun stuff, isn't it?
Sure glad global warming doesn't exist... it could have been much worse!
-AI
For me, it is far better to grasp the Universe as it really is than to persist in delusion
Readings in SW suburban areas of Chicago reached 91F today.
Living in the area affected, I can attest that it's been an unusually warm winter. It's been pretty terrible since I have dogs... instead of nice frozen ground its been mud all winter long. It's not just been warm this month, it's been very warm all winter.
BUT... this is not odd at all. We live next to 3 of the largest freshwater seas in the world. The weather in this area is freakish and unpredictable. It's not unusual for us to get snow in the summer, or a random 75 degree day in December followed by -30 the next. The weathers fucking weird next to the great lakes... nothing new here.
Portland, Oregon, right now in fact, is seeing snow, something that, by all local news accounts, is rarely seen at the lower elevations and doesn't happen repeatedly as it has in the month of March. Climate change indeed!
How about I look for what I actually claimed, which was the people were saying that cyclones were caused by global warming:
http://www.thenews.com.pk/TodaysPrintDetail.aspx?ID=30541&Cat=1
http://news.ninemsn.com.au/technology/97558/super-storms-linked-to-global-warming
http://hauntingthelibrary.wordpress.com/2011/07/01/global-weirding-how-global-warming-will-mean-more-cyclones-and-fewer-cyclones/
http://dsc.discovery.com/news/2009/05/14/tropical-cyclones-warming.html
Oh look, about five seconds.
Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean there isn't an invisible demon about to eat your face
localized, to the eastern half of North America.
It's the deniers who, every goddamned winter, come out of the woodwork with their childlike taunts
This is your personal bias showing. Otherwise you would have seen that, even when it is cold, non-scientist warmists are still taking it as a sign of global warming. If it's too warm, it's a sign of global warming. If it's too cold, it's a sign of global warming.
You might want to look at whatever process is making you think that only people who disagree with you act like idiots.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
But I didn't see people screaming OMG GLOBAL FREEZING!!1!!1! back then.
If you'd looked, you would have seen people saying it was caused by global warming.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
What you said:
"And the warmists, who every time a cyclone hits, come out crying that it wouldn't have happened, if only you'd let them tax you more for your sinful energy consumption."
What your articles say:
A major climate study in 2010 based on the results of a range of computer models concluded there was likely to be a substantial increase in the number of storms in the severe category range of 3 to 5, with 5 being the maximum.
Overall, storms would be between 2 and 11 percent more intense by 2100 and rainfall would increase about 20 percent near the centre, it predicted.
The study also found that, with the exception of the Atlantic, there might be a drop in the number of storms in the Pacific and around Australia, but the storms that did form would tend to be more dangerous.
Can you really not see the difference? On the denier side, you have people who are literally saying "It's cold outside, therefore global warming is false." On the other side, you have people running simulations and making falsifiable predictions. But rather than actually discuss the science, you come back at them by putting words in their mouths, saying things like "sinful energy consumption".
Scientists aren't saying every cyclone is proof of global warming. They aren't saying that your energy consumption is "sinful". Those are lies that you are telling, in an attempt to make them look bad.
The idea that this particular warm snap in one part of the globe is caused by global warming is not scientific consensus.
The idea that humans are going to cause problems by warming the globe is not scientific consensus, either.
There is no 'solution' to global warming that is supported by most scientists.
The only thing that IS scientific consensus is that human effects have some effect on the earth's temperature. How much is a huge question; it could be completely negligible.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Hopefully you understand that nobody is claiming that carbon dioxide is poisonous to humans in the concentrations discussed in climate change and you were just trying to be funny. But I think it's useful to be clear about what CO2 does. It and some other gases trap heat in the atmosphere. That phenomenon was discovered in the mid 1800s. Things like the Jet Propulsion Laboratory's Atmospheric Infrared Sounder wouldn't work without that effect.
A good link covering that and more: http://climate.nasa.gov/evidence/
Note that globally, 10 of the warmest years occurred in the last 12.
Humph.
There's pretty good consensus that it will be enough to melt the a lot of ice and raise the sea level. We've got paleoclimate data showing that when there's this much CO2, it gets warm, and the sea level goes up.
The question still in play, now, is how fast will the oceans rise? We do not have paleoclimate data on what happens when CO2 is cranked up this quickly; it took hundreds of years in the past, but it also took hundreds of years to crank up the CO2, so we can't draw solid conclusions.
