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Polar Vortex Sends Life-Threatening Freeze To US
Hugh Pickens DOT Com writes "Reuters reports that the Midwestern United States is shivering through the region's lowest temperatures in twenty years as forecasters warn that life-threatening cold is heading eastward as a polar vortex of freezing Arctic weather sweeps across the United States. 'The coldest temperatures in almost two decades will spread into the northern and central U.S. today behind an arctic cold front,' says the National Weather Service. 'Combined with gusty winds, these temperatures will result in life-threatening wind chill values as low as 60 degrees below zero (Fahrenheit/minus 51 degrees Celsius).' The coldest temperature reported in the lower 48 states on Sunday was minus 40 F (-40 C) in the towns of Babbitt and Embarrass, Minnesota. Meteorologists warn that the wind-chill factor could make it feel twice as cold, causing frostbite to exposed parts of the body within minutes. Eleven people have already died in weather-related incidents in the past week, including a 71-year-old woman with Alzheimer's who wandered from her home in upstate New York and was found frozen to death only 100m away. Polar vortexes occur seasonally at the North Pole, and their formation resembles that of hurricanes in more tropical regions: fast-moving winds build up around a calm center. Unlike a hurricane, these are frigid polar winds, circling the Arctic at more than 100 miles per hour. The spinning winds typically trap this cold air in the Arctic. But the problem comes when the polar vortex weakens or splits apart, essentially flinging these cold wind patterns out of the Arctic and into our backyards. 'All the ingredients are there for a near-record or historic cold outbreak,' says meteorologist Ryan Maue. 'If you're under 40, you've not seen this stuff before.'"
OMG! We're all going to die!
As a resident of Michigan, I can concur that this is the worst weather I have ever seen in my life. I am under 40, but I seem to remember getting hit by something similar back in the mid 90s. I am one of 10 people in the I.T. department at work that made it in today. Considering we have a staff of around 150 people, that's a lot of folks stuck in their homes.
Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known. -Carl Sagan
Crap... It was that stupid "The Day After Tomorrow" movie.
These comments are my own and do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of my employer or colleagues...
What the hell does "twice as cold" even mean? If it's intended to mean "double the negative distance from zero", then it's unit-dependent. The same with "half the temperature". Just give an actual temperature, instead of using vagary in an attempt to impress people with how cold it's doing to be.
This is a REAL Chicago winter... you kids have all gotten soft in the last 30 years. We used to have these all the time when I was a kid. I remember in about 1980, it had been this cold for sever days in a row so I had sever cabin fever (a condition resulting in the need to GET OUT OF THE HOUSE)... so I walked 1.2 miles in -40 temperatures to get to Montgomery Wards. (I just checked the distance using google maps) That's -40 REAL degrees (trivia: -40F == -40C), or -80F with the "Wind Chill".... I was very glad my dad came to pick me up and take me home, so I didn't need to make the return trip on foot.
Two pairs of jeans (the thick kind we used to have back then) were barely enough to keep my legs warm during that walk.
We've had these before, we'll have them again... shove off with the invented names like "Polar Vortex"... it's just WINTER. /rant
PS: Maybe it's cabin fever getting to me? ;-)
Not that long ago (meaning.. 5 to 10 years) it was quite common in my area of northern new england to have a week or more of -30 at night -10 day. We've all been spoiled a bit the past few years by only a handful of days like that. What is unsual about this year is that we had a few of those days in mid/late December instead of the more typical Feb.
Also, while those -30, -40 etc numbers sound terrible, if you dress properly its not that bad and further, they usually happen betwen 4am and 7am and quickly moderate.
But how will our metric friends know what the temperature is if we report -40F? How will they ever tell?!
Someone, please, think of the pedants!
"Our goal each year should be to increase the number of goals we set for ourselves!"
People who aren't into sensationalism call this an Alberta clipper. It happens every year.
And people in Alberta call it "Late Autumn", and just wait for the next Chinook.
If this weather report is news to you, you really do live in the basement.
