And to think that I was actually complaining earlier in the week about how cool it was [high of about 68 degrees] here in the Pacific Northwest.
Posted by ubrew12
Jul 22 2011 - 11:33pm
What amazing technology we're able to harness, with which to record our own extinction.
Posted by RichardsCatz
Jul 23 2011 - 2:00am
Please! Climate Changes are common in the history of the planet, The differance between us and the dinosaurs, is that we can measure and react, If we need to move the grain belt to Canada or south to Mexico we'll just have to do it! We can change, or we can die! It's our choice! The planet's gonna do what the planets gonna do.
EVOLVE >^^< That's my motto!
Posted by Jack East
Jul 23 2011 - 10:31am
Moving the grain belt will be a very short term solution, as the new grain belt also becomes inhospitable to grain. At the rate we are going, James Hansen postulates no life on planet Earth in a couple of hundred years.
Posted by Nietzsche
Jul 23 2011 - 11:02am
So man can fix anything? Not bloody likely! My motto is that you reap what you sow.
Posted by gardenernorcal
Jul 23 2011 - 11:10am
What man must do is adapt or die. Somethings are inevitable.
Posted by pjd412
Jul 23 2011 - 11:56am
Yes, and the most effective of those adaptations is an emergency program of deep cuts to human-caused CO2 emissions, right?
Posted by RichardsCatz
Jul 23 2011 - 7:52pm
If they choose to dieout then they will, the Universe won't shed a tear. So what is it do we change or Die?
I've had to change so many times in the course of my life time it doesn't bother me much! I already filte my homes and cars cabin air and run an overpressure system in both to avoid the worst of whats out there.
As long as the grids up I'll use it if it goes down I'll do something else, As long as the internet is out here I'll use it to learn and share ideas. When it's all gone I have a fair collection of books. >^^<
Posted by ubrew12
Jul 23 2011 - 11:37pm
"Kilauea... has been releasing more than twice the amount of noxious sulfur dioxide gas (SO2) as the single dirtiest power plant" If Kilauea is releasing SO2, then Kilauea is cooling the planet, not warming it.
' Volcanoes... release a total of about 200 million tonnes of CO2 annually'
Moerner and Etiope (2002) and Kerrick (2001) report a minimum-maximum range of volcanic emission of 65 to 319 million tonnes of CO2 per year. The burning of fossil fuel results in approximately 30,000 million tonnes of carbon dioxide per year worldwide. The fossil fuels emissions numbers are about 100 times bigger than even the maximum estimated volcanic CO2 fluxes.
Posted by mlb
Jul 24 2011 - 10:14am
A side note: Volcanic activity has been high in the last decade. Although they haven't been huge volcanoes, scientists have recently found that a good deal of the stuff they've spewed has made it into the stratosphere where it has been putting a damper on global warming. (Ash reflects more sunlight back into space than it traps infrared energy emanating from the Earth, so has a net cooling effect.) It won't last long, and once it's gone we can expect things to really start heating up!
http://news.sciencemag.org/sciencenow/2011/07/a-bit-of-shade-for-a-warming-pla.html?etoc&elq=28952dc1fc484015a91c168d9cf15ca0
Posted by phineas
Jul 24 2011 - 6:08am
And there's less land up north, even if the grains could grow, you can't grow anywhere near as much as mid-latitudes
Posted by mlb
Jul 24 2011 - 10:15am
People who think everything can be fixed are very good at ignoring the fact that lots of people suffer and die before and during the fixes.
See no evil, hear no evil, admit no evil. That's your motto!
EVOLVE, yes, but into what?
Posted by Mairead
Jul 24 2011 - 10:26am
People who think everything can be fixed are very good at ignoring the fact that lots of people suffer and die before and during the fixes.
--------------------------
That needs to be said over and over again until it penetrates. People (I include other species) should never be regarded as expendable.
Posted by blythespirit
Jul 23 2011 - 1:27am
105 degrees today in Maine, for God's sake.
Posted by NC-Tom
Jul 23 2011 - 7:05am
Ha, "only" 94 down here in NC. Our pool temp is 92 F. No sense even bothering to go into it to cool off any more.