Note that "sin" is not a scientific concept. The religious stuff is generally on the other side.
We've figured out that our fossil fuel burning is causing an unwanted effect on our environment. We've figured out similar things before and been able to reverse some of the damage (e.g. smog, acid rain). This one's a bigger problem.
you better be right, asshole, 'cause I'm blowing all my Christmas money on hookers and blow the week before, and I'll be goddamned if I'm going to show up at the family dec 25 celebration with nothing
if we throw away the data that shows warming near man-made warmers, yes. you're waking up, the CRU is a propoganda organ of those with an agenda
Firstly, your use of "scientist" is a strawman. I didn't say scientist - I said "warmist". And despite what they believe, every warmist is not a scientist. Secondly, I didn't say they were claiming cyclones are proof of global warming. That was you putting words in my mouth, after I'd already corrected you once. I said they were claiming cyclones were caused by (not proof of) global warming
Scientists aren't saying every cyclone is proof of global warming.
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2011/08/25/hurricane-irene-can-be-tied-to-global-warming-says-bill-mckibben.html
"Irene’s got a middle name, and it’s Global Warming...Record floods from Pakistan to Queensland to the Mississippi basin; record drought from the steppes of Russia to the plains of Texas...This is what climate change looks like in its early stages."
They aren't saying that your energy consumption is "sinful"
http://savingspecies.org/offset-carbon/how-to-be-carbon-neutral/
"The USA puts more carbon into the atmosphere than any other country. That is 5 tons for each of us - you, me, and everyone else. Dr. Pimm has sinned more than most because he travels to tropical forests a lot. If you live outside the USA, you likely sin less. (You can work out the amount of your “carbon sin” with our carbon calculator.)"
There's lunatics and nut-jobs on the fringe on both sides. The fact that every time a cold front comes through, a nut-job on the denier fringe says "so much for global warming" is no less ridiculous than each time there's a seasonal shift a a nut-job on the warmist fringe says "See! Climate change". You and the GP are doing nothing for the debate by trying to paint the extremists as representative of the whole - the same can be applied to your side too.
Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean there isn't an invisible demon about to eat your face
Well of course it's always that way. Nobody knowingly picks the stupid side of a debate.
In this case, we have science on one side and science deniers on the other. I'm going with the science.
Oh, also, if you look at my third link, you'll see that warmists aren't just claiming cyclone activity will increase, they're also claiming it will decrease. It's easy to make "falsifiable" predictions when you hedge your odds with a bet each way.
Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean there isn't an invisible demon about to eat your face
There's pretty good consensus that it will be enough to melt the a lot of ice and raise the sea level.
I'd love to see your data for this. How are you measuring the consensus?
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
I'm pretty sure not ALL the research is funded by biased groups.
There are two types of people in the world: Those who crave closure
And add, to this, as someone who spent the first half of his life living on the (humid, warm) Gulf coast, that humans living in many parts of the US would have no trouble with a warmer local climate. They'd bitch at first, but they'd adapt.
The stuff to watch out for is melting ice caps (which might raise sea levels and displace people, even people in the US), droughts (suppose last summer in Texas becomes something you see every three years), and perhaps dangerously high temperatures+humidity in various parts of the world (including central US) that would make it impossible for humans to stay cool. Low-probability-but-extremely-scary are things like the ocean doing some atmosphere-poisoning anoxic badness ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Permian–Triassic_extinction_event#Causes_of_the_extinction_event ).
IPCC
When people say 'consensus' they usually imply that they went out and did a survey of scientists.
The IPCC report predicted 3mm per year, extrapolating the long-term trend. In the next report, they will probably include some studies that suggest the rise might be higher in the future, but I'm not sure there's much evidence of scientific consensus on that point. If you have some, I'd be interested in seeing it.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
For some reason I find it easier to believe that several billion people "will nilly" emitting greenhouse gasses have more of an effect on the atmosphere than 5 or 6 (?) high powered radio transmitters.
I'm sure there are people who would love to control climate to dubious ends, but really?
The weather here in the south is great. My ghost and habanero peppers are doing fantastic. The strawberry plants started growing berries 3 weeks ago. This weather is delicious and our canning gear will be in overtime this year.