Or even outside the USA. It's a possibility you know.
Get your SuperSoaker ready and snow your friends!
I am not interested in articles about life extension advancements.
Though they both cause extremely cold weather, a polar vortex and an Alberta clipper are very different meteorological events.
Everything is better with chainsaws.
In the UK we have only had frost in the morning two or three times this winter. It's much warmer than usual.
I'm fine with the idea that climate and weather are different things. But where are all of you to point this out when idiots get on TV and try to claim that the latest big hurricane was "exacerbated by global warming"? You can't have it both ways.
The cow says "Moo." The dog says "Woof." The Timothy says "Thanks, valued customer. We appreciate your input."
Years from now someone will look at this event from lightyears away, and from their telescopes on their planet with a planet wide climate control system, they will see this system and observe a small planet orbiting a star much like their own, with a lot of activity in the radio spectrum being emitted. However, they will dismiss this planet as having intelligent life as the weather patterns are too sporadic to be those from a planet which harbors a civilization; for those who have not yet controlled their planet are simply animals and nothing more.
Sig: I stole this sig.
Not where I live in Alberta. Anything North of Calgary doesn't get Chinooks all the often and we are stuck in the deep freeze. We just don't whine about it like the Easterners. Yesterday morning it was -34c with a wind chill of -45c. We decided it would be better to walk to the grocery store instead of driving as the car was just to frozen over. This morning we remembered to plug it in and it's no where near as cold, only -24c not sure of the wind chill. Still walked to work though.
http://www.skepticalscience.com/climate-change-global-warming.htm
TL;DR: Both of the terms in question are used frequently in the scientific literature, because they refer to two different physical phenomena.
40 below, yeah. But is that Celsius or Fahrenheit?
Another Michigander (Michiganian?) here. Only one guy decided to brave his way into the office this morning. The rest of us were smart enough to fire up our remote terminal connections over our company VPN and work from home.
I live in Michigan too. Wasn't that bad unless you are driving something like a Prius (aka a sled). Most of us don't have jobs that can be done from home. I run a manufacturing plant and it's pretty hard to make parts over a VPN connection.
I was all set to at least attempt the trip in, but the 4 foot snow pile at the end of my driveway said otherwise.
So you don't own a shovel? [/teasing] I plowed my driveway 3 times yesterday and again this morning. The roads near me were reasonably clear considering. Was a little later than usual but staying home wasn't really necessary.
This ridiculous storm naming habit needs to stop! It's winter, sometimes it's cold and snowy, sometimes it's REALLY cold and snowy. I guess the next storm will be called "Winter Storm Anus Ripper" eh?
In Edmonton, where I come from, we would get one chinook a year.
Although most people just called it summer.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
ugh. your angry ignorance is overwhelming. global warming is happening, meaning the MEAN (ie, average) global temperatures are rising. what this causes is (among other things) temperature and climate swings in any particular region are likely to become much more severe. (noticed any patterns lately of 'rare' storms happening frequently?)
PART of the reason for calling it climate change (aside from the fact that the issue is bigger than just things getting warmer) is to change the semantics so dolts like you wouldn't look out the window and say 'gee zeke, aint no warmer here! all is good y'all! pop me another brewskie! here come's honey boo boo! " apparently, it didn't work as you so clearly display. someone intent on keeping their head buried up their ass will fight tooth and nail to do so.
This is all media drama. Real story here is how most people do not want to layer-up for weather like this. They will chance it wearing jeans, no hat (don't want to mess the 'do) and dressing just warm enough to make it to their car. This works great until car leaves you stranded because injectors gel'd up, or whatever. In this weather, walking a couple miles in the wind wearing only blue jeans, no hat/socks/mitts will easily f- you up. If you need to dress lightly, at least throw some appropriate gear in the trunk in case you *do* need to be out in it. Even new cars can have trouble in extreme cold.
Join the Slashcott! Feb 10 thru Feb 17!