Posted by Mairead
Jul 23 2011 - 11:12am
100 yesterday right on the Atlantic coast in Mass. Same predicted for today.
Posted by RichardsCatz
Jul 24 2011 - 12:25am
>105 degrees today in Maine, for God's sake< I remember a Steven King book stating that at some point in the recent past temperutures over 100 were not uncommon in the Maine region,,
Along with clowns in the sewer, and self resurecting pets???? is this not the case?
>^^<
Posted by phineas
Jul 24 2011 - 6:07am
That would balance the snow they get in July?
I kid you not! July, 1988. I was in Oxford, Me for 2 Grateful Dead shows and when we arrived at 5am there was 1/2" of snow on the ground. Not frost, SNOW!
Posted by samosamo
Jul 23 2011 - 2:11am
Hot is as hot does.
Posted by ctrl-z
Jul 23 2011 - 3:04am
This is what happens when you don't throw the virgins into the volcano.
Posted by Ocean
Jul 23 2011 - 3:58am
Ha-Ha-Ha and a big Peli Laugh to you.
Posted by ubrew12
Jul 23 2011 - 4:35pm
I think my problem is, they just 'said' they were virgins.
Posted by Ocean
Jul 23 2011 - 3:56am
WOW, all those Red States really are red.
Posted by metal
Jul 23 2011 - 8:13am
The epicenter of all that heat drills right into the Texas/Oklahoma State line like a magnifying glass using sunlight to fry a line of fire ants.
I saw a news report last night that said that over 100 cities are experiencing record high nighttime temperatures that are so abnormal for the U.S. that they are disrupting people's sleep cycles. I believe it's true because June and July nighttime temps are about ten degrees hotter than they were a decade ago in my State.
Between losing sleep to hot nighttime temps, imbibing hours of far-right radio and TV propaganda every day, clutching cell phones to their brains for hours on end and denying global warming even as it Dust Bowls their States it's no wonder these red State righties are so bat-shit crazy.
I remember the absolute hell Jimmy Carter caught for DARING to ask the American people to conserve energy by turning their winter thermostats down to 69 degrees and wearing a sweater. Now Bloomberg tells New Yorkers to turn their air conditioner up to 79 degrees "admittedly uncomfortable" and no one bats an eye.
We're becoming a nation of Elois and Morlocks straight out of H.G. Wells. Once all their livestock die from the heat the red State morlocks will drive herds of Lefties from tent camp to tent camp to use for their meat. They'll move underground to escape the heat and gradually evolve to lose all pigmentation while we die off young from skin cancer unless we're devoured by the cannibal Right.
Posted by logitech
Jul 23 2011 - 9:40am
Lefties, It's What's for Dinner!
Posted by Ameranglo
Jul 23 2011 - 10:23am
"Once all their livestock die from the heat the red State morlocks will drive herds of Lefties from tent camp to tent camp to use for their meat."
They'll find ME pretty darn tough!
It was 118 in our backyard yesterday (SW Oklahoma).
Posted by NC-Tom
Jul 23 2011 - 11:09am
"They'll... gradually evolve to lose all pigmentation..." If you have ever seen a Tea Bagger rally you'll realize that has already happened...
Posted by runningamuck
Jul 23 2011 - 9:36am
Well Spoken metal!! My sleep cycle is disturbed just reading about it.
Posted by kivals
Jul 23 2011 - 11:34am
We are in the early stages of an obvious climate crisis and what are the soulless fiends in Washington doing about it? Nothing, nada, zip. The politicians are too obsessed with stealing grandma's last few nickels because their masters, the bloodthirsty plutocrats, have to have it, have to have every last red cent, and none of them can see the future melting before their eyes.
Posted by shadre
Jul 23 2011 - 12:50pm
Maybe they aren't doing anything because they know we've been messing with changing the weather for decades. Seeding the clouds for rain, and such. Perhaps they've found the way to turn it on, but not the way to turn it off, so like some of the germ warfare experiments, like AIDS, that went awry, we're in for it big time now.
I just finished reading Sidney Sheldon's book, "Are You Afraid Of The Dark." It got my brain going on this severe weather we've been having.
