Just yesterday, I watched a news report on CNN that showed inordinately high snow banks in Maine. According to residents, they haven't seen this much snow in the last 15 years. In Chicago, citizens are fed up of stepping into mushy puddles of sleet, while grimly hanging on to their newspapers to prevent them being ripped out of their hands by strong, icy cold winds. I told a lady friend in Minneapolis that she looked adorably polar bearish in her white fur parka; but she wasn't amused. I'm afraid some very unladylike language was employed, with chattering teeth.
The weather this winter truly is the worst it's been in a very long time. In Boston, for example, 49.6 inches of snow has fallen this winter, or 19.3 inches more than normal. In Madison, Wisconsin, where it never had snowed more than 76.6 inches, the city already had seen 77 inches by February 12. So you are probably wondering, as I am, where is this global warming that Gore character keeps going on about? If our planet is supposed to be warming up, why am I freezing my butt off?
You may not be alone. Weather data over the last one year is prompting some scientists to have a re-look at the global warming theory. According to the experts, they have been forced to reconsider earlier assumptions about the warming effects of carbon dioxide emissions. Anecdotal evidence, gathered over the past 12 months, suggests that the planet has been cooling during this period. For example, this year, China had its coldest winter in 100 years, Baghdad saw its first snow in all recorded history; North America had the most snow cover in 50 years. The list doesn't end there. Observation data includes: record levels of Antarctic sea ice; record cold in Minnesota, Texas and Florida; record winter chill in Mexico, Australia, Iran, Greece, South Africa, Greenland, Argentina, Chile and many other regions.
And the evidence is more than anecdotal; it has also been supplanted by hard scientific fact. Pointing out at updated data released by the four major global temperature tracking outlets - Hadley, NASA's GISS, UAH and RSS - they say the figures show that over the past year, global temperatures have dropped precipitously. In 2007, hundreds of people died, not from global warming, but from cold weather hazards. Writing in the Washington Times recently, David Deming, associate professor of arts and sciences at the University of Oklahoma, Norman, said: "Since the mid-19th century, the mean global temperature has increased by 0.7 degrees Celsius. This slight warming is not unusual, and lies well within the range of natural variation. Carbon dioxide continues to build in the atmosphere, but the mean planetary temperature hasn't increased significantly for nearly nine years. Antarctica is getting colder. Neither the intensity nor the frequency of hurricanes has increased. The 2007 season was the third-quietest since 1966. In 2006 not a single hurricane made landfall in the US."
Looking at it another way, the total amount of cooling, over the period under consideration, ranged from 0.65C up to 0.75C - a value, an expert says, large enough to wipe out nearly all the warming recorded over the past 100 years.
So to those of you who have spent a bomb on that new Prius; or those self righteous windbags, who never tire of preaching to the unconverted, about how they are saving the planet by going 'green'. I have only one word: suckers.
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Comments: 45
Last I knew Al Gore did not belong to the GOP!!
No Juan, it is a theroy by some scientists
I can't speak for "global warming." I do know that Long Island has had a very warm winter, snowfall is minor, rain is more common and temperatures go from 20 degrees to 55 degrees on a very strange oscillating pattern. Ironically large snow can be the results of relatively warm weather. It takes warm waters to recharge the clouds to produce massive snowfalls. That's why Buffalo NY is the place where massive snow falls shut down the city in very deep snow. The waters around Long Island have moved the snow to mixed ice and even rain with most of the snowfall starting in Connecticut.
I do think there is evidence we may be going into global cooling. But you need to look at things in general; warming or cooling locally strange things will always happen.
yea that's what I thought
Well no matter what you stance on the issue of Global Warming, the buzz about global warming has given us all a new sense of environmental responsibility. That is a major plus.
What global warming means is that the aggregate temperature of the ENTIRE world is going up. What that means in realistic terms is that it is much warmer in some places, and much colder in others, but that overall across the entire world the average is going up. It doesn't mean it will never snow again in Minnesota. In fact it means that exactly what you're seeing in some places this winter is going to become more common. There will be more big storms in some places, and fewer in places you would expect them.
For instance, the temperature here in the Northwest is becoming milder. We are getting tons of snow in the mountains, but in general the storms are skipping the lowlands here. It means that they are now growing apples in Alaska where it has never been possible before, and that the ice caps are receding. It means that the levels of lakes are dropping from less than normal precipitation in some areas, while people are literally being flooded out of their homes in other places.
What global warming doesn't mean is that every single location across the earth is becoming uniformly warmer. That's not even logical, and is why I wish the term had never been coined.
A big factor is the slowing of ocean currents as arctic and antarctic water get slightly warmer.
It's no con.
http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosphere/IMAGES/current.365.jpg
"Global climate change is much more accurate."