Localized? Well, I suppose, it only affects 300 million people. You have to admit, though, it was nice of us to contain it at the northern border so it won't affec Canada.
"I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)
No, throw away the data from stations that are clearly positioned to give a 10-15 degree warmer reading than the nearest known good station. Throw out the stations that are placed directly under hot air exhaust vents and throw out the stations that are in the middle of asphalt parking lots.
Another fun deception is gridding. Just look at one great example - Chile. All the reporting stations are high up in the dessert, where the climate is extremely hot much of the year, without exception. They do not take one single reading from the much cooler coastal areas. This is how they intend to trick dumb people like yourself.
The Ogallala aquifier is going dry anyway.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/8359076/US-farmers-fear-the-return-of-the-Dust-Bowl.html
Hey hold on. People I know in Europe are complaining of an unusually hard winter this year.
Chewbacon
The Bible is like Wikipedia: written by a bunch of people and verifiable by questionable sources.
Tell me about it... I've had the goddamn A/C in the window for the better part of a week now here in Vermont!
I distinctly remember it snowing for TWO SOLID DAYS at the end of May last year. What the hell is going on?! This doesn't feel like 'climate change' so much as 'climate schizophrenia'!
Friend: "The NIC is misconfigured..." Me: "No prob, I'll just telnet in and fix it." *Silence*
Old guys love to jaw about the weather. Be sure to read this one when you write: http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/mailings/2012/20120105_PerceptionsAndDice.pdf
voted against Pi Day.
Have gnu, will travel.
Global warming is a misnomer, it was coined to dumb things down to the level the average person could understand. What it means is that there is more energy in the atmosphere, the extremes become more extreme, and the range of "normal" expands significantly.
Please, enough of the "But I'm freezing, where is your global warming now"
Well, there's this: http://www.post-carbon-living.com/TTHW/Documents/Climate_Change_Consensus.pdf
I don't think that will do it for you.
In everything that I read, I have not seen anyone who accepts the IPCC conclusions who does not also say that eventually, several meters of ocean rise worth of ice cap will melt. Obviously there's the possibility of sample bias. What I do see is a wide range of predicted time spans for that to occur, some of them on the order of a thousand years, some as short as 100.
Most Slashdotters know very little about moisture down under.
------ The best brain training is now totally free : )
In everything that I read, I have not seen anyone who accepts the IPCC conclusions who does not also say that eventually, several meters of ocean rise worth of ice cap will melt. Obviously there's the possibility of sample bias. What I do see is a wide range of predicted time spans for that to occur, some of them on the order of a thousand years, some as short as 100.
Hmmmm, that does make sense. Ultimately, extrapolating out, 3mm a year (as mentioned in the IPCC report) would be a meter 300 years. So if you continued that extrapolation, it would be a few meters. A few things to mention, each cumulative ton of CO2 added to the atmosphere produces a smaller amount of warming, so it might not make sense to extrapolate it out to 1000 years.
To keep things in perspective, it helps to remember that continents move an order of magnitude faster than the rise of oceans.
Well, there's this: http://www.post-carbon-living.com/TTHW/Documents/Climate_Change_Consensus.pdf [post-carbon-living.com] I don't think that will do it for you.
Thanks, but I was specifically interested in the point on sea-level rise. As far as I could tell, most scientists seemed ok with the 3mm a year number. Recently there have been some ideas about how more water-level rise could happen, especially if there is a tipping point. If scientific support has built around that point, I would like to know.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
El Nino//La Nina has global effects. They're just more subtle the further away from the Pacific Ocean you are.
Compare the data near "man-made warmers" to other data stations and you will see different temperatures but the temperatures trends will be similar. It's not at absolute temperature we're measuring here but how it's changing over time.
Or "the record 3 feets of snow [in 2008] is proof of global warming."
It's not proof of global warming. It's just not proof that global warming is wrong.
"Too bad climate 'science" cannot say the same about their so-called "evidence" that man-made CO2 is the cause of global warming, as opposed to other possible causes, both man-made and natural."
Of course it can. You can measure the CO2 and change thereof, confirm that it is from human activity (fossil fuels) with isotopic ratios, measure the change in infrared emissivity, find it is exactly as predicted by theory and lab experiments, confirm other physical predictions such as lowering and cooling of the stratosphere and followup with global temperature measurements which show patterns consistent with greenhouse increase (and inconsistent with others such as increased solar output) such as more warming at night than at day, more warming at poles, and more warming in winter than summer.