Posted by woodboot
Jul 23 2011 - 1:35pm
Wonderfully informative map! Interesting, how weather, like almost everything else, stops at the USA's borders.
Posted by camelrocker
Jul 25 2011 - 2:36am
hee hee, I've noticed that too.
Posted by kcy
Jul 23 2011 - 3:09pm
Extreme heat waves in the US are nothing new. In 1954, Saint Louis recorded a 115F maximum. In 1976, I ran the Boston Marathon (in April) when the temperature at noon at the start was 100F. The climate alarmists focus only on those weather events that support their agenda. Here in northwestern California, we have had record cold with below normal temperatures every month this year except January which was slightly above normal. February and May were the coldest that I have recorded at my home (ten years of records). The average annual temperature has declined by more than 1.5F over the past six years. Send us some of that "global warming."
Posted by Mairead
Jul 23 2011 - 3:38pm
But the world's average temperature continues to rise, the oceans continue to acidify, glaciers continue to melt, and the Amazon river looks like drying up. Surely that must tell you something.
Posted by Erroll
Jul 23 2011 - 5:33pm
Mairead
Well said
Posted by joecool9
Jul 23 2011 - 8:08pm
Kcy, open your mind. This isn't 'liberal' crap. If you bothered to read the reports about climate change, what is happening is what they predicted. Your part of the world is cooler and wetter then normal, while other areas are hotter. Take the extreme winter weather for example in areas that don't usually experience winters that severe. Look at the the flooding, tornadoes, heat waves that are more extreme. Quit being stuck on global warming and think climate CHANGE! That is what is happening. There isn't an 'agenda'.
Posted by shadre
Jul 23 2011 - 11:01pm
I remember back in the '70s, living in Sacramento, when it was 115°, and in the '80s when it was 90° in March one year. But I've never seen or heard of the kinds of extremes in weather world-wide that's going on now.
Posted by camelrocker
Jul 25 2011 - 2:40am
I live in the cool wet NW too but am not so ignorant to not understand that we are damn lucky to live here.
Posted by pjd412
Jul 25 2011 - 2:22pm
Your argument has no basis in statistical fact.
From those archives:
All US reporting stations:
Number of all-time high temperature records broken - prev 365 days - 92
Number of all-time min temperature records broken - prev 365 days - 17
Number of daily high temperature records broken - prev 365 days - 25,996
Number of daily low temperatures records broken - prev 365 days - 4,948
Number of all-time high temperature records broken - prev 30 days - 46
Number of all time low temperatures records broken - prev 30 days - 2
Number of daily high temperature records broken - prev 30 days - 1,796
Number of daily low temperatures records broken - prev 30 days - 444
The above data pairs are even more squewed if we look at record high morining low temperatures 3,673 vs 444.
Now, if statistics holds and temperature extremes are fluctuating randomly, all the above data pairs should be nearly equal. For any day of time period of the year, record high temperature setting events should be very close to record low temperature setting events. However, for the past for the past couple decades now, the sqew toward setting record high temperatures has steadily increased. Even in the past supposedly "record cold winter" (it was nowhere close) more record high temperatures were set than record low temperatures.
Posted by Obedient Servant
Jul 23 2011 - 3:48pm
Interesting animation-- but describing it as a "'cool' time-lapse" beggars irony.
To paraphrase Mae West, "Coolness had nothing to do with it!"
Posted by skeptimist
Jul 23 2011 - 5:05pm
Summer in the South is best treated like a headache: find a cool dark place to lay down until it goes away. My sympathies to those in the North who have gone from blizzard to blister with maybe 2 days of spring in between?
Posted by Chicago Dan
Jul 23 2011 - 6:16pm
Red is for very warm, brown is for toast. It was 101 in Chicago yesterday!
Of course, global warming has nothing to do with local warming - if you can be made to believe it.
Posted by kcy
Jul 23 2011 - 8:01pm
Climate and weather are man-made distinctions. In nature, the atmosphere-oceans-land complex comprises an ever changing and chaotic system. "Climate" change, like "weather" change, has ALWAYS been with us; it is not something that just came along in the past few decades.
