Planet Woes

[Gregg1100]

This planet seems to have gone to hell on a hand cart.
Nasty floods in England, extreme temperatures in Australia with bush fires burning peoples homes, floods in South America, twisters in mid America, etc.
Man seems to have really screwed up our world.. I pity our kids and their kids who will have no end of problems.

[DonaldG]

Yes Gregg, things seem to always be getting worse, beating previous records again and again. Can't help feeling that until we get our exploding population under control there's no chance of improvement.

As someone who has experienced the destruction of their home by flooding (during 2012 - the summer of wild freak floods all over the UK ) I really feel for those affected. The media talk about it being weeks or even months before they get back into their homes - 2 years is more realistic, especially when so many are affected and resources spread thinly.

[dillon]

I'm not arguing with anyone on here about the human effect on the climate, and not even trying to play Devil's advocate. But to be responsible advocates for scientific truth, we need to inject factual evidence, otherwise we become as thoughtless and propagandist as the climate-change deniers have shown themselves.

One year, hotter or colder than normal does not make a trend. The warming trend exists, obviously, but it is proven by long-term climate record, much of which is fairly primitive, and glacial, tree ring, and geological (soil) evidence that the trend exists. I only caution everyone to get the facts of the argument correct, as that is the only way to assert the reality of climate change in the face of those who have immense economic and political interests in denying it. For any of us to say that this one-year El Nino event is evidence of climate change is to reduce our argument to the level of brainless wonders like Limbaugh and O'Reilly who stated as if it was somehow factual, over and over again last winter, when there was record snowfall in much of the US, that the severe winter was evidence of the fallacy of climate change.

They were technically very, very wrong, of course. and transparently deceitful in the implication. Weather has always had aberrations, but the warming trend for the overall climate still persisted, despite the nine feet of snow in the north. In spite of the dreadful winter that I am sure Carl, at least, will never forget, the average planetary temperature still increased in 2015. So, the observations of those pundit-whores, pimped to us by Big Carbon, were proven to be way off, as will any speculation that this dramatic El Nino is the beginning of the demise of the planet because of the heat. There have been other record-breaking weather cycles before, and more will follow. We do a disservice by exaggerating the significance of any single winter or summer, though the phenomena are remarkable. The significance of the consequences of big swings in weather, is partly because we have such a staggering human population now, and still growing, so in any natural disaster, to which we are all vulnerable, larger and larger numbers of humans will be affected.

We could, perhaps, accurately speculate that atmospheric heat exacerbates weather extremes and does so dramatically. Some have suggested that even the record snowfall associated with last winter's polar vortex phenomenon was a product of atmospheric heat, which contributes water to the atmosphere, hence, mixed with frigid air, equals snow. This year, of course, New England has seen little of the white stuff, and like us, an excess of the clear wet stuff, so far, and is simply balmy by their norms. However, for me to say that it is all due to global warming, is just as wrong as for Limbaugh, and the Fox News Idiots, and the pandering, lying politicians like Ted Cruz to say that a single cold winter proved that global warming was a hoax.

Obviously, huge fluctuations are not the direct result of a trend of accelerating average global temperature. Here in NC, a mid-Atlantic state, our daytime temperatures, statewide, mountains to sea, are 20 degrees F above normal; more startling is that our night temperatures are 30 degrees F above normal. We have strawberries blooming and grape vines and blueberries budding. We know that eventually cold will arrive; we just pray that it will not be April before it does. A too-warm winter makes, for us, a worse agricultural disaster than a cold winter. Combine that with saturated soils and standing water across most fields, and we are left scratching our heads as to what the spring will bring.

[crfriend]

In spite of the dreadful winter that I am sure Carl, at least, will never forget, the average planetary temperature still increased in 2015.

Actually, overall, the winter of 2014-2015 wasn't all that severe -- it's that it was all compressed into two months instead of the more normal four. In December of 2014 we got about an inch-and-a-half of snow, down from a normal of 14.4; in January it was 46.5 inches up from a normal of 17; and in February -- the longest darn month of the year -- we got 53 inches up from 15.6; March quieted down to about normal. Looking at it from July to July, the way the NWS (National Weather Service) does, we got a total of just shy of ten feet (119.7 inches) up from a normal of 64.1 -- and the bulk of that arrived in the two months mentioned.