One of the articles (the last one linked to) says, "Brutal conditions are expected in Detroit, which has had only five days in living memory when temperatures stayed below freezing all day." I find that hard to believe. I live quite a bit further south than Detroit, and we probably have at least two or three days a year where that is the case. Looking at the forecast for Detroit, I suspect it is a conversion problem. If someone in America says, "There have been only five days in living memory that the temp in Detroit has not gotten above zero", someone outside of the U.S. might read that and think zero Celcius, which is freezing, and not -18 Celcius, which is what is meant.
Proverbs 21:19
Show us where we can correct those idiots - Global waming is such a stupid word to use, because people who wants to argue with you will focus on that single word.
Doesn't matter if you had a billion scientists saying something different, there is a single word that the other person can attach to and argue against, which means you will have lost.
Global climate change is a much better wording - you can even add a small star "due to global temperature average climbing".
Yeah, like *I FUCKING SAID*, I'm perfectly fine with the idea that climate and weather are two different things. I just want some consistency. You can't just pick and choose weather events and say "This weather event counts as evidence, but this one doesn't." Nor can you construct a hypothesis that is so convoluted as to be supported by ALL EVIDENCE, and which is impossible to disprove. That's not science, it's religion.
The cow says "Moo." The dog says "Woof." The Timothy says "Thanks, valued customer. We appreciate your input."
Climate != Weather
Totally, right?
Because all the kerfuffle here in the Rocky Mountain West the last decade has been hot summers and drought -- AS PROOF -- of global warming. It's in the papers here as soon as the temperature goes over 90F. Warming, warming, warming, we're all gonna die.
Well, since Climate != Weather, why can't I say that the hot dry summers are proof of global cooling? After all, it's perfectly reputable, apparently, to say that -40F winter wind chill is proof of warming!
I've said it before, and I'll keep saying it:
Some of us already know what we should be doing. We should be building topsoil, planting trees, building alternative energy supplies, cleaning the air, cleaning the water, greening the deserts; in short, taking the simple steps to making Earth a little better.
(Adding something like 1" of topsoil to America's farm land would sequester more CO2 than man has ever emitted, IIRC, and we could actually do that simultaneously with growing bio-fuels...!)
AGW (whether true or false) is just something for people to argue about while governments and corporations make the biggest power grab in the history of power grabs. Divide and conquer at work.
That I'm right, and you don't like it, doesn't mean I'm a troll.
Rubbish.
The Day after Tomorrow was released in 2004.
Please read my Canon EOS tech blog at http://www.everyothershot.com
I love it when idiots pick a single point of data and call it a trend.
You could also try:
"This glorified network cable costs 10 grand! Network cables are getting insanely expensive!"
or
"That airplane crashed! Air travel is getting more dangerous by the minute!"
or
"I used to buy only laptops, but now I build my own desktops. The desktop market is on the rise!"
This comment comes up every single time there is anything vaguely related to weather. The drooling idiot is usually quite open minded with valid questions about the direction of change - warmer, colder, more extreme, is it natural, how much impact do humans have, and so on. (Sure, there is the odd troll too) Just in the past year it seems anyone that would question these predictions quickly gets tagged as a denier. I really don't get it.
Try cueing the geologists and solar scientists. We're IN an Ice Age, and have been for the last ~2.58 million years. We're currently in between continental glaciations, and the next is due Real Soon Now. . . in geological terms (which is anytime from right now until 10,000 AD or so. . .)
And you might want to talk to solar scientists, as we're in a solar minimum, and they are extensively correlated with lower global temperatures. Hint: google "Solar Minimum", "Maunder Minimum", and "Dalton Minimum".
I'll also note that the warming trend that reportedly ended in 1998, still did not reach the average temperatures of the Medieval Optimum Period. . .
Actually it DOES NOT. When the evidence was corrected, it showed the medieval warm period and the roman warm period to both be warmer.
But remember, it's all how you pick and choose your data, except for one fact. History. When we know places like Greenland/Iceland were historically freer of ice, etc. Then we KNOW that in the past it was in fact warmer.