The problem I have with this is it generalizes the issue to the point that no matter what happens it can be " climate change"
Lots of hurricanes " climate change"
Few hurricanes " climate change"
Lots of cold and snow " climate change"
Little cold or snow " climate change"
Too hot " climate change"
Too cold " climate change"
Too much rain " climate change"
Droughts " climate change"
Ect. Ect. Ect.
The earths climate has been changing for billions of years and trying to describe the current environment as " climate change" is misleading and allows those who subscribed to " global warming " to use any change in the climate as "proof" that they are right.
I tend to think that we shouldn't produce more CO2 etc. than we have to, but be smart about doing it, and not jump to knee-jerk reactions like biofuels from food, or others that just make things worse!
That being said, yes, I know the earth goes through cycles and will continue to go through the cycles regardless to what we do or don't do, but we can try to maintain a healthy planet as long as we can and not speed things up by stripping/ravaging it.
Those who preached panic over global climate change took every opportunity to convince us that every variation in the weather was caused by global warming. At one point, not only was Katrina blamed on global warming but Bush was blamed for "causing Katrina".
Now not only is the snow is back on Mount Kilimanjaro but the polar ice cap has reformed, thicker than it was before and the temperature is dropping in both Greenland and Antarctica.
So what does it all mean?
It means that weather is not climate.
As for us hapless souls in Minneapolis who have returned to "real" Minnesota winters, global climate change may mean, if the models are to be believed, that our climate in 100 years will be like that of Des Moines, Iowa.
We have more gas and oil then we know what to do with, obviously. Emvirementalist, if they continue with this obsurd religion known as Global Warming are enivitably going to ruin our economy. Oil companies are bigger than governments, some mere souless people in their own right denying the truth for their own sakes. You think Russia or China ect are going to worry about global warming? Personally, I could care less, the sun could explode tomrrow.
That's all.
As far as suckers are concerned you can bet the people of Tennessee and Georgia would like to solve their water supply controversy.
There is a documented phenomenon known as "global dimming" which may explain some of the effects we're seeing in the weather patterns, especially the parodoxical cooling where we would expect to see a warming trend.
But hey, let's not let reality spoil a perfectly good argument. Those who credit the hundreds of legitimate scientists who have studed the global-warming phenomenon i detail are crackpots, as are the scientists themselves. I get it.
But will you still deny its legitimacy when the mean global temp is up a couple more degrees, and we're having food shortages as a result? Or will you blame us "crackpots" for not doing something sooner?
O.K. do nothing, hold on to the belife that mother nature's breast are full with milk to feed these poor two legged creatures who believe they are god's chosen. Furthermore these two legged creatures that we are, believe that there nations will stand forever as the world spin on its axis regardless of nature's ebb and flow and the effect it has on their thinking.
Point the finger of inaction at politicians, big business, ideologies of the status quo the religion of we speak for god and you know not. We stand in line waiting those of us who suck on the breast of mother nature, until it is sucked dry. Then what do you say, its too cold or its too hot, something is going on, but if you happen not to notice there is always something going on.
Very well - since some of my tax dollars went to the Pentagon in order to finance its defense program for GW purposes, let me have my money back.
Deb, why express such a naive notion that politics has nothing to do with the enviroment. Politic is was one of the grand activity of humankind. Humans are not separate from the sphere of the earth. But I don't except you to be convince, nothing has change, nothing at all and G.W. Bush is not godlike, no not at all he has given tax breaks to his supporters, there are more people losing their homes now, we borrow to fund our current conflict, the dollar is down and our exports overseas are up, he pushing for us to open up areas to drill for more oil in Alaska, off the California and Florida coast to bring down the cost of gas. G.W. not to blame he done the best he could and Deb you're not to blame either.
Everything is going swell and with the republicans and consevatives back in the White House WE CAN ALL SLEEP AT NIGHT KNOWING THAT THE ENVIORNMENT ARE IN GOOD HANDS WITH CORPORATION LEADING THE WAY TO A BRIGHTER FUTURE.
YES, DEB A. EVERYTHING IS A O.K.
If there is no evidence, why is the Pentagon spending your tax money on this matter?
Article
An appropriate term for those who say there is no global warming but who still pay taxes in order to subsidize the Pentagon's GW defense spending.
The myth of Global Warming, and the reality of Pentagon Defense spending are mutually exclusive.
This has been the coldest Winter in the history of Chicago. It beat last year as the previously coldest year on record.
If Al Gore ever set foot in this town, he'd get his ass kicked.....LOL.
It's about time the world sees Al Gore for who he is, the emperor with no clothes, the only huckster that duped the world into giving him a Nobel Peace prize for being a snake oil salesman
Go to Youtube and watch "The Great Global Warming Swindle" it's a documentary stating global warming is false. Scientists from all over the world speak in it. And they are REAL brilliant scientists, unlike the wanna be scientist Al Gore.
You will be enlightened, if not, then you're ignorant.