Dean Freytag

Hear that funny noise in the sky? That's black helicopters hovering over your house right now ....

Hah!

Wolf K.

Indeed. We've had many colder winters than usual. Much more snow then usual. When I was a kid it rarely snowed in December but for the past several years it has snowed every December. White Cristmas? You bet we got 12 inches the day after and we had to reschedule the Eagles- Vikings game. This global warming thing is out of control. If it gets any warmer we're all gonna freeze to death.

But 2010 is still the warmest year on record (ie, highest average daily temperatures in most parts of the N. hemisphere). Paradox, or what?

NYT had an article on why global warming causes snowier winters in the mid-latitudes. It has to do with increased snow in Siberia. The higher summer temperatures make more water available for snow, so Siberia gets more snow, and snow further south. That changes the heat exchange between ground and air, and one effect of that is that the jet stream moves south. The jet stream collides with the warmer/damper air in the mid-latitudes, which causes snow; and the larger than normal temperature differences cause strong winds. Result: blizzards. Then the snow melts, a good deal of water evaporates, the air becomes moist again, and the cycle repeats. Every two weeks or so. IOW, you're in for a few more storms. If you're lucky, not quite as bad as the last two.

BTW El Nino and La Nina (upwelling of warmer water to the surface of the Pacific near the equator) both cause increased snowfall in Canada and the northern USA because both increase the temperature of the air over the e central and eastern Pacific Ocean. Similar mechanisms, different location.

So, yes, global warming does cause more snow than usual in the mid-latitudes. And less snow further north. Much less, in fact. We have some snow, but not nearly as much as we had 30-40 years ago. And further north, in the arctic, it's warmer than usual. Much warmer. The forecast a couple or three years ago was that the arctic ice cap would last at least until sometime after 2150. Now it looks like it may be gone by 2050.

BTW, for those of you living in the UK: one of the possible effects of global warming is a change in the flow of warm water from the Caribbean to the North Atlantic: at present, the Gulf Stream flows "downstream" so to speak, on top of the cold N. Atlantic water, and warms up the UK and Iceland. Global warming could warm up the N. Atlantic enough to block the flow of the Gulf stream, or divert it south. If that happens, the UK and Iceland would become colder.

Will this happen? Nobody knows for sure. But the experiment is under way. And you guys are the guinea pigs. All of us are guinea pigs, actually: a likely effect on Canada will be extended droughts. It may comfort you to know that. Then again, maybe not.

have a good day, Wolf K.

You don't seem to understand the difference between "climate" -which can be thought of as the total amount of energy in the system- and "weather" which is the expression of that energy.

Fact: as the globe continues to accumulate more energy (in the form of heat) than it gets rid of through radiation, the weather will become more and more extreme; and this includes having both lower lows and higher highs. Human beings can insulate themselves from these extremes to some extent, but the plants and animals that have evolved to live in certain ranges of temperature extremes cannot; and will go extinct if they cannot migrate.

Alas, this is the case with most species, and many of those same species -both plants and animals- are ones that comprise part of the food chains *we* rely on.

Care to try living on 500 calories a day and having to fight to get even that much?

~Pete

You are a classic case of having been indoctrinated by the purveyors of this drivel, twibil. I would have expected better from you.

Uh, sure. *That* must be it.

A basic understanding of high-school physics, and the fact that I taught for 12 years at the University of California -and got to know several guys in the Science Department who have spent their entire professional lives researching this problem- couldn't *possibly* have anything to do with it, right?

So tell us: how many climatologists and geophysicists do *you* know?

Oh wait, I forgot: they're all part of this plot to promote something that you'd rather not admit was true, so they must all be lying.

Sheesh!

A lot more than you probably do, because I used to work in close proximity to a whole department of them.

Almost all the ones I know either were never part of the conspiracy or have now seen the light. The only ones standing ground are the recipients of research grants that would dry up if they admitted it is nonsense.

Well, it looks like none of us will be around 50 years from now, by which time it will be plain who's spouting nonsense.

Cheers, Wolf K.

I am one of those who doesn't doubt global warming.

However, I just don't buy into all the claptrap that it's caused by humans.

That's just an excuse so that governments can start impossing a new tax by calling it a "carbon tax", what ever the heck that means. Heck, we are all carbon based life forms.