Now, this does not indicate any sort of long-term trend, and to believe that it does is to deceive one's self. However, broad patterns have changed in my lifetime; it used to be that we'd have a light dusting of snow on the ground in early December, and sometimes even on Thanksgiving Day, we'd be under a pretty good blanket up until mid-January when we'd typically get a warm stretch which would melt a lot of it, and then we'd get more through February and March. Typically, we'd not let our guard down and put the shovels away until well into April. Now, gone is the "Mid-January Thaw" (I haven't seen one in better than a decade and a half), November and December are deceptively warm, we get slammed for January and February, and then it tapers off a bit more quickly than it did in the past.

Up until the last couple of years when we've actually gotten a fair bit of snow, we were increasingly getting "wintry mix" of snow, sleet, and freezing rain -- weather which used to be common to the Virginia area but which has since moved North (along with opossums; even the fauna is changing) -- and we're slated to get some of that tonight and tomorrow. So, definitely in the short term there's nothing conclusive -- although I fear that we're going to get a repeat of last winter this time 'round -- but long-term is more concerning, and is where we need to be looking.

I put no stock in the pundits here; they're little more than apologists for Standard Oil Exxon-Mobil and Ford Motor Company. In fact, I put very little stock in much US-based science now because it's so difficult to weed out the spin and money, and, instead, look internationally. The S/N ratio stinks; there's plenty of signal, but the noise is entirely shrill and distracting to the point of being impossible to filter out.

We shall see what the next few months bring, and what the next few years do. What will be interesting to see, although I won't be here to see it, is what it'll be like for our grandchildren.

[partlyscot]

I think it is pretty obvious that there are more, and more extreme, weather variations of late. From what I have read so far, it is virtually certain that it is due to humankind's impact on the environment. I fear it has gone too far to stop before the impacts are catastrophic. There are those who already feel those catastrophes are here. All I can do is carry on with my own life in as responsible a manner as can. I keep my eye on things for early warnings of a "tipping point" event, what I do if one occurs, is going to be interesting, and indeed, there may be nothing I can do. All a bit depressing, as I say, just going to keep on keeping on. Do the next thing. Hope none of you suffer any disasters, stay safe.

[crfriend]

From what I have read so far, it is virtually certain that it is due to humankind's impact on the environment. I fear it has gone too far to stop before the impacts are catastrophic.

Of note here is that from the geologic record, the planet tends to cycle on its own, and is still in the process of digging out from the last Ice Age. That the planet is warming is beyond question at this point; what remains as questions are how much of the trend is down to human activity, and what, if anything, can be done to slow the process to give humans a better shot at maintaining the environment that allows humans to exist? (And, yes, is that baldly self-serving.)

Recall that extinction is the rule, not the exception -- and that humankind are not privileged when it comes to that rule. The planet can snuff humanity out in a tick of the geologic clock and there may not be much that we can do to stop that. However, it does not mean that we should shove our heads into the sand and keep doing things the way we have for the past couple of hundred years.

[dillon]

Speaking of extinction, if you didn't catch this on NPR, it is well worth the listen/watch, regardless of what you may think of the hypotheses presented.

http://www.radiolab.org/live/

[Gregg1100]

One other thing is that there is no cold weather about ( at the moment ) to kill cold and flu bugs and other stuff rendered knackered by low temperature.
Pesticides, insecticides etc, are also killing off the bees, that go around pollinating a lot of plants that we depend on for food. No bees, eventually no us.
Like I said in my post here, humans will and are naffing up our world.

[moonshadow]

Meh..... the scientist blame the religious for burning all those fossil fuels and screwing up the climate... the religious blame the scientist for angering God and now our climate issues are "prophesy"....

Personally there is so much spin on both sides I really don't know.... but one thing I do know for sure is I can't change anyone's opinion on the subject, and since I'm not a scientist, nor a religious man I am in no position to take a position.....

I just know my electric bill for last month was $60 less than the year before, and I expect the next bill to reflect a similar usage as I know the heat pump hasn't ran as hard lately.....

So I'll take it!