Are we going to have winter?
 

It's 70 degrees here with blue skies and a mild breeze. It hasn't gotten really cold yet. Will this weather hold till Spring?

No, Peyton Manning hasn't won a Superbowl yet.

Actually, while I hate driving in the snow, I hope we have more of a winter. They've been REALLY mild the past how many years now? My grandma (who was very superstiscious) used to say that the shifting of seasons was a sign of the End Times.

Fixed yer post for ya.

I'm just old enough to remember what real winters were.
As a kid in SE Kansas we had snow over our knees several times a year and in december/january snowy days were more common than rainy ones.
What the hell has happened to the weather?

Chiefs4me did it.

I realize that, but my grandma was very old and set in her ways. I remember the ice storms we used to get. Electricity going out. Power lines being down for days. Being VERY cold. Fun, fun, fun.

My great grandma used to say- as a rule mans a fool when its hot he wants it cool when its cool he wants it hot always wanting what is not.

That is so true, though.

Global-Warming because of USA CO² emmission !!!

I feel your pain. It's ****ing 73 here right now.

ON JANUARY 19!!!!!!!! :cuss:

Of course, we had winter for those two weeks between summer and spring... back in early December...

I try to help prevent it. I stopped using Aqua-Net hairspray in the early 90's.

Interestingly (or perhaps not), I was driving around with the top down yesterday, and it was 63 degrees. Today it's snowing like dandruff on a Giants fan.

May the fleas of a thousand camels infest your pubic region.

Yeah? Well I want ice cream.

Please do.

Nope, but we are gonna have ticks the size of basketballs and mosquitoes that circle overhead like buzzards this summer.

La Nina cycle.

Its supposed to snow here tomorrow.

Freon use associated with the breakdown of the Ozone layer is not anymore related to global warming than finding pee in your beer and your beer simutaneously being warm. The slight connections are worthless to discuss.

Ozone layer freon Global warming COtwo and methane gas production

Ozone breakdown increase ultraviolet rays more skin cancer

Global warming more intense and longer periods of extreme weather.

By the way the moderation of our temperatures is from the melting of the glaciers. After they go well hold on to your thermometer.

You should read what they say about the Chiefs.

Yes, I'm a little more educated on the causes of global warming than I was when I was 14. That was the rave back then. Stop using aerosol cans. Just my attempt at humor.

The southwestern arid conditions should spread all the way to Missouri. The warmer spells of a couple of thousand years ago. (Jesus time) saw desert conditions in Souther Missouri. The biological evidence is the indigenous collared lizard that does well in open non wooded areas representative of a dryer time before forestation occurred as the world cooled. It represents (along with the dry spell in Texas and OK) the move to a more arrid climate.

what was kind of bizarre this year... we got 10 inches of snow, but 2.5 days later it had all melted away. I thought that shit would be on the ground for a week or more.

Back in 1979, the next largest snowstorm before this one... the snow was on the ground for over 2 months.

I heard a tornado put them there.

Actually on a molecule per molecule basis, CFCs (what you are calling "freons") are much stronger than CO_2 as global warming agents. CFC's exert about 10% of the cumulative global warming potential as CO_2 (not insignificant), even though their atmospheric concentration is about a million times less.

Incidently, the use of CFCs as aerosol propellants in consumer products was discontinued in the US in the late '70s. The ban was motivated not by the antartic ozone hole (which had not yet been discovered), but by the mere potential of significant ozone descrtuction by CFCs postulated by Moline and Rowland. Moline and Rowland eventually won a Nobel prize in chemistry for their work. Evidently, luv2rite suffered many bad hair days in vain.

Here is an idea lets bitch about nice weather in january

I don't buy the global warming stuff.

It was very mild this summer, too.

Unless there is simultaneous global warming and cooling, you are all full of shit.

And who cares?

It 70 degrees outside and you are sitting in your basement b!tching on the computer about how nice it is. WTF?!

I don't care!! It really pisses me off!!

It is January and despite popular beliefs Winter did start on December 21, 2005. The fluctuaion of temperatures have nothing to do with the season. But I don't think that fact has ever stood in the way of someone that is pissed off.

Thats exactly what I am saying. I expect it from skip's grouchy ass, but I am dissapointed in the rest of you.

I blame the sand in your vagina

ROFL

Volcanoes put more pollution into the atmosphere that humans ever could.
But go ahead and blame CFCs, CO2 emissions and SUVs. :rolleyes:

Let's see. . . two minute Google search and vioala!

Volcanic production average per year: 130 million tonnes per year vs Billions of tonnes by human consumption.