Yup, they sure do: they tell both the far right side *and* the extreme right side.

Fox News is "fair and balanced" like Keith Olbermann and MSNBC are conservative.

So far, so good.

Then you -or someone- has to demonstrate that there is another cause. And despite a couple of decades of trying, no other cause has yet been found. No other possibility even comes close, and believe me; people have been *looking*!

Oh dear. A conspiracy theorist.

Look: Bush/Cheney did *not* blow up the World Trade Center on orders from the Mossad. Little green men in flying saucers are *not* abducting Earth people and subjecting them to anal probes. Revisionists to the contrary, the WW2 holocaust *did* take place, and millions of innocent people *were* executed in German death camps. (And yes, we really *did* land men on the Moon, too: it wasn't a government hoax.)

The proposed "carbon tax" would simply be a way of changing the tax load to reflect the amount of carbon dioxide that had to be put into the atmosphere in order to build a given item.

Q: Why is it probably going to be needed?

A: To offset the costs of fighting global warming; which are likely to make the recent gummint bailout of the auto industry look like chump change.

True. But that has absolutely *nothing* to do with global warming.

Sure you did. That's why you carefully failed to mention exactly where and when this was.

You are either an outright liar -and don't think anyone's smart enough to catch you at it- or you're completely insane; so let's see which it is, shall we?

(A) You just admitted that you think there *is* a global warming conspiracy, which means that you *are indeed* nuts.

(B) At last count, a *huge* plurality of the world's climate scientists not only still stand completely behind man-caused global warming as being real, but the most recent research clearly demonstrates that it's taking place even faster than the worst former estimates had supposed, and is actually accelerating as it goes along.

(C) Your claim that "the only ones standing ground are the recipients of research grants that would dry up if they admitted it is nonsense" is utterly false. And it's a claim that nobody but the most rabid global warming revisionists could possibly take seriously, because five minutes of Googling will demonstrate it's falsity to anyone with an IQ better than that of a fire hydrant.

You're the one whose nuts if you deny that there is.

Translated - a plurality of these people are busily thriving on their huge research grants at taxpayers' expense. And successfully bluffing and indoctrinating gullible people like you to support a continuation thereof.

Speaking from past experience in broadcasting where I had to write some news copy to be read on the air, I have some knowledge of how to write copy which is neutral on a subject or not. That Fox News claims to be "fair and balanced" would be laughable if there weren't so many gullible simpletons that actually believe it. Fox News is an example of the *worst* sort of yellow journalism in the history of the American press. They are not a "news" outlet, they are an "opinion" outlet. If they were a daily newspaper what they provide would be equivalent to only printing the op-ed pages, and little more. Fox News is nothing more than a propaganda mill for the factions in this country whose goal is to destroy America from within. I have not yet found a national broadcast news source which is entirely neutral and centered. I listen to NPR's morning and afternoon news magazine shows because they will spend more time on a story than other outlets, and they do try to tell both sides of a story an order of magnitude better than Fox does. I do admit that they lean left, which annoys me at times, but they seem far closer to the center than any other source I have yet listened to or viewed.

On 31/12/2010 10:37 AM, Rick Jones wrote: [...]

I don't think that's what they are trying to do, on the contrary, they think they are saving America from itself. They just don't realise what will be the effect of their efforts if they succeed.

Gloomily (and as bystander that will be sucked into the maelstrom), Wolf K.

"Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity"

- Robert A. Heinlein or Robert J. Hanlon, popularised by Heinlein.

Christopher A. Lee wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@4ax.com:

While it is easy to believe Fox is just stupid, I think they just represent greedy rich a**holes who want to retain even a larger percentage of the USA GDP. In this case, there really is malice. They will all relocate off shore when they have finshed ruining the USA economy.

Actually, all TV news broadcasts on commercial stations have degraded into opinion and/or infotainment. Fox is just the worst of them. But I agree that they do seem to have an agenda. Most of the others just want to make money by pandering.

Now, back to modeling!

If you laid all the economist from end to end. they still wouldn't reach a conclusion - G. B. Shaw

You guys are mostly from California. If anyone should know what liberal programs can do to an economy you all should. If you're still not convinced, ask someone from Europe.