The logic (or lack thereof) behind an anthropogenic global warming is that (1) the global average temperature has been rising, (2), the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere has been increasing, (3) humans produce lots of CO2, and therefore humans are causing global warming. The computer models that are the ONLY basis for making this connection were calibrated under the assumption that the observed warming was due to increases in CO2. Forty years ago, very similar models were predicting an ice age because they were calibrated based on a historical record of global cooling.
Now, there is so much money and prestige involved in climate change and the predicted dire effects of human activities, that the scientists working in the field have strong vested interests in maintaining the status quo. Recognizing that global warming due to anthropogenic CO2 will probably become widely recognized as a non-problem, the emphasis now is "sudden climate change." That is a pretty safe bet since sudden climate change has been around a long time.
Posted by Mairead
Jul 23 2011 - 8:12pm
You're wrong. Do please inform yourself.
Posted by phineas
Jul 23 2011 - 10:49pm
The earth is 50F warmer because of the natural 280 ppm CO2 concentration. It would have an average global termperature of 0F if not for that natural CO2 concentration. We've added 120ppm - almost 50% more, and it is only that low because 50% of what we've added has been absorbed by the oceans, turning them into mild carbolic acid, and you think C02 is irrelevant?
Posted by Buck
Jul 24 2011 - 8:21am
kcy, the reason the scientists thought another ice age was coming was because science had shown that the Earth had been oscillating between cold periods, the last appr. 11,000 yrs ago when ice covered the upper latitudes of the N american continent and reached down to southern Illinois.
But a not so funny thing happened on the way to the next glacial period; the industrial revolution. The rapidity of the temperature upswing is already having damning effects on food production and we can only expect worse to come.
The theory of moving the grain belt (posted above) doesn't take into account soil quality, let alone shifting rain patterns (flooding downpours followed by drought), radical temperature swings (70 degree weeks followed by 100's), insects (they can move faster than new crops can be planted), and plant disease which attacks weak/stressed plants. The negative impact on global food production has already started and will do nothing but get worse.
How silly it is to think it is the millionaire scientists lying to capture the remaining wealth by ruse. The sky is falling and sticking your head in the sand won't save you.
Posted by huntz
Jul 24 2011 - 10:38am
K-see.....Wow, I bet you're so intelligent, you can convince yourself of anything. Thank you for sharing your existence with the ignorant of the world. Is world hunger caused by the normal fluctuation of climate, or by humans? Or better yet, is it caused by praying to the wrong God(s)?
Posted by ctrl-z
Jul 24 2011 - 1:00pm
How to make a makeshift swamp cooler:
Materials:
A fan
A towel
Something to hold/drip water, like an (empty) plastic bag from a box wine or a cheap plastic bucket or milk jug or..?
Something to hang the towel from
Something to hang the bag/bucket above the towel.
Optional: Something to catch water dripping from the towel.
1) Hang the towel in front of, but not touching, the fan. Keep it hanging flat to maximize the surface area the wind from the fan will hit.
2) Make a pinhole in the bottom of the bag/bucket. In the box wine bag the "bottom" is the side opposite the nozzle (the top of the bag while it was in the box).
3) Fill the bag or bucket with water. If you are using a box wine bag, you can either open the plastic nozzle to fill it or cut part of the nozzle off.
4) Suspend the bag or bucket over the towel so the water dripping from the pin hole drips onto the towel. A noose made of twine can be used to suspend a box wine bag and to close off the nozzle portion. Keep in mind you're going to be refilling the container so make whatever you use to hang it easy to undo/redo. If using twine, make a bow instead of a knot.
5) Turn on the fan.
The water dripping out should be at a rate to keep the towel mostly damp but not sodden. If the flow is too high put something under the towel to catch the drops. If the flow doesn't keep most of the towel damp, make the hole in the bag/bucket a little larger or make another pinhole.
I made one of these last year when it was hot and it can help to cool the air from the fan. If you have drunk the wine just prior to assembling the makeshift swamp cooler, be careful when making the pin prick and DO NOT GET WATER ON THE FAN.