Comparison of CO2 emissions from volcanoes vs. human activities. Scientists have calculated that volcanoes emit between about 130-230 million tonnes (145-255 million tons) of CO2 into the atmosphere every year (Gerlach, 1999, 1992). This estimate includes both subaerial and submarine volcanoes, about in equal amounts. Emissions of CO2 by human activities, including fossil fuel burning, cement production, and gas flaring, amount to about 22 billion tonnes per year (24 billion tons). Human activities release more than 150 times the amount of CO2 emitted by volcanoes--the equivalent of nearly 17,000 additional volcanoes like Kilauea (Kilauea emits about 13.2 million tonnes/year)!


Yeah I can't wait until the methane ice is released from Siberia's deep freeze. Look if it really gets warm you want to buy land in Siberia and Northern Canada. The open artic ocean will be the 21st centuries Mediterranean of commerce.

http://volcanoes.usgs.gov/Hazards/W...Gas/volgas.html

"Since 1751 roughly 290 billion tons of carbon have been released to the atmosphere from the consumption of fossil fuels and cement production. HALF of these emissions have occurred since the mid 1970s. The 2002 global, fossil-fuel CO2 emission estimate, 6975 million metric tons of carbon, represents an all-time high and a 2% increase from 2001.

http://cdiac.esd.ornl.gov/trends/emis/tre_glob.htm

Troll the political forum and learn something troll

no, its over.

I did say your beer was warm. Yes carbon based compounds including flourine compounds do have heat retention. But compared to the production of COtwo and methane the CFC content is limited compared to the catalytic effect CFC compounds have in depleting Ozone in the upper atmosphere.

And the recent reports indicate with a stabilizing of CFC release into the atmosphere the HOLE is not getting bigger. We may get to see a reversal on what was good forsight. As opposed to ignoring Global Warming.

Skip, you're in OK now. Winter will get here towards the end of Feb.

While some cold weather to kill off the dormant bugs and such would be nice, I'd really like some moisture - I don't really care how we get it right now either (well 2 inches of Ice might be a bit hard on powerlines and such). Give me a foot of snow or a couple inches of rain a couple times a month between now and march.

When I went on my honeymoon way back whenever. My wife got fried in the sun of the Carribean. Let's just say we had better bedding before the ceremony. But located on the beach without air conditioning , I did buy ice and a fan (and noxema) and blew the warm air over the ice and cooled it to offer relief. (It paid devidends later)

The glaciers and ice caps are melting. They are tempering the effects of temperature. There is the melting "heat of fusion" cooling effect as the mass of ice melts.

This is why you can see mild conditions in summer. We live in the Alberta Clipper area where cold builds up in the north and plummets toward the plains. Except now we see this as a moderation of summer as the ice melts.

None of this changes the fact that the average temperature around the world was higher in 2005 than at any other time we have been keeping score. And higher than indications for thousands of years.

Well shut mah mouf'! I've been reading the wrong info.
So much fer subtlety. It must be true if its on the internets! (esp. google)
I wonder how much of that human pollution is absorbed by the oceans.

/hardly a troll; musta hit a noive

Regarding the scientific content of the posts on this thread. I teach a gradute level course on environmental chemistry, about half of which concerns atmospheric chemistry. Still I don't consider myself an expert by any means. I consider that I barely have enough credibility to intelligently discuss the issues.

For the record, I still hold some skepticism on global warming. Based on my state of knowledge, if I were to say it were definitely happening, or definitely not happening, I would be FOS.

Let the reader understand.

I was taught that all trolls are redheaded. I hope you didn't take too much offense.

If you checked the sources for the info you'd see I quoted USGS. Not a liberal part of the government. Usually more interested in securing data about minerals and mining and in obtaining mapping.

You dismiss good data because it doesn't suit your thoughts.
Wishful thinking. "If wishes were horses than beggars would ride"

If you wish me to give the references about COtwo absorption I will. But you will find that again it ain't the data you were hoping for. So go ahead and live under your bridge in your imaginary world. Don't take notice of real world determinations.

OK, I think we all agree that Seedy Cocks is FOS.

So lets walk through the physical chemistry for all on board. I shan't shrink from a technical discussion.

What part of global warming are you uncomfortable with. Is it that that you don't think the measured temperatures increases are real?

Is it you don't think there is a correlation between COtwo or other carbon/ water content and heat retention?

Is it you don't think the contribution is from human activity?

Is it you think that the 1.5 degree change is so small as to really have any effect?

I'm asking because if someone with some sophitication in understanding is waffling than I can't expect anyone else to take the concern as real.

Hey, it's all good. I read somewhere a long time ago (don't remember where) where this one little volcano put out a lot of pollution. Not just CO2, but real nasty stuff like sulphur dioxide, hydrogen sulfide, hydrogen chloride and the like. But if it makes you feel better to revert to insults, go right ahead, I can take it. We all live on the same planet.

