Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
Location: planet octupulous is nearing earths atmosphere
13,621 posts, read 12,731,507 times
Reputation: 20050
Advertisements
in the 1970's they said a new ice age is coming,in the 1990s it was global warming, in 2005 i changed to climate change. well what the hell is it
so what changes have you noticed during the years. cold, drought, more rain, fires. etc.
this is my take on climate change. whether we humans are responsable for climate change or not. we are a force to be reckoned with. we humans use more materials in one day, than they did in a whole year in the 1800s!!! we have leveled half the forest and jungles,, burned half the oil, burned mount rainier size heaps of coal every year, burned trillions of cubic meters of natural gas,, we are stripping the oceans of fish faster than they can reperduce.. species are going extint 1000 times faster that before the industrial revolution..we are polluting the air, rivers, land ,oceans. it's got to have an effect on weather and or climate, ok thats enough of that i could go on and on!!!
the way i see it the earths climate has changed for millions of years. you name it, it's happened in the past. from super volcanos that spewed billions of tons of ash and other chemicals that effect the climate.. to astroids that slamed into the planet and ejected massive amounts of ash, rock and other chemicals...to ice ages that form and then suddenly go away... and many other scenarios to many to mention..
so what if all the carbon that we humans emit was a good thing insted of a bad thing, "seriously" trees love carbon and will grow faster if there's more of it in the atmosphere.. look at this way for the past two and a half years the winters have been getting colder and this winter looks like it will be worse than the previous two years. so in a sense we could be averting a new ice age. what would you rather have a little bit of global warming, or the start of a new ice age. freezing climate is worse than hotter climate. just look at what a small blizzard did on the east coast in just three days.. and then magnify that by like 3 or for months of freezing temps and you can see how bad an ice age could be for us humans.. the gaia hypothesis or theory clames that life regulates the temperature of the planet to a sertain degree. so life kicks in to set the counter ballance in many ways from more phyto plankton and other microscopic bacteria and so on.. we humans are life and would be part of that scenario... so imagine if the world did the "crap and trade" in the 1970s we could be going into a full blow ice age by now!!!! and even with all the extra carbon in the atmosphere it still could go into another ice age,,, but just not as fast as it would have if we did not spew it in the atmosphere in the past and present..
don't get me wrong it could be bad or it could be good who realy knows.
in the past 40 years here in the us vi i can't say that there's been a major change in the weather that would be concerning.. but i know thats here not other places around the world.
More windstorms and gales out here on the West Coast recently but none so far this year... Nobody really knows how the climate will change until it actually happens
I've been told by family members that NYC used to have very cold winters with a whole lot of snow, it's not like that at all anymore, now it's cool/cold (with some mild/warm days thrown in) winters with rain being the main form of precipitation. They also say that the Summers are still about the same but with higher humidity making it feel hotter. I haven't really experienced any change (too young) but NYC's climate is different now.
I'd welcome a nice 10°F average temp rise (as long as the world doesn't spin into chaos), NYC's summer averages (high/low) would be 96F/81F and winter would be 50F/38F. Of course I'd just rather move somewere warmer lol.
Not sure this answers the O.P's question but there are lots of things to consider with climate change (global warming?).
First off, any climate change starts with the sun. We've seen a slight drop in global temperatures since about 1999 or thereabouts. It isn't much and the most influential driver of this dip is likely to be the record low level of sunspot activity. This slightly lower level of solar activity, in turn, tends to favor oceanic circulation patterns that further encourage cooler conditions. La Nina as an example, tends to cool off the northern tier of the U.S. Other circulation patterns have similar effects in other parts of the world.
Now that Mr. Sun is getting back to a more active state, I expect we will see global temperatures climb again......
"Climate change" is as much related to the efficency at which heat transfers from tropical regions to polar ones as it is to anything else. Any temperature trend, warmer or cooler, is felt first and most profoundly in the polar regions. Since 1950, Barrow AK has warmed up almost 3 degrees F while my hometown (Corvallis, OR) has warmed up slightly less than 1. Thats just one example - but you can contrast high latitude cities with mid latitude ones all over the globe and see the same trend. This faster rate of warming will occur in higher latitudes whether or not man is causing the climate change we're seeing. If we go the other way and descend to "Little Ice Age" conditions, polar latitudes will feel it first and worse. The Original poster mentioned seeing little climate change but the U.S. V.I. are a lot closer the the equator than I am and sits in the Caribbean basin surrounded by all that water so I'm not surprised there is little, if any, warming signal.
Natural forces are still a major player here. One ill timed volcanic eruption in either Hemisphere could drop global temperatures as much as a degree and a half. Doesn't sound like much but 1.5 degrees either way is huge. Mt. St. Helens contributed to a 0.2 decrease, hardly more than noise and Pinatubo caused a year long temperature drop of almost 0.5. People felt that one. Google "year with out a summer" or "summer of 1816" if you want to know how badly a volcanic eruption can ruin your vacation.
It can go the other way, too. There is a LOT of methane locked up in the polar permafrost and in "ices" or hydrates buried in our continental shelves. If any of that cuts loose we could double our methane fraction in the atmosphere in a year or two. Since methane is far more efficient at heat retention than CO2, we could be in for some really unpleasant surprises.....
Is Global Warming such a bad thing? What farmer in North Dakota or Minnesota (or the Ukraine for that matter) wouldn't want an extra week tacked on each end of the growing season? Problem here is, temperatures aren't the only thing that change in a warming world. Rainfall patterns become chaotic. Climate modeling for rainfall is even less precise than for temperatures and no one really knows what would happen to rainfall in the upper midwest given a "warm" earth scenario. If higher temperatures there are accompanied by dryer conditions, then there is no net gain. A warmer world will be one with a lot less continental ice locked up in glaciers as well. All that ice melt has to go somewhere and if you live in New Orleans, Amsterdam, the Ganges Basin or the Maldives a warmer earth is not your friend.
Much of the heat generated by the Global Warming (Climate Change) debate comes from the rate the temperatures are climbing (or changing) more than the fact of change. We have had cycles of warming and cooling go on for several million years and there is no reason to think all that will quit now. But we have not seen such a dramatic temperature trend (either way) as we are seeing now since the end of the Younger Dryas 13000 years ago. Scientists are worried and I think, rightfully so.
I have lived in the northeast US my whole life There seems to be a trend of having less snow during the winter, but I have not found winters to really be any milder. Sure there are some mild days, but there are just as many extremely cold days to balance them out. This past November was almost 4-deg above normal, but now December has been extremely cold all month. Also, the difference between getting snow and rain is usually more dependent on the storm track than to the overall temperature trends. As an example, it has been extremely cold here all week, but the storm that is coming for tomorrow is going to be rain, simply because of the storm track to the west. Last week we got a big snowstorm because the storm tracked east.
Summers seem about the same to me.
Here in Minnesota , I have noticed it getting cooler in summers with a much shorter growing seasons.
The longer maturing day corn that farmers planted 25 years ago will no longer reach maturity due to our cooler summers and will be of a much higher moisture content due to lack of drydown.
My dad talked about the severe drought and heat of the 1930's. Many of the daily record high temps in summer still stand from the 1930's.
In my lifetime, I can only remember 2 very hot dry summers ( 1976 and 1988 )
I think we must cut back on actual pollution, but I sure don't buy into the global warming scare.
After watching Jesse Ventura on Tru TV'S -Conspiracy Theory-my thoughts on global warming were confirmed.
A contrived hoax to make some very rich and give some much power. As Ventura stated---------" Follow the money trail "
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