Posted by locust
Jul 24 2011 - 2:27pm
My heartfelt condolences to all those undergoing these trying and frying times.
Here in southernest California, near the coast, near San Diego, well, we have nothing to complain about..
Historical note: My dad told me that back on the farm in Nebraska, sometime in the 1930's, there was a July where the thermometer NEVER went below 90, night or day (for the entire month). Imagine trying to sleep at night (and I'm pretty sure that some nights all he could do was imagine sleeping).
No a/c, and the farm work did not stop. It was awful enough that dad remembered it 75 years later.
Posted by lhhj
Jul 24 2011 - 9:10pm
Try that in the Southeast with unrelieved 90% humidity and a dew point of 78 or so, punctuated with increasingly violent thunderstorms and tornadoes. And lasting about six months straight without relief. The air is so soaked with water vapor that getting a deep breath can be a challenge, and one takes at least one change of shirt to work each day.
In 1950, the Orlando area had maybe 80,000 people, today a couple of million, I think. Greater Atlanta was about 650,000 then; today over 4 million. That's a lot of nouveau riche Republicans. And then all the cars that are in use on all the huge freeways that were built in that era and all the McMansions with independent multi-level AC systems.
This explosive growth has occurred all over the sunbelt, including its most humid portions. Air conditioning was the technological revolution that made the huge post-WW II migrations into the South possible. Its summers are long and truly miserable, and a lot of its post-1950 housing stock, with 7.5 to 8 foot ceilings and no attic fans, and its office towers with sealed windows, would be nearly uninhabitable were AC to become a scarce or very expensive commodity.
59 Comments so far
Show AllAnd to think that I was actually complaining earlier in the week about how cool it was [high of about 68 degrees] here in the Pacific Northwest.
What amazing technology we're able to harness, with which to record our own extinction.
Please! Climate Changes are common in the history of the planet, The differance between us and the dinosaurs, is that we can measure and react, If we need to move the grain belt to Canada or south to Mexico we'll just have to do it! We can change, or we can die! It's our choice! The planet's gonna do what the planets gonna do.
EVOLVE >^^< That's my motto!
Moving the grain belt will be a very short term solution, as the new grain belt also becomes inhospitable to grain. At the rate we are going, James Hansen postulates no life on planet Earth in a couple of hundred years.
So man can fix anything? Not bloody likely! My motto is that you reap what you sow.
What man must do is adapt or die. Somethings are inevitable.
Yes, and the most effective of those adaptations is an emergency program of deep cuts to human-caused CO2 emissions, right?
If they choose to dieout then they will, the Universe won't shed a tear. So what is it do we change or Die?
I've had to change so many times in the course of my life time it doesn't bother me much! I already filte my homes and cars cabin air and run an overpressure system in both to avoid the worst of whats out there.
As long as the grids up I'll use it if it goes down I'll do something else, As long as the internet is out here I'll use it to learn and share ideas. When it's all gone I have a fair collection of books. >^^<
"Kilauea... has been releasing more than twice the amount of noxious sulfur dioxide gas (SO2) as the single dirtiest power plant" If Kilauea is releasing SO2, then Kilauea is cooling the planet, not warming it.
' Volcanoes... release a total of about 200 million tonnes of CO2 annually'
Moerner and Etiope (2002) and Kerrick (2001) report a minimum-maximum range of volcanic emission of 65 to 319 million tonnes of CO2 per year. The burning of fossil fuel results in approximately 30,000 million tonnes of carbon dioxide per year worldwide. The fossil fuels emissions numbers are about 100 times bigger than even the maximum estimated volcanic CO2 fluxes.
A side note: Volcanic activity has been high in the last decade. Although they haven't been huge volcanoes, scientists have recently found that a good deal of the stuff they've spewed has made it into the stratosphere where it has been putting a damper on global warming. (Ash reflects more sunlight back into space than it traps infrared energy emanating from the Earth, so has a net cooling effect.) It won't last long, and once it's gone we can expect things to really start heating up!
http://news.sciencemag.org/sciencenow/2011/07/a-bit-of-shade-for-a-warming-pla.html?etoc&elq=28952dc1fc484015a91c168d9cf15ca0
And there's less land up north, even if the grains could grow, you can't grow anywhere near as much as mid-latitudes
People who think everything can be fixed are very good at ignoring the fact that lots of people suffer and die before and during the fixes.