Yeah, like *I FUCKING SAID*, I'm perfectly fine with the idea that climate and weather are two different things. I just want some consistency. You can't just pick and choose weather events and say "This weather event counts as evidence, but this one doesn't." Nor can you construct a hypothesis that is so convoluted as to be supported by ALL EVIDENCE, and which is impossible to disprove. That's not science, it's religion.
Global warming means there is more energy around. Energy which can move cold air to areas where it doesn't belong. The extra energy provided by global warming is right now moving huge amounts of freezing air from the polar region where it belongs, to the USA where it doesn't belong.
Prius are heavier for their size and weight distribution thanks to the batteries and the transaxle (generator/motor). This added weight makes the Prius far better in the snow than the average front wheel drive vehicle.
Just an FYI...
My Prius was the best non-4x4/AWD vehicle i've driven in the snow. But no, nothing is quite as nice as 4x4
Kelvin.
So we're all well and truly fucked.
There are two types of people in the world: Those who crave closure
We also know that, historically, Antarctica was north of Australia. So just saying that Greenland was once clear of ice is picking and choosing facts just as much as only looking at any other limited dataset. The truth is that it's a very complex system with a shit-ton of variables involved on a daily basis. Once you start looking at historical trends, you need to consider everything from solar cycles to plate tectonics.
Is in Rio de Janeiro, were the heat is setting off sprinklers.
Looking at a chart for this part of the Midwest, there have been plenty of days this cold, if not significantly colder. The real problem here is crappy reporting, short memories, an ignorance of historical data, and general sensationalism. The big laugher is in last sentence of the last linked article: "Brutal conditions are expected in Detroit, which has had only five days in living memory when temperatures stayed below freezing all day." Really? No one knows the difference between 0 degree F and freezing? Between this kind of sloppy reporting and naming winter storms, the public interest in meteorology is going to taper off even further, once we all get through this and it gets back into the 40s by the end of the week. When weather news then becomes marginalized, people pay even less attention to the realities of climate change and other issues...maybe that's the point, I don't know.
The NOAA lists -27F as the lowest recorded temperature in Chicago.
They also have a list of days with a temperature below -16F and 1980 wasn't listed.
http://www.crh.noaa.gov/lot/?n=chi_temperature_records
Has a habit of touting every storm or weather incident (even earthquakes) as proof of global warming, but denying those same incidents as proof against global warming.
I suspect that is selection bias on your part. While the media do love to play up the "global warming" angle after every calamity, in every interview with an actual climate scientist that I've seen, the scientists seem pretty eager to distance themselves from that sort of speculation. If they have their dander up, they might point to theories which predict that the frequency and intensity of storms will increase, but that's about as far as I've seen them go.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
Actually, C and F converge right at -40. That convergence is the cause of the whooshing sound you heard when replying to the previous poster.
But where are all of you to point this out when idiots get on TV and try to claim that the latest big hurricane was "exacerbated by global warming"?
I obviously can't speak for every Slashdotter who thinks that the scientific consensus is probably correct, but I know it pisses me off when they do that.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
Nither, it was Kelvin.
So cold that not only did atomic motion stop, it reversed.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
It's right here. More energy in the system, more chaotic weather. It doesn't just mean it gets "warmer everywhere all the time".
Well, considering the jet stream usually runs further north without large southward lobes in it, and considering it is the temperature differential between the arctic and southern climes that creates a strong jet stream, a warming trend in the arctic weakens the jet stream and allows these polar vortexes to move south. So yes, this is actually a result of global warming. Global warming doesn't actually say that the planet will turn into a boiling hot place. It simply says that global average temperatures are rising. The effect of that is to put increasing amounts of energy (in the form of water vapor) in to the atmosphere. This means more intense storms more frequently. That includes winter storms. It pushes weather out to the extremes on both sides. Deeper freezes, hotter summers, less temperate weather.
