Talking about winter, I lived for a while on a farm in the Bavarian Alps. Sometimes it was so cold we had to start a fire beneath the cows to get their milk.

~ Life is a journey. Live it well. ~

~ Happy is he who can discover the causes of things, for thereby he has mastered all fear, and is throned above fate. -- Goethe ~

114 degs in Vegas yesterday, so I heard on the news.

~ Life is a journey. Live it well. ~

~ Happy is he who can discover the causes of things, for thereby he has mastered all fear, and is throned above fate. -- Goethe ~

You know, maybe if we paid some attention to the Kyoto Accords, we wouldn't be frying our collective brains out. It's going to get really rough when we have mass "die-offs" in the poor, equatorial areas. Best wishes to all.

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- (Bob in Eugene, WHERE IT RAINS A LOT!!!! Glug, Glug, Drip, Drip)

That's an important question! By "We," I mean our elected officials in government. Man, I'M COOKING OUT HERE! IT'S BLOODY HOT!!!

Everything above this line is sponsored by Captain Zort!I'm Captain Zort, and I don't know what he's talking about!!!!

- (Bob in Eugene, WHERE IT RAINS A LOT!!!! Glug, Glug, Drip, Drip)

renomarvinm The EU is up 16.4% over Kyoto guidelines The U.S. is up 16.7% The EU figures include the conversion of East German coal burners, without which ... **goldeneye** The correct figure is less than 1°F since 1970 There was a cooling trend from 1940-1970

Google and Wikipedia are not substitutes for education or intelligence. —cornercube, 2009

Global warming has raised the average world-wide temperature by only about two degrees during the past 50 years. There are other factors involved for these unusual global extreme weather patterns. The temperature difference would be enough to upset global weather patterns, causing wild swings in the weather. What we're seeing now could most certainly be a side-effect of global warming.
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With sufficient thrust, pigs fly just fine. However, this isn't necessarily a good idea. It's hard to predict where they are going to land, and it could be dangerous sitting underneath them as they sail overhead.

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mister*phil "The temperature difference would be enough to upset global weather patterns, causing wild swings in the weather. What we're seeing now could most certainly be a side-effect of global warming." Ah, no. It's simply weather.

Google and Wikipedia are not substitutes for education or intelligence. —cornercube, 2009

renomarvinm Just to make it perfectly clear, I am a skeptic about global warming. I have a background that includes modeling and simulation, and have been keeping up with atmospheric modeling since the crude efforts of the early 1970's were used to predict dire consequences if a fleet of SST's were built. The earth has been in a cycle of extensive ice ages interrupted by shorter warm periods for millions of years. Our information on those earlier time periods is limited. Since reliable measurements only go back a couple hundred years, and there are not written accounts older than a few thousand years (and those sketchy), we have to study many things using "proxy" measurements. Ice cores, ocean sediments, coral, tree rings (dendrochronology), and a variety of other methods have been used to peer into the past, with varied and debatable success. "The glaciers are melting" has been one of the phony rallying cries used to urge precipitate action on "the global warming problem". One thing that can be pretty conclusively stated is that in the previous warm period between ice ages, the tropical glaciers melted completely. Kilimanjaro has been cited regularly since about 2001 as the "poster glacier", but research earlier this year pointed the finger pretty conclusively at the destruction of the local rainforest, which dried out the winds taking moisture aloft to be turned into snow. Likewise, some ongoing research into European glaciers is indicating that they may not date to the last ice age, but may have melted completely several times since. Stay tuned for that one. The Earth is not a closed system. Solar radiation warms the Earth, and the Earth radiates heat into space. (Before we go any further, let’s note that the sun doesn’t keep the Earth warm by itself. Without the heat generated inside the Earth by radioactivity, our planet would be frozen through.) The amount of heat that is generated by burning fossil fuels is negligible and is omitted from most heat balance calculations because it is tiny compared to the incoming solar energy. The sun supplies more than 5,000 times as much energy to the earth as we get from burning fossil fuels. Despite claims to the contrary that seem to appear weekly in the popular press, the question of whether or not the earth is warming is not settled science. In the last few years, an media avalanche has been driven by a rather famous historical graph of global temperatures that was constructed by combining data from many sources, mostly proxies, and purports to show a sharp increase in global mean temperatures over the last few decades. This graph commonly referred to as the “hockey stick”, is the linchpin upon which most arguments for controlling greenhouse gas emissions are based. For the past two years, there has been convincing argument that the methodology is flawed, and that the data was improperly manipulated. Following it properly requires a pretty extensive background in mathematics and statistics. Here is a link to the site of the primary critics of the work: http://www.climateaudit.org/index.php?p=205 For the layman, it is sufficient to note the extreme year-to-year variability in the global mean temperature. This makes it very difficult to determine trends, and also makes it clear that GMT has a wide natural variation that has many contributing factors. Recent research has shown that variations in solar output associated with established solar cycle is a large contributor to changes in GMT. Preliminary results show that this factor alone can account for about half of the variation. Again, stay tuned.