More generally, you can see that your predictions from the laws of physics (which are damn good for anything not producing exotic quarks or understanding the first microseconds of the big bang) plus observed physical facts play out as you think they should which means that more CO2 == warming due to well-understood processes of radiative transfer.
By the way, human emissions of other gases and land use changes are responsible for nearly half of the anthropogenic effect (CO2 is the other half plus a little bit), and these are probably more easily controllable in the short run.
Well it was a similarly cool and wet summer in eastern Australia as well this year. Last summer was too.
Two La Nina summers in a row like that are very rare, but were sorely needed after having about 8 years in a row of MUCH drier and warmer conditions than average. But a cooler year or two doesn't mean anything in the wider scheme of things, especially if its coming off a decade-long warm streak. There are still at least 3 or 4 max temp records being broken for every min temp record, looking across any time scale you wish to use, in the last few decades.
Plus these things are highly regional. While NZ and eastern AU may have been cool and wet, western AU had an absolute scorcher. 40C+ for weeks on end over in Perth (they get periods like that every summer, but the last few have been particularly insane). I don't think you can use regional data to make any judgements either way on climate change ... global mean temp is about the only measure that makes sense.
It will be quicker and easier that way. Blame people, the sun, Apple, Microsoft, China, FSM, Cthulhu, whatever. Everyone has an opinion, with some set of science to back them up for whatever. At this point it is just tiring to listen to endless rounds of "people are at fault," "no they're not!," "yes they are!" and on and on.
Guess what- shit happens, yet we always have to make it about ourselves. Even if humans are causing warming, the proposed solutions are shit. No, I don't have any better ideas, but I sure as shit wouldn't dump $500 million on a piece of shit solar plant that failed a year or 2 later, then paid to retrain all the workers.
Vote monkeys into Congress. They are cheaper and more trustworthy.
La Niña (and El Niño) affect us all the way across in Europe. It'll sure as hell affect you in the Great Lakes region. It causes the jetstream's path to change, and this affects the track of low pressure systems over most of the northern hemisphere.
Oolite: Elite-like game. For Mac, Linux and Windows
On the Interstate Highway 5 what? On the I-5 bridge? on the I-5 ...what? (You used it like an adjective, you wouldn't say "on the Route 66", would you? Or "on the Main Street" ? Did you mean "on I-5" perhaps.)
What does it matter that the stations are in the desert? What's important is not the absolute temperature that a station records, but its variance over time, and I believe that the desert perfectly satisfies your demand that the stations should not be anywhere near people and their filthy heating habits.
Practically, your first paragraph demands that weather stations should not be near people, and the second that they should not be where there are no people. You're either a very misguided individual or a very subtle troll, and Poe's Law makes me unable to decide which.
My understanding of the science (some of this is recent) goes like this on this point. If you look at "paleoclimate", what you get is that the last time it was as warm as it is projected to get, the sea level was meters higher. http://www.cmar.csiro.au/sealevel/sl_proj_longer.html That is, the temperature may be predicted by models, but the melting is predicted by "history". What history lacks is a record of how fast things melt during rapid change, because past change was not as rapid as what is currently observed and predicted.
At the fast-melt end, there's this: http://www.giss.nasa.gov/research/briefs/hansen_15/ I followed the links and attempted to understand them, but did not to my satisfaction. One paper notes that we seem to be observing accelerating melt rates (but it is too soon to tell for sure). The other paper ( http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/mailings/2011/20110118_MilankovicPaper.pdf ) is harder to understand. One issue is the difference in methods of estimating old temperatures; ocean sediment cores give one result, ice cores give another. If you believe ice cores, we have a couple of degrees C before we hit the icecaps-melt temperature; if you believe the ocean cores, we have a few tenths of degree C (i.e., we're essentially there now). Hansen also discusses much faster icecap disintegration, but I have not followed the reference chain all the way back to the papers that reached those conclusions (it appears to be based on more paleoclimate studies, and some inferences from the rate of temperature change then versus now).
And I've been trying to make sense of the Hansen predictions, because at the high end, they suggest rates as fast as 5 centimeters per year, occurring sometime later in this century, which I think counts as alarming.
What happens is that with global warming there's more energy in the atmosphere.