First one, then the other.
rewriting history since 2109
The AC is making a serious error here and it almost seems as if though he imagines the US to be the entire world even weather-wise.
Meanwhile, here in Europe we have weather so unusually warm that it's almost unnatural. I live in Sweden and this time of year I can usually do such things as skate, ski cross country and engage other snow-requiring activities. However, today it's been six degrees Celsius and I'm seriously considering taking a short drive with the top down tomorrow provided that it's sunny.
This is of course kind of anecdotal but actual data (http://www.smhi.se/klimatdata/meteorologi/2.1353/showImg.php?par=tmpAvv) demonstrates the same thing. About five degrees warmer than the normal temperatures and probably much warmer during the warmest part of the day.
Just like a religion, you can claim all you want and dispense with all dissent with a wave of a hand. The sad part is, we have had worse weather patterns before and we will have varied and unpredictable weather patterns in the future.
Guess what, it has always been this way. The idea you can suddenly declare THIS is more relevant than THAT or whatnot is just silly. Yet every exceptional weather issue suddenly is proof positive of your belief. Whats next, finding pictures of Al Gore on bread?
Do you realize how silly you come off with your "IN FACT" declaration. Its not fact, its theory and the one thing about weather we all know is, we cannot tell you whats going to happen one month to the next. If we could then someone should have known this was coming way off but guess what they did not.
I would love to see the model which shows no hurricanes smacking the US, record low tornado activity, followed with one week of exceptional cold. There won't be one, but it certainly won't stop the fanatics from declaring it.
Hell, over a hundred years ago we had sixty foot drifts in New York, can you imagine the insanity that would cause today?
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
All I can say is : Cool!
Damn! That's just cold, man...
Oh I get it, Global warming is the energy that moves the weather. So if it gets hotter or colder this summer it is global warming. If it is warmer or colder this winter it is global warming. If there are more or fewer tornado's or stronger / weaker hurricanes. It is all global warming.
So all weather events are proof of global warming no matter what way they go. Great logic!
You can see "global cooling" from your window? How high is your floor?
Just kidding of course. As someone else pointed out, global warming and climate change don't mean exactly the same thing. But I guess you're right that some folks have started to use the latter where they used to prefer the former, simply because certain other people react on every story which has "ice" or "snow" or "cold" in the title with a reflexive "see, AGW is a socialist conspiracy".
For the record:
In the scientific literature, there is a strong consensus that global surface temperatures have increased in recent decades and that the trend is caused primarily by human-induced emissions of greenhouse gases.[2][3][4] No scientific body of national or international standing disagrees with this view,[5] though a few organizations hold non-committal positions.[6] Disputes over the key scientific facts of global warming are now more prevalent in the popular media than in the scientific literature, where such issues are treated as resolved, and more in the United States than globally[7][8].
Gosh, thanks. That must be why the other ships call me Meatfucker -- GCU Grey Area (Eccentric)
Dude: You mentioned winter tires, but it needs mentioning again. Blizzaks FTW. Every complaint you make about the Prius is actually a complaint about the tires. :)
When it's snowing and nasty outside, do you wear smooth-soled open-toed sandals, or proper boots?
Even on your Xterra: Put some decent rubber on the thing that's made for the conditions, and just go for it.
My old RWD BMW 325i with a skinny set of Blizzaks goes, turns, and stops like an unstoppable force on ice and snow and sun-polished packed snow and.... This, despite having only a bit more than 5 inches of ground clearance.
The only time it has issues is on fresh snow up to 8 or 9 inches deep. Beyond that, it starts floating on the floor pan and there isn't enough weight on the tires for them to grip anything. Adding 80 or 100 pounds of ballast over the rear axle helps, but there are limits.
In the 7 or 8 years I've owned this car, it has been stuck once. And that was on 13 inches of newly-fallen snow. The rest of the time, I carry a tow strap to help other vehicles out of ditches....much to the amazement of several FWD sedan drivers, and one or two 4WD Jeep owners.