Google and Wikipedia are not substitutes for education or intelligence. —cornercube, 2009

Remember all the hoopla about the "hockey stick" and how the 1990's were supposed to be the hottest decade in a thousand of years? Myth busted: from the NAS report released last week: "Even less confidence can be placed in the original conclusions by Mann et al. (1999) that “the 1990s are likely the warmest decade, and 1998 the warmest year, in at least a millennium” because the uncertainties inherent in temperature reconstructions for individual years and decades are larger than those for longer time periods, and because not all of the available proxies record temperature information on such short timescales." In the meantime, the "scientist" still refuses to release his data and the algorithms he used to massage the data into a graph guaranteed to get more funding. If the proponents of global warming were held up to one-tenth the standard applied to those that disagree with evolution, we'd be a lot better off. As it stands now, we don't have enough data to determine what the temperature trend is, much less why. The Vikings settled Greenland more than a thousand years ago. It was warmer then. Every time you hear a news report about the climate "models", just remember that George Lucas used all kinds of models to make Star Wars. You don't see Han Solo running for office, do you?

Google and Wikipedia are not substitutes for education or intelligence. —cornercube, 2009

Don't think so. Global warming has raised the average world-wide temperature by only about two degrees during the past 50 years. There are other factors involved for these unusual global extreme weather patterns.

So, who says it can’t all be interrelated? A few degrees here and the icecaps start melting. Once the ice caps start melting, ocean currents start shifting, along with solar winds and weather patterns. Etc.

Hi: I accept the idea that "It's just the weather" as a reasonable argument that might have value.

It’s most certainly an argument, even a “successful” argument (which has been used for several decades, now), but it’s NOT reasonable (not at this point)! It’s a “desperate” argument, at best! It’s one of those stick your head in the sand, cross your fingers, eat whatever you want as long as you pop a magic pill, close you eyes and hope it goes away arguments! I expect such arguments from oil men and children (who don’t know any better), but not from men with your age and wisdom

The Earth is changing, but would have with or with out us. Yes, of course the earth changes, with or without man's help. But, I don't think that's the issue, is it? We (humans) will all die (sooner or later), NO matter how well we take care of ourselves. But, we certainly can speed up the process through ignorant and risky actions

As I pointed out to Mr Goldeneye above, the correct figure is less than 1°F since 1970.

Perhaps that’s true. However, most scientists now agree that the rise will continue. The major point of contention is how far will it go and how quickly will it get there?


I hope you aren’t one of those guys (or gals) that think, a few degrees here and there isn’t going to matter much (if you are, I’m wasting my time . Sea levels have (and will continue to rise. Mid- and high-latitude regions, such as much of the United States, Europe, and Asia, could experience an increase in the incidence of heat waves, floods, and droughts as the global climate changes. The impacts of such extreme events on human welfare as well as natural ecosystems could be significant.

Climate change is likely to have wide-ranging and mostly adverse impacts on human health. The projected increase in the duration and frequency of heat waves is expected to increase mortality rates as a result of heat stress, especially where air conditioning is not available. To a lesser extent, increases in winter temperatures in high latitudes could lead to decreases in mortality rates. Climate change is also expected to lead to increases in the potential transmission of many infectious diseases, including malaria, dengue, and yellow fever, extending the range of organisms such as insects that carry these diseases into the temperate zone, including parts of the United States, Europe, and Asia. For example, projections indicate that the zone of potential malaria transmission, in response to global surface temperature increases at the top of the projected range, may enlarge from an area containing about 45% of the world population to about 60% by the end of the twenty-first century, resulting in 50-80 million additional cases of malaria per year .

With 50-70% of the global human population currently living in coastal areas, future sea level rises, alterations in storm patterns, and higher storm surges could have significant effects. About 46 million people are currently at risk by flooding in coastal areas as a result of storm surges. In the absence of measures to adapt, even with current populations, a 50 cm (about 20 inches) sea level rise would increase the number of people whose land will be at risk from serious flooding or permanent inundation to about 92 million, while a 100 cm (about 40 inches) rise would increase this number to 118 million. If expected population growth is incorporated into the projections, these estimates increase substantially.
Other projected changes include a disappearance of between one- third and one-half of existing mountain glacier mass by 2100. Alpine glaciers are already observed to be in rapid retreat and many cities between 30°N and 30°S depend on these natural reservoirs for their water supply. For example, in Lima, Peru, the entire water supply for 10 million people depends on the summer melt from a glacier that is now in rapid retreat, for reasons that may or may not be related to global climate change. In the future, climate change could also lead to shifts in river flow and water supply, with serious implications for human settlements and agriculture.
Climate change is also likely to affect human infrastructure, including transportation, energy demand, human settlements (especially in developing countries), the property insurance industry, and tourism.

I’m hoping we won’t end up like the planet Venus (as Stephen Hawkins has predicted), anytime soon . But one things for sure, “things are a changing.” And, I’m one who believes it ain’t nice to fool with Mother Nature!