What causes winds is the air warming up in some places more than in others. As it warms up, it expands and rises, creating a low pressure region. Air from some colder region is blown in as wind, to replace the air that went up.
Looking at it globally, air near the equator warms up and rises, cold air from polar regions is brought in. That's why a warmer climate causes colder winters, paradoxical as it may seem. Climate is different from weather, you will still have spells of cold weather in a hotter climate.
Since the air near the equator is warming up more, it rises quicker and brings air from the poles faster. The quicker the air comes from the poles, the less time it has to warm up before it reaches middle latitudes.
As for Global Warming, I think statistics and physics have proven quite nicely much of these climate change theories are on the right track. The planet is getting warmer overall - it's a fact. That's not to say the ice caps will melt [...]
Why not?
There were no ice-caps in the times of the dinosaurs and with the warm wet climate there was a huge amount of biological diversity.
Might as well hang on and invest in a good air conditioner...and then heater when we inevitably dip back into an ice age.
We have been in an ice-age for the whole of human history, it would be nice to get warmer again.
"Glaciologically, ice age implies the presence of extensive ice sheets in the northern and southern hemispheres.[1] By this definition, we are still in the ice age that began at the start of the Pleistocene epoch, because the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets still exist." from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ice_age
Too much of our water is locked up in ice and these cold temperatures limit the useful productivity of our main energy harvesting system(chlorophyll).
The fact that this ice-age seems to go on for ever may just be our short human memory, and perhaps it is related to the gradual decline in the amount of carbon in the atmosphere since the middle of the mesozoic. ( http://www.biocab.org/carbon_dioxide_geological_timescale.html )
In any case, while melting the ice-caps would no doubt be a substantial blow to a lot of infrastructure, we as humans would adapt and go on. Also, once the planet has warmed up a little we should have a veritable explosion in vegetative productivity and then general biological diversity as there is more and more energy available so that species that are less efficient can still procreate thus increasing the amount of genetic drift.
Both is incorrect.
Or three things are incorrect.
a) the winter was not _extremely_ cold in europe.
b) in fact it was not even really cold at all, a normal winter would be that from roughly 15th of december till 15th of march the temperature is around zero degrees celsius. Most of the time, below zero.
c) we don't had much snow this winter. In fact, like the last 20 years, we had very little snow.
I assume you are very young, perhaps less than 20 years old. So you only know the last 16 years of winter, which where UNUSUALLY WARM. So it surprises you that a winter like this one exists, but this winter STILL was UNUSUALLY WARM!
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
Solar Output of a star like ours increases by about 10% per GigaYear. It DOES change. very very VERY slowly. In another about 2.5-3.5Gy it should increase enough to create a runaway green house effect with the oceans and destroy all life on earth.(Venuification) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sun#Life_cycle
Really? Have a look at the following links please:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-16897068
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-16759324
http://www.hotnews.ro/zoom.html?desc=Foto:%20Mediafax&imgUrl=http://media.hotnews.ro/media_server1/image-2012-02-10-11476127-41-oameni-izolati-glodeanu-silistea.jpg (yes, that is the roof of a house beneath the snow)
I have no idea where you live, but you don't really know what the winter was like in Europe. And there were sequences of days with temperatures below -20 C in various places (also note the cold record from the Netherlands mentioned in the first article).
new sig
other causes have been studied, they don't match the facts; and global warming has made several predictions.
1978 called, they want there argument back.
Please, bring forth something besides mans constant emissions of CO2 that match the facts.
Just to save some time:
The Sun has been ruled out, as has cosmic radiation, planetary alignment, and pirates.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
"The idea that humans are going to cause problems by warming the globe is not scientific consensus, either."
yes it is, actually.
"There is no 'solution' to global warming that is supported by most scientists."
reduction in CO2 is the consensus on that.
"How much is a huge question;"
not really.
"it could be completely negligible."
consensus says otherwise.
Fucking read up, asshole.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
"I've moved my garden activities ahead as much as possible. I really hope that we do not see another hot summer like last year."
Then you've probably also already noticed that the USDA has updated its hardiness zones to reflect the warming. The fact is that you can plant less hardy seeds earlier and further north that you used to be able to. The warming is having real results.
Beta is broken and the link to classic doesn't work. Stop wasting our time or there won't be anybody left here.