But it's not the car (well some of it is -- the weight distribution is quite good, and there is a lot of weight to distribute), it's the tires.
Kid-proof tablet..
Yes, I have missed them. Please do enlighten me! Maybe I'm a bit odd, but my threshold for "climate scientist" is quite high. I feel like you need to be involved in the construction and testing of climate models in order to call yourself a climate scientist. At the very least, you need to be in the data collection end of things.
Also, while I wish people pushing for reduced carbon emission well and hope they succeed, I don't think that they will. I think the efforts are wasted - people will probably use most of the world's fossil fuels as long as they are the cheapest way to get energy. Perhaps technology will save us, but barring that we should probably be putting money into mitigation efforts. There should be some centralized effort to cope with the effects of global warming: Do we continue to rebuild low-lying areas? Do we build sea walls? Do we pump cooling material into the atmosphere? And so on.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
Don't get all hot under the collar. You'll melt the ice caps faster.
"Breakin' rocks in the hot sun,
I fought the warm and warm won...
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
I'm fine with the idea that climate and weather are different things.... You can't have it both ways.
Firstly, I'm not a climate expert (though I did study some climate physics) so I'm not going to come into the debate about whether a particular hurricane was influenced by global warming, however in this case there are two underlying statements here
These two statements are in no way contradictory. Think about a marble at the bottom of a bowl. Now you start moving the bowl back and forward a bit. Sometimes the marble moves slowly, sometimes it moves quickly. If you add more energy to the system by moving the bowl more, it will still sometimes move fast (hot weather) and sometimes slowly (cold weather). The average will just be faster.
At the same time, for a given level of energy input there is a maximum height the marble can reach (limited by friction which sets the rate of loss of energy of the marble). It very rarely reaches that level, but it often get close. If you shake the bowl more strongly that maximum level will be higher. In the same way, the biggest storms you get with global warming will be bigger than it would be possible to get without global warming. This means that there will be some exceptional events where it really is possible to talk about global warming having a direct effect.
Suck it up, princesses.
"Evil will always triumph over good, because good is dumb." - Dark Helmet (Spaceballs)
I have the good fortune to live on Lake Michigan in Chicago, where there are beautiful mists rising off the lake as the waves smash into the ice piles extending off the shore, splashing on them, adding layer on layer of ice. Truly a fascinating sight.
This is the kind of winter I recall as a kid, blizzard of '78 being one vivid example. Snow piled up to the roof of our garage! It got so heavy that come Spring the snow melted to reveal the yard fences all bent out of shape. But the past several winters have been so mild, barely freezing at all the past two, that today there's almost a sense of a return to normalcy.
In "get off my lawn" mode, all this weather reporting drama is just silly -- when I was younger winter was like this on a regular basis. We were heartier for it too. I had grizzly chest hairs by age six.
"Molest me not with this pocket calculator stuff."
- Deep Thought
"at a rate far far less than predicted by all your models."
Patently False. They aren't rising as fast as the worse case scenarios the media likes to report. They are rising within model predictions.
"Nor have they risen to temperatures that exceed recent human history past"
irrelevant. Then rise in the past was do to different reasons. WHAT EXPERTS IN THE FIELD OF CLIMATOLOGY are talking about is energy trapped by excess CO2.
" Dismissed global warming that transpired on other celestrial bodies in our solar system during the same time."OK, you are just waving your ignorance arounbd.
A) If you are implying the warming is from an extrenal source, say in increase in the out put of the SUns energy, it would apply to every single body in the solar system in accordance to the inverse square law. Other body warming is NOT happenign on all bodies, and where it does happen there is no correlation to it happening on few other bodies.
B) IF you are implying there is an increase in the energy output of the sun, we would know becasue we measure it pretty accuratly. The rising trend does NOT correlate with the Suns activity.
" Has a habit of touting every storm or weather incident (even earthquakes) as proof of global warming, "
um, that's the media, not scientists who are experts in that field of study. However, there will be an increase in the energy of events. This can be stronger storms, or more storms,. The bottom line: more energy expressed over time.