See no evil, hear no evil, admit no evil. That's your motto!
EVOLVE, yes, but into what?
People who think everything can be fixed are very good at ignoring the fact that lots of people suffer and die before and during the fixes.
--------------------------
That needs to be said over and over again until it penetrates. People (I include other species) should never be regarded as expendable.
105 degrees today in Maine, for God's sake.
Ha, "only" 94 down here in NC. Our pool temp is 92 F. No sense even bothering to go into it to cool off any more.
100 yesterday right on the Atlantic coast in Mass. Same predicted for today.
>105 degrees today in Maine, for God's sake< I remember a Steven King book stating that at some point in the recent past temperutures over 100 were not uncommon in the Maine region,,
Along with clowns in the sewer, and self resurecting pets???? is this not the case?
>^^<
That would balance the snow they get in July?
I kid you not! July, 1988. I was in Oxford, Me for 2 Grateful Dead shows and when we arrived at 5am there was 1/2" of snow on the ground. Not frost, SNOW!
Hot is as hot does.
This is what happens when you don't throw the virgins into the volcano.
Ha-Ha-Ha and a big Peli Laugh to you.
I think my problem is, they just 'said' they were virgins.
WOW, all those Red States really are red.
The epicenter of all that heat drills right into the Texas/Oklahoma State line like a magnifying glass using sunlight to fry a line of fire ants.
I saw a news report last night that said that over 100 cities are experiencing record high nighttime temperatures that are so abnormal for the U.S. that they are disrupting people's sleep cycles. I believe it's true because June and July nighttime temps are about ten degrees hotter than they were a decade ago in my State.
Between losing sleep to hot nighttime temps, imbibing hours of far-right radio and TV propaganda every day, clutching cell phones to their brains for hours on end and denying global warming even as it Dust Bowls their States it's no wonder these red State righties are so bat-shit crazy.
I remember the absolute hell Jimmy Carter caught for DARING to ask the American people to conserve energy by turning their winter thermostats down to 69 degrees and wearing a sweater. Now Bloomberg tells New Yorkers to turn their air conditioner up to 79 degrees "admittedly uncomfortable" and no one bats an eye.
We're becoming a nation of Elois and Morlocks straight out of H.G. Wells. Once all their livestock die from the heat the red State morlocks will drive herds of Lefties from tent camp to tent camp to use for their meat. They'll move underground to escape the heat and gradually evolve to lose all pigmentation while we die off young from skin cancer unless we're devoured by the cannibal Right.
Lefties, It's What's for Dinner!
"Once all their livestock die from the heat the red State morlocks will drive herds of Lefties from tent camp to tent camp to use for their meat."
They'll find ME pretty darn tough!
It was 118 in our backyard yesterday (SW Oklahoma).
"They'll... gradually evolve to lose all pigmentation..." If you have ever seen a Tea Bagger rally you'll realize that has already happened...
Well Spoken metal!! My sleep cycle is disturbed just reading about it.
We are in the early stages of an obvious climate crisis and what are the soulless fiends in Washington doing about it? Nothing, nada, zip. The politicians are too obsessed with stealing grandma's last few nickels because their masters, the bloodthirsty plutocrats, have to have it, have to have every last red cent, and none of them can see the future melting before their eyes.
Maybe they aren't doing anything because they know we've been messing with changing the weather for decades. Seeding the clouds for rain, and such. Perhaps they've found the way to turn it on, but not the way to turn it off, so like some of the germ warfare experiments, like AIDS, that went awry, we're in for it big time now.
I just finished reading Sidney Sheldon's book, "Are You Afraid Of The Dark." It got my brain going on this severe weather we've been having.
Wonderfully informative map! Interesting, how weather, like almost everything else, stops at the USA's borders.
hee hee, I've noticed that too.
