Is this drought a permanent thing? (Austin: suite, car wash, trees)

[OpenD]

Originally Posted by cBach

Looks like this week has been a good drought buster...

Nope. It's much needed rain, but hardly a drought buster. And with all the weird weather hitting all over the map... high temperature records are being broken 10X as often as low temperature records are... this could be just the start of the drought. The very best any weather scientists seem to have to say is "no end in sight."

[G Grasshopper]

Originally Posted by cBach

Looks like this week has been a good drought buster...

So far, I have just gotten 3" from this "rain event." In order to break the drought, we would need many more inches, hopefully over a period of time, so as not to flood, and they would have to be in the right place. Rain at my house is great, but to fill up the currently low upstream lakes, we need lots of inches over the Llano area. This rain has no doubt saved the area some water usage (I didn't run my spriklers this Sunday, and I imagine lots of people didn't) and it is for sure good for the trees in greenbelt, wild and park areas that otherwise wouldn't be getting watered, but I think we would have to follow this rainy week with a tropical storm to put much of a dent in the drought.

[jimboburnsy]

Originally Posted by 7ry1an3

You can have some of Houstons rain. I just want one week of no rain so I can wash my car.

You are fired.

After last summer I told myself I would never complain about rain again. Ever.

I'm still not. I'm actually revelling in this weather and happily mowing the lawn twice a week.

To no one in particular: 2011 was the worst that I've ever seen, but I think that those of my generation (worldy and experienced as we may fancy ourselves) would do well to remember that we haven't really seen much and it isn't sound to draw conclusions about geologic and meteorologic trends based on ten years of haphazard, anecdotal, intuitive observation within the confines of a specific region of Texas. In other words "Whew, it sure seems to be getting hotter every year. Maybe the global climate really is changing. What? Lake Travis is lower than I have EVER seen it. That reinforces my belief that the global climate is changing" is certainly a tempting manner of thinking, but it's not very sophisticated and it's too narrow.

[TexasHorseLady]

jimboburnsy, that is so true. That kind of thinking reminds me of when my son was 9 years old and informed me, because I didn't care for a particular rock song on the car radio, that the reason I "didn't like rock music" was because "we have electric guitars now". (At that point, I, a teenager in 1968 and a veteran of many many rock concerts, found the closest showing of Monterrey Pop, took him to see it, and said, "See that thing that guy up there is setting on fire? That's an electric guitar. I've seen him live when I was a teenager." It was perfectly understandable, of course, for him, at nine, to think that just because he'd discovered or experienced something, it had never happened before in the history of the world.

[OpenD]

Originally Posted by jimboburnsy

"Whew, it sure seems to be getting hotter every year. Maybe the global climate really is changing. What? Lake Travis is lower than I have EVER seen it. That reinforces my belief that the global climate is changing" is certainly a tempting manner of thinking, but it's not very sophisticated and it's too narrow.

True, but complaining about the weather seems to be in our genes, because people everywhere do it, all the time, and likely always have.

As far as a broader and more sophisticated look, with some effort it is possible to determine for oneself that yes, global climate change is clearly upon us. Within the scientific community there is no significant doubt of that, and there is no real controversy, and there hasn't been for years. The only surviving controversy about climate change is the manufactured controversy in the news media created by people with an agenda to deny the consensus of the scientific community for business reasons.

But human nature being what it is, people are going to remain persistently unswayed by ever more dire reports of the accelerating disappearance of polar ice, while seeing clear signs of the approaching apocalypse in the increased browning of their lawn.

[Trainwreck20]

The only surviving controversy about climate change

There is legitimate controversy related to whether climate change is impacted by human activity or not; it seems that if someone says "humans don't have a significant impact', they are immediately cast as 'what, you don't think climate change is real?'

As for scope of basis, yes, we humans rarely live long enough to have any personal experience of planet cycles. We MIGHT live long enough to see some change, one way or the other, but we don't have the ability to compare that to a complete cycle that may take 500 or 1,000 years (or longer) to occur.