"we did have some of the hottest years in recent record during the late 90's.
That really nice and I"m sure that makes sense in your little box of ignorance, sadly it shows you are completely ignorant and just restating the same bull crap Fox has fed your simpleton mind.
"We have also had some of the coldest incidents in recorded history in recent years as well."
As expect by climate change models, dumb ass. The term climate change is older the global warming, BTW.
Facts:
1) Visible light comes from the sun.
2) Visible light creates IR when it strikes something
3) CO2* absorbs IR energy
4) We put out far more CO2 then can be absorbed by the pre-industrial climate cycles.
So tell me: What's happening to the extra absorbed energy id it is impacting the climate?
There is a reason you echo chamber only cherry picks 'facts' and never talks about the actual science.
*This applies to other gases as well, but CO2 is the biggest one we emit at this time.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Repeat After Me: No single weather event can be said to be proof or refutation of Global Climate Change.
All Global Climate Change says is that as the *average* global temperature increases the traditional weather patterns we have become accustomed to will change in unpredictable ways. Some areas may see colder winters, others warmer. Some areas will see increased rain, others will become deserts. In fact some places may have hotter, drier summers yet colder wetter winters. The problems come from the fact that we've put farms and cities in certain locations with the expectation that the weather would be stable over the long term.
You can't say any one hurricane is proof of global climate change any more than you can say any one cold winter refutes global climate change.
Natural != (nontoxic || beneficial)
My old RWD BMW 325i with a skinny set of Blizzaks goes, turns, and stops like an unstoppable force on ice and snow
Is stopping like an unstoppable force a good thing or a bad thing?
"Our two-party system is like a bowl of shit looking at itself in a mirror." - Lewis Black
And Viking settlements from the 100AD range show they grew crops similar to much further south... Crops that its still not WARM enough for where you live.
The problem is not whether climate will change, it is the changes in available natural resources that go with it. When that Roman warm period ended about 400AD it pushed the north men south, and set the Vikings to sea because farming slowly became unproductive.
The North America has little history of 500+ years ago. So how are things going to change for PEOPLE... In much of the Midwest we've been dealing with multiple years of drought... And even these mega storms aren't dropping ENOUGH snow to fix it. On the other hand, the droughts cause flooding and mudslides when the rains do come because HUMANS have changed the landscape over 200 years.
One way or another these changes will effect PEOPLE, and sitting in Arizona hiding behind your AC is only going to last so long before RESOURCES have to be reallocated for another 50-100 years DIFFERENTLY than they are now.
This is where Capitalism conflicts with running a nation properly. National economists are about making the COUNTRY operate efficiently.... Capitalists are about taking those identified weaknesses and PROFITING from making them WORSE.... Which is why they hate the push for addressing climate change/global warming because that means we're addressing DEMAND before a profitable crisis occurs.
So, they have defective sprinklers. No sprinkler should be going off at 50C.
Just another day in Paradise
We should be [...], greening the deserts; in short, taking the simple steps to making Earth a little better.
Greening the deserts is not a risk free proposition.
You could easily shift local or global weather patterns, depending on how much greening you do and where you do it.
Anyways, if you want to see results, you can watch the Chinese try (and so far fail because of poor choices) in their attempts to green the Gobi desert.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three-North_Shelter_Forest_Program
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
Sigh. Take a look at this graph and read the article.
What a fool believes, he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.
(Adding something like 1" of topsoil to America's farm land would sequester more CO2 than man has ever emitted, IIRC, and we could actually do that simultaneously with growing bio-fuels...!)
AGW (whether true or false) is just something for people to argue about while governments and corporations make the biggest power grab in the history of power grabs. Divide and conquer at work.
Hang on, buddy!
Questions raise, answers kill. Raise questions to stay alive.
Yes.
Kid-proof tablet..