Extreme heat waves in the US are nothing new. In 1954, Saint Louis recorded a 115F maximum. In 1976, I ran the Boston Marathon (in April) when the temperature at noon at the start was 100F. The climate alarmists focus only on those weather events that support their agenda. Here in northwestern California, we have had record cold with below normal temperatures every month this year except January which was slightly above normal. February and May were the coldest that I have recorded at my home (ten years of records). The average annual temperature has declined by more than 1.5F over the past six years. Send us some of that "global warming."
But the world's average temperature continues to rise, the oceans continue to acidify, glaciers continue to melt, and the Amazon river looks like drying up. Surely that must tell you something.
Mairead
Well said
Kcy, open your mind. This isn't 'liberal' crap. If you bothered to read the reports about climate change, what is happening is what they predicted. Your part of the world is cooler and wetter then normal, while other areas are hotter. Take the extreme winter weather for example in areas that don't usually experience winters that severe. Look at the the flooding, tornadoes, heat waves that are more extreme. Quit being stuck on global warming and think climate CHANGE! That is what is happening. There isn't an 'agenda'.
I remember back in the '70s, living in Sacramento, when it was 115°, and in the '80s when it was 90° in March one year. But I've never seen or heard of the kinds of extremes in weather world-wide that's going on now.
I live in the cool wet NW too but am not so ignorant to not understand that we are damn lucky to live here.
Your argument has no basis in statistical fact.
From those archives:
All US reporting stations:
Number of all-time high temperature records broken - prev 365 days - 92
Number of all-time min temperature records broken - prev 365 days - 17
Number of daily high temperature records broken - prev 365 days - 25,996
Number of daily low temperatures records broken - prev 365 days - 4,948
Number of all-time high temperature records broken - prev 30 days - 46
Number of all time low temperatures records broken - prev 30 days - 2
Number of daily high temperature records broken - prev 30 days - 1,796
Number of daily low temperatures records broken - prev 30 days - 444
The above data pairs are even more squewed if we look at record high morining low temperatures 3,673 vs 444.
Now, if statistics holds and temperature extremes are fluctuating randomly, all the above data pairs should be nearly equal. For any day of time period of the year, record high temperature setting events should be very close to record low temperature setting events. However, for the past for the past couple decades now, the sqew toward setting record high temperatures has steadily increased. Even in the past supposedly "record cold winter" (it was nowhere close) more record high temperatures were set than record low temperatures.
Interesting animation-- but describing it as a "'cool' time-lapse" beggars irony.
To paraphrase Mae West, "Coolness had nothing to do with it!"
Summer in the South is best treated like a headache: find a cool dark place to lay down until it goes away. My sympathies to those in the North who have gone from blizzard to blister with maybe 2 days of spring in between?
Red is for very warm, brown is for toast. It was 101 in Chicago yesterday!
Of course, global warming has nothing to do with local warming - if you can be made to believe it.
Climate and weather are man-made distinctions. In nature, the atmosphere-oceans-land complex comprises an ever changing and chaotic system. "Climate" change, like "weather" change, has ALWAYS been with us; it is not something that just came along in the past few decades.
The logic (or lack thereof) behind an anthropogenic global warming is that (1) the global average temperature has been rising, (2), the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere has been increasing, (3) humans produce lots of CO2, and therefore humans are causing global warming. The computer models that are the ONLY basis for making this connection were calibrated under the assumption that the observed warming was due to increases in CO2. Forty years ago, very similar models were predicting an ice age because they were calibrated based on a historical record of global cooling.
Now, there is so much money and prestige involved in climate change and the predicted dire effects of human activities, that the scientists working in the field have strong vested interests in maintaining the status quo. Recognizing that global warming due to anthropogenic CO2 will probably become widely recognized as a non-problem, the emphasis now is "sudden climate change." That is a pretty safe bet since sudden climate change has been around a long time.
You're wrong. Do please inform yourself.
The earth is 50F warmer because of the natural 280 ppm CO2 concentration. It would have an average global termperature of 0F if not for that natural CO2 concentration. We've added 120ppm - almost 50% more, and it is only that low because 50% of what we've added has been absorbed by the oceans, turning them into mild carbolic acid, and you think C02 is irrelevant?
kcy, the reason the scientists thought another ice age was coming was because science had shown that the Earth had been oscillating between cold periods, the last appr. 11,000 yrs ago when ice covered the upper latitudes of the N american continent and reached down to southern Illinois.