OTOH, there are ways of objectively looking at cycles based on other data, and we do appear to be a continuing trend in warming since the 1500s (the 'little ice age'). Where is the 'top' going to be? That is the real question, along with whether or not what we do will impact that top (or when it arrives). How will the process effect the Central Texas area? And how soon? All good questions, with many legitimate scientific projections but with lots of variables that are 'fuzzy', at best. Will we end up high-n-dry (ala W. Texas) or worse (true desert), or even have some weird effect that results in MORE rain due to Atlantic changes?

Finally, imho, from what I see being proposed to counter green house gases (GHGs), the most aggressive/optimistic proposals out there would result in a 5% or MAYBE (in your dreams) a 10% reduction in our human GHG output. The more realistic ones have us just holding steady and not increasing.

[G Grasshopper]

[LEFT]The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Admin. has just determined that the past 12 months in the United States have been the warmest 12 month period since weather started being tracked in 1895.

Quoting Jonathan Overpeck, a professor of atmospheric sciences at the University of Arizona, "This is what global warming looks like at the regional or personal level. The extra heat increases the odds of worse heat waves, droughts, storms and wildfire. This is certainly what I and many other climate scientists have been warning about."

We can't necessarily blame every storm or high temperature on global warming, but global warming increases the likelyhood of extreme weather events, as those we have been seeing.
It is true that many measures people talk about would seem to put only a small dent in this trend. But if we as a nation could look objectively at the science of our situation and start taking measures to ameliorate it, we might at least start to deal with the problem. I know it is a lot easier to deny global warming and therefore go about our lives as usual, but it is not reality.






[/LEFT]

[Parksider]

Whether true or not, we can't afford to gamble.

The situation is much like Pascal's Wager, but in regards to the global environment. In a nutshell, compare the best case scenarios and worse case scenarios --> Best case is that we combat climate change and suffer economically (poor growth) ---> worst case is that we do nothing and suffer much worse economically (human migration, crop failures, weather disasters, humanitarian crisis, war, famine).

check out the possible future scenarios ----> The Most Terrifying Video You'll Ever See - YouTube

[Trainwreck20]

1895 to now is still just a blink in global time.

we might at least start to deal with the problem.

Whether true or not, we can't afford to gamble.

Getting a bit off-local issues, but....if you can't afford to gamble, no matter the economic cost, you better not get in a car - there is am much greater chance that you will die. You better no use a cell phone, there is a change you will get cancer. And the list goes on. I know these are much smaller scale, but the issue is really the same. The cost to society to cut our GHGs by more than 5 or 10% is STAGGERING and would not happen overnight, even if the entire world agreed to start down the road tomorrow. The recession we just had? A blip compared to what the cost would be to suddenly pour trillions upon trillions (in the U.S. alone) into revamping our power structure, redesigning how we make computers (big culprit in GHGs, btw), abandoning our existing manufacturing complexes (plastics, food, steel, and more), etc. You are talking about massive increase in prices AND increase in taxes.

And those outcomes (I did not watch the video, just guessing)? We will see those come to be anyway - global warming is happening, humans or no humans. There is nothing we can 'deal' with that will prevent global warming from occurring. If we are (or were) at fault, it is much too late to 'stop' being at fault. The warming has been occurring for half a millennium.

[jimboburnsy]

Originally Posted by OpenD

True, but complaining about the weather seems to be in our genes, because people everywhere do it, all the time, and likely always have.

As far as a broader and more sophisticated look, with some effort it is possible to determine for oneself that yes, global climate change is clearly upon us. Within the scientific community there is no significant doubt of that, and there is no real controversy, and there hasn't been for years. The only surviving controversy about climate change is the manufactured controversy in the news media created by people with an agenda to deny the consensus of the scientific community for business reasons.

But human nature being what it is, people are going to remain persistently unswayed by ever more dire reports of the accelerating disappearance of polar ice, while seeing clear signs of the approaching apocalypse in the increased browning of their lawn.

I would probably take exception to a line item or two if this thread were over in the politics or green living forum, but it sounds like we agree with regard to the Texas aspects.