"at a rate far far less than predicted by all your models." Patently False. They aren't rising as fast as the worse case scenarios the media likes to report. They are rising within model predictions.
Actually, he is more right than you are. Let's compare, shall we? Plot the trend from 1990 - 2050, and compare with observations.The IPCC even revised their 2013 report from the 2nd quarter, downgrading their predictions from 0.13-0.33 per decade to 0.10-0.23 per decade. That's near the BOTTOM of the model's predictions, so it seems even the IPCC isn't buying that the models are accurate.
They claimed in AR5 that the observations were within the model predictions from AR4, but their OWN GRAPHIC tells a different story.
B) IF you are implying there is an increase in the energy output of the sun, we would know becasue we measure it pretty accuratly. The rising trend does NOT correlate with the Suns activity.
Actually, that's not accurate. True, it does not correlate with the sun's total solar irradiance but the models ignore anything else, such as spectral variability. There have been plenty of correlations made with solar activity, earth's orbit, Milankovitch cycles and cosmic rays. You might want to review a few of these papers on solar influence of climate change.
" Has a habit of touting every storm or weather incident (even earthquakes) as proof of global warming, " um, that's the media, not scientists who are experts in that field of study. However, there will be an increase in the energy of events. This can be stronger storms, or more storms,. The bottom line: more energy expressed over time.
Well you can claim that if you want to, but in fact it's a compromised media and activist climatologists. Like the ones that made a trip to Antarctica as a marketing exercise and alarm people about the disappearing ice (it didn't work out for them), like James Hansen, like Michael Oppenheimer, like John Harte.
" Has a habit of touting every storm or weather incident (even earthquakes) as proof of global warming, " um, that's the media, not scientists who are experts in that field of study. However, there will be an increase in the energy of events. This can be stronger storms, or more storms,. The bottom line: more energy expressed over time.
"No True Scotsman", then?
"We have also had some of the coldest incidents in recorded history in recent years as well." As expect by climate change models, dumb ass. The term climate change is older the global warming, BTW.
Yes, as everything and nothing is all evidence of climate change. There are so many predictions, EVERY event is confirmation and NO event can shed dispersion upon it. Does that really sound like science to you?
4) We put out far more CO2 then can be absorbed by the pre-industrial climate cycles.
Pure conjecture. The FACT is that the correlation between increasing CO2 followed by increased warming is not very good.
"Somebody has to do something. It's just incredibly pathetic it has to be us."
--- Jerry Garcia
"Ordinary" (orange-bulb) fire sprinklers are designed to trigger at 57C, and are rated for a maximum sustained ceiling temperature of just 38C. In buildings that are expected to get hotter than that, you're supposed to use red-bulb sprinklers, which trigger at 74C and are better able to deal with high sustained ceiling temperatures. It doesn't seem too unreasonable that someone in Rio was not thinking conservatively enough and installed the wrong kind of sprinkler heads.
So CO2 levels aren't rising? Really? That's a rather amazing claim.
Humans put out massive amounts of CO2, mostly by burning fossil fuel. We're the single largest source for the gas on the planet, far surpassing the volcanoes. Atmospheric levels of CO2 are rising because our output outstrips the natural processing of the gas into the crust, to the point where if we all died off and stopped emitting CO2 tomorrow it would be most of a century before our excess was finally processed out. The natural processes are pretty well known, they know how much limestone, peat, deepwater sediments, etc. are produced every year, and how much CO2 should be trapped by them.
The only reason why atmospheric CO2 levels aren't rising even faster is because the ocean is absorbing massive amounts of it and changing PH sufficiently to kill aquatic species in many areas. Dead coral, clams and diatoms can't process CO2 into calcium carbonate, so now we're producing a feedback loop in those places too.
Since you seem to think I'm completely out in left field, why do **YOU** think that atmospheric and oceanic CO2 levels are rising? Is it just coincidence that the rate of rise corresponds to the rate of our output?
"Think about how stupid the average person is. Now, realise that half of them are dumber than that." - George Carlin