But a not so funny thing happened on the way to the next glacial period; the industrial revolution. The rapidity of the temperature upswing is already having damning effects on food production and we can only expect worse to come.
The theory of moving the grain belt (posted above) doesn't take into account soil quality, let alone shifting rain patterns (flooding downpours followed by drought), radical temperature swings (70 degree weeks followed by 100's), insects (they can move faster than new crops can be planted), and plant disease which attacks weak/stressed plants. The negative impact on global food production has already started and will do nothing but get worse.
How silly it is to think it is the millionaire scientists lying to capture the remaining wealth by ruse. The sky is falling and sticking your head in the sand won't save you.
K-see.....Wow, I bet you're so intelligent, you can convince yourself of anything. Thank you for sharing your existence with the ignorant of the world. Is world hunger caused by the normal fluctuation of climate, or by humans? Or better yet, is it caused by praying to the wrong God(s)?
How to make a makeshift swamp cooler:
Materials:
A fan
A towel
Something to hold/drip water, like an (empty) plastic bag from a box wine or a cheap plastic bucket or milk jug or..?
Something to hang the towel from
Something to hang the bag/bucket above the towel.
Optional: Something to catch water dripping from the towel.
1) Hang the towel in front of, but not touching, the fan. Keep it hanging flat to maximize the surface area the wind from the fan will hit.
2) Make a pinhole in the bottom of the bag/bucket. In the box wine bag the "bottom" is the side opposite the nozzle (the top of the bag while it was in the box).
3) Fill the bag or bucket with water. If you are using a box wine bag, you can either open the plastic nozzle to fill it or cut part of the nozzle off.
4) Suspend the bag or bucket over the towel so the water dripping from the pin hole drips onto the towel. A noose made of twine can be used to suspend a box wine bag and to close off the nozzle portion. Keep in mind you're going to be refilling the container so make whatever you use to hang it easy to undo/redo. If using twine, make a bow instead of a knot.
5) Turn on the fan.
The water dripping out should be at a rate to keep the towel mostly damp but not sodden. If the flow is too high put something under the towel to catch the drops. If the flow doesn't keep most of the towel damp, make the hole in the bag/bucket a little larger or make another pinhole.
I made one of these last year when it was hot and it can help to cool the air from the fan. If you have drunk the wine just prior to assembling the makeshift swamp cooler, be careful when making the pin prick and DO NOT GET WATER ON THE FAN.
My heartfelt condolences to all those undergoing these trying and frying times.
Here in southernest California, near the coast, near San Diego, well, we have nothing to complain about..
Historical note: My dad told me that back on the farm in Nebraska, sometime in the 1930's, there was a July where the thermometer NEVER went below 90, night or day (for the entire month). Imagine trying to sleep at night (and I'm pretty sure that some nights all he could do was imagine sleeping).
No a/c, and the farm work did not stop. It was awful enough that dad remembered it 75 years later.
Try that in the Southeast with unrelieved 90% humidity and a dew point of 78 or so, punctuated with increasingly violent thunderstorms and tornadoes. And lasting about six months straight without relief. The air is so soaked with water vapor that getting a deep breath can be a challenge, and one takes at least one change of shirt to work each day.
In 1950, the Orlando area had maybe 80,000 people, today a couple of million, I think. Greater Atlanta was about 650,000 then; today over 4 million. That's a lot of nouveau riche Republicans. And then all the cars that are in use on all the huge freeways that were built in that era and all the McMansions with independent multi-level AC systems.
This explosive growth has occurred all over the sunbelt, including its most humid portions. Air conditioning was the technological revolution that made the huge post-WW II migrations into the South possible. Its summers are long and truly miserable, and a lot of its post-1950 housing stock, with 7.5 to 8 foot ceilings and no attic fans, and its office towers with sealed windows, would be nearly uninhabitable were AC to become a scarce or very expensive commodity.
No thank you.