Over the weekend I was having lunch with some folks I have a great deal of respect for and the talk turned to the environment as it usually does. Comments were made about how much snow and cold we are having this winter(not fun when you are in the car business by the way) and how this extreme cold and snow was caused by man-made global warming. Out of respect I did not say much, but I am still trying to figure out how 4 feet of snowfall and several days of sub-zero temperatures are the result of man-made global warming. I did some AGW surfing over the weekend, and I have to admit I am puzzled, Gore continues to say global warming is worse than anyone thought, yet when I find data it does not paint the same picture. I have watched his movie several times and have watched the Great Global warming swindle once. From past experience with the world I would guess that the truth lies somewhere inbetween. I found this graph on a US site that has a huge AGW proponents name attached(Hansen), looking at this graph, how could anyone say the earth is heating rapidly? When I look at most individual station graphs that are in rural areas(no heat island effect) there has been little if any temperature rise. Also in gore's movie the insinuation is that Hurricane Katrina was caused by AGW and now a report comes out that says AGW actually diminishes hurricanes. I know there are many scinetists on here, someone explain some of this to me please.
I'm not a scientist, but I'll take a small stab at it: I think that it's the terminology. Global warming creates shifts in weather patterns, thus Climate Change. Extremes of weather, very unusual weather, and unseasonal weather, whether it is way cold, or unbelievably warm, is all symptoms of Climate Change. Global Warming shifts Climate patterns by altering the amount of moisture in the air, which shifts the upper wind patterns, and by altering the temperature of the oceans, which shifts the tidal patterns. Just looking at US temperatures doesn't give a complete picture. The southern hemisphere seems to be dealing with much more serious effects at this time. NOTE: this is a highly simplistic explanation. YMMV.
I think that couching it in terms of climate change isn't necessary. The climate is never a static thing. From year to year there can be pronounced differences in temp and precip. This has always been true. You don't need to invoke GW to explain this sort of thing. Yeah, it's cold outside. Here in CO it's been pretty cold, though not nearly as consistently cold as last Janurary, where the temps were in the 10's day in and day out. We've hit 30's and 40's quite often this winter. Looking at global averages, it certainly appears that the earth is warming. On a region by region basis the numbers will vary quite a bit.
Climate is not the same a weather. For example the climate in Hawaii is tropical. For most part it's humid, rainy and sunny. When it's rainy that's weather. When it's sunny, that's weather. When it rains more today than yesterday that's weather. The cumulative weather over a year, that's weather. If it were to snow for a day. That'd be weather. It'd be a fluke, but it would still be weather. If it were to snow consistently on the beaches of Waikiki during the winter year after year, then that'd be climate change. Four more or less feet of snow in Minnesota compared to last year does not tell you anything about climate change. That'd be like smoking one cigarette then asking yourself, "did that give me cancer." Then the next day smoking another 2 cigarettes and asking the same question. It's the cumulative effects over long periods of time.
What they said. I'm not quite sure how anyone can look at a one and a half month weather pattern for an isolated area and extrapolate global climate change affects from just this data.
You absolutely cannot. Look at last year. We had a pretty darn cold winter here in CO (though I'm not sure how it figures into our 30 or 50 year average) while back east it was one of the warmest winters in recorded history.
Haven't you heard - everything is caused by global warming: warmlist That's why I just have to shake my head every time there is some new article about this or that being caused by global warming. Usually, if you read or listen to the news report closely, there is little evidence of "global warming" being the cause. Case in point - I recently watched a show on a particular set of coral reefs that were dying in the pacific. The narrator warned ominously about the prospect that climate change was a likely factor in causing the reefs to die. About 3/4 of the way through the program it is revealed that the cause in fact was deforestation on the island that was causing soil erosion which was putting silt into the ocean which was settling on the coral and smothering them / blocking sunlight. I'm not saying CO2 is not having any effect on our ecosystem, but I am really tired of hearing that everything that is "wrong" or even observationally changing on our planet is the result of global warming.
Yea and we had the hottest summer in Bozeman Montana, a summer that started in March and lasted until Sept. It was really hot. Year before it went into the seventies in Jan. Montana has variable weather but this is weird.