Actually, when you through away the data from the "poorly situated" stations, the global warming signal becomes stronger. Turns out those stations have been adjusted downwards to counteract the bias, but because their temperatures are partly driven by fairly constant nearby man-made sources they actually under report the warming trend. At least that was the conclusion from the "sceptic" (Koch brothers) funded BEST report.
Fanatically anti-fanatical
This is not necessarily directed at you, because your post was kind of witty:
It's funny when there's a warm stretch, global warming promoters cry "global warming!"
But if there's a cold stretch, and global warming deniers say "so much for that theory", promoters say "you don't know the difference between climate and weather."
So how come it's climate when it's warm, and weather when it's cold?
I'm not a lawyer, but I play one on the Internet. Blog
pro-science? You're kidding, right?
Anyway, what would constitute falsification of the theory?
If it's warm, it confirms the theory. If it's cold, that also confirms the theory. Same for rain and drought.
An unfalsifiable theory is indistinguishable from a belief.
I'm not a lawyer, but I play one on the Internet. Blog
The issue is that new stations are being added to hot areas of the globe, and locally hot areas, and that data is then compared to earlier data from reporting stations that are not in such hot spots, with the purpose of creating a story of global warming.
If you throw out the CRUd and calculate the global average temperatures using well known, long term fixed stations, you will see that we are in a decade+ long cooling trend right now.
If they put these stations up in the middle of parking lots and under air conditioning vents, and never ever compared the data they receive from these questionable weather stations with older data, you might have a point.
I've been to O'Hare, it may be outside the city limits but it is certainly not outside the urban heat island.
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Friends don't let friends enable ecmascript.
It's the deniers who, every goddamned winter, come out of the woodwork with their childlike taunts: "If the Earth's getting warmer, then why is it currently cold outside!?"
Did a "denier" post this article? Or can we accept that there are a large number of idiots in both camps?
Fucking read up, asshole.
Fortunately your rudeness is only surpassed by your ignorance.
yes it is, actually.
No it's not. If you've ever actually read a survey of scientists, like the actual questions they asked, you would no this. Unfortunately, you seem to be the kind of person who doesn't think about things, only believes someone else.
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
It DOES change. very very VERY slowly.
I pointed out that solar output also varies on time scales of decades and centuries, not just the long term trend above.
I don't have links to the studies but the studies themselves were funded by reinsurance companies, the money that backs up the insurance companies you and I buy from. They wanted to know how global warming was going to affect the future of storms.
Looking ahead with a non-ideological eye is probably why they have most of the money.
Perhaps you should read the links you linked?
So you get a damn clue? I live in germany. Since roughly 25 years the weather is TO WARM. Every winter. So if we now have winter which is as cold as 28 years ago (your first link) then this winter is NORMAL! And not UNUSUAL. The last 25 winters that where WARM are the UNUSUAL winters.
As I'm FAR older than 25 years, I perfectly WELL KNOW how the winters where before.
-20 degrees is NOTHING special. For a January or February that was the NORM 25 years ago!!!
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
Yea, living up here in Minnesota I can tell you all about this one. About 2-3 weeks ago we got a huge blizzard that forced me to head home from college early. Cost me 8 extra credit points for bio the damn thing... Then about a week ago it just... turned to spring. Hell, it feels like summer to be honest. The only real hint that it's still actually spring is that most of the flowers haven't yet bloomed. This is not normal weather. I'm used to there being around a month of mushy slush being on the ground and, while I welcome the skipping of that phase, it is a tad concerning. Having taken an Environmental Bio course I know well enough that it's not like global warming is solely at fault here but I still can't really put the thought out of my mind. Ah well, here's hoping it's just a pleasant fast-forward past the two worst months of the year!
Yeah, I'm aware of these ideas. I'm not sure there's much scientific consensus on them, though. As one paragraph from your first link said,
"Present day contributions from the Greenland come from both surface melting and iceberg calving and for the Antarctic ice sheet from iceberg calving only. The contribution from the ice sheets is poorly understood at the moment and is an active area of research."
I will be interested in knowing if most scientists do begin to support this point of view, (which in turn would hopefully mean that the view would be supported by evidence).
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
All this blathering about eastern US heat waves causing record high temperatures, but did anybody notice that on March 21-22, record snowfall occurred in Oregon? Seems only warm temperatures get any headlines in order to reinforce belief in the religion of global warming. Somebody will probably blame the Oregon snowstorm on global warming, too.