Heat as you know is energy. A tiny increase in the temperature of the atmosphere globally is a massive amount of energy stored. Creating wind and storms require energy. The atmosphere is driven by heat, it makes cyclones, hurricanes and just good old winds. Hotter air drops less rain so there are droughts too but when the rain comes down the hotter air is super saturated with water causing floods. There is also a warmer ocean to think about. If climatoligists are wrong and there is no global warming what will we hurt by using less fossil fuels and emitting less carbon? But if they are right and we ignore them we will look pretty stupid. We can keep using energy at this rate and not run out of oil for 100 years they say. Great but what then? I have a child, do you have a child? Work hard to make a better future for that child do you? So why make it harder for that child's grand children? Lets conserve what we have now by minimising consumption, save some for future generations.
The hidden caveat there is the often excluded phrase "at the current rate of consumption". Here in the US in the 1970's we had 400 years of coal left. Now we have 250. The rate of consumption is key. If consumption grows 7% a year in 10 years it will have doubled. So you can really see where China is headed. I wonder what their consumption growth has been over the last decade.
Pat - I don't think anyone is saying that minimizing consumption isn't a good idea (except for the Fed yesteday - LOL). I think Malorn's point is the whole global warming hysteria has reached such a fevered pitch that even otherwise reasonable people are buying into increasingly dubious claims.
GLOBAL WARMING PROBLEMS: 1) In global warming discussions, 99% of the participants cannot help but make connections with the present weather somewhere. I have tried...and always fail. 2) Sustainable living is (mostly) independent of global climate mechanisms. We either burn up all the oil and coal before we become sustainable or not. 3) If we find out global warming is independent of CO2, it still sucks to be covered in two inches of ash, sulfuric acid, every fuel reserve area stripped mined to the core, and gigantic nuclear waste areas to be secured for 100000s of years.
Sounds good, although I suspect the nuclear waste problem is much shorter term. I remember reading a pretty compelling article in MIT Technology Review a few years back that basically suggested nuclear waste should be secured for a couple of hundred years -- at which time the technology would be so far advanced from our own that the storage problem could be easily solved. It may sound like pushing the problem off on future generations, but realistically I suspect it is an easily solved problem using future technologies. In the meantime, we could reduce a lot of CO2 output by switching to nuclear, for those who are highly concerned.
If I had not spent years of my life operating nuclear power plants, I might agree. Unfortunately, I do not. Here is why: 1) For "containment" to work, everyplace in the world must not dump their waste. North Korea, Iran, etc. are going to get rid of the waste in some manner that is unlikely to be "easily solved". This is the type of thing where 99% of the waste being perfectly stored is actually megacurries of toxic stuff released to the world. 2) There is no economic incentive to solve the problem. Techology will absolutely change in the coming centuries, human nature will not. I would also note that we have the technology to solve some of yesterday's problems now (e.g. destroyed fisheries, rainforest destruction, etc.), but we are not. Dumping it on the future generation is the problem, not the solution. 3) We have all the technology present now to solve our energy problems with solar, wind, and other renewable sources. Yet most are convinced that this is not true. In the end it turns out to be an economic reason we are not moving in that direction. (I would instantly buy a viable production electric car if I could, but I cannot....and someone telling me it is because battery technology is not available reveals their lack of understanding, not mine.)
If it smells like a duck, quacks like a duck and looks like a duck ... Yeah, and in the 1930s they probably thought "this stinking smog we are pumping into the air is only going to build up and we will eventually run out of fuel but we believe in 50 years there will be a solution to that problem." It may sound like pushing the problem off on future generations, but ...
Pat - we did largely solve the problem of air pollution in this country - the air is much cleaner today than it was 20,30,40,50 or more years ago - because we now have superior technology. You just proved my point.
Admittedly, the term 'global warming' is used far too often by people who have no idea what they're talking about. No, any one weather event is not enough to merit the quick conclusion, but there are enough significant and sudden (in geologic time frames) changes that there is cause for concern. Why is it not enough to say that we are doing serious harm, and that we should change our ways? Yes, we hear the words too often and not always in the right context. But that doesn't mean the changes aren't happening, or that humans have nothing to do with them.