Flatulence from my Rats have increased levels of methane in the Ozone layer causing a climate shift, a.k.a., El Nino, which is directly tied to the global warming that has obviously ensued.

Sorry dude, but I remember the next Ice Age being taught in the 70's, shock and surprise, it was colder than heck for a few years.

It was also caused by our emissions that "blocked the suns rays".

What do you propose to do about all this "human activity"? Kill some people?

I just thought maybe I would share..........:D

and FYI...70 freaking degrees is NOT warm.....:shake:

I remember that NYE 1979, but remember we had an 8 inch snow storm couple of weeks later which contributed to the snow staying on the ground.

We are in an ice age. Technically we are in an interglacial period within an ice age. And there was an expectation in the 70's of just that, a return to an ice age with building glaciers. (Ice ages are a result of mountain building if you want an understanding how they are driven by geology) We had good evidence that temperatures have been dropping since the time of christ and earlier. The mid 20th century had temperatures colder since the 'little ice age.' (It snowed in Pennsylvania during the Revolutionary War IN JUNE) This is why we old guys remember the long winters of the past with plenty of snow as opposed to now.

It is against this backdrop of expectation of a return to ice age that we now find this sudden dramatic increase in temperature. It correlates with the increase in COtwo production (and methane) associated with human activity. And the measurement of those compounds as rising in the atmosphere.

So the real increase in temperature around the world puts the average temperature higher than any determination no matter how much uncertainity, for the last 2000 years. Not just warmer but the highest measurement of warmth.

I don't like it, I don't think we are at the cusp of doom either. But it is exponential growth and that means we have to put on the brakes earlier than waiting for more dramatic draconian situations to develope and then take actions

We used to have three months of snow cover from Dec-Feb now it's hit or miss. :shake:
Puts a damper on skiing, sledding and snowmobiling. Not cold enough for winter fun too cold for golf. :banghead:
Thanks for letting me bitch about the weather.

The rays from the sun are invisible to COtwo coming in. It strikes the ground changing colors and therefore wavelengths. These reflected wavelength do interact with CO2 and are reflected back to earth. Otherwise the energy is radiated out to space without replenishment on the night side of the planet. (Sun is blasting more in than is radiated out on the day side)

Suppose Iran does get the bomb and successfully has one of their towel headed nutjobs successfully deliver it to an American city. Do you think it will matter if the Sun melts down, grows cold, or gaseous vapors decend upon us like the arch angel?

Living in the now. Nothing I have done, or will do, can make any difference to the world's ecosystem.

I am not going to read one book, nor waste one minute of my precious time sweating over that chit.

It is chilly and wet outside, and I am dealing with it today, it won't kill me today.

Nobody is guaranteed of anything, and there is no guarantee that any generation will proceed unto the next.

What are you doing with your time?

So what? Is this suppose to impress me that you are some sort of educated fool who knows what the fug you are talking about?

What are you doing with your time?





All I can.....:D

I am sure you make a living at something. I would expect you have expertise in your occupation. I might even find value and purchase whatever it is you do.

I don't disparage your technical understanding of your field. I do disparage garbage information in an era when anyone and anything can be put out there for consumption.

I add content that I hope allows you to understand a technical/scientific argument. It allows you to frame intelligent questions that may indeed point to missing parts of my presentation.

I suppose we don't have to do anything about anything. Don't vote, don't make purchase decisions, don't plan. My part is diluted by the billions on the planet. But then that sort of says we are not smart enough to survive in areas were we do have control collectively.

I entertain all kinds of solutions. Don't be unimaginitve in your solutions and only somewhat clever is your posts.

Well, I am a fug up. I went to college and basically fugged off my opportunity so far, so forgive me for being a little harsh.

rep to you, for not taking the bait. :)

My comments in bold.

You missed the key area where understanding is incomplete, and that is in the global climate models. While addition of CO2 and other green house gases provides a force to warm the atmosphere there are various feed back mechanisms that are poorly undersood. Some of these feedback mechanisms act to further warm the surface of the planet. One example of this is that if warming causes a reduction in snow cover. Snow reflects radiation back into space without changing its wavelength, so the heat from this raditation is not absorbed by greenhouse gases. So removal of snow cover will cause additional warming of the planet. An example of a feed back mechanism that would tend to help the planet resist warming is an increase in cloud cover due to additional evaporation.

Global climate scientists have only started quantifying the strength of these feedback mechanisms. Some of these feedback mechanisms may be nonlinear, which results in potentially very large effects with small inaccuaries in the strength of the feedback. So not understanding a feedback mechanism just a little bit can have a huge effect. If the history of science has taught us anything, it is that we usually don't understand something as well as we think we do at any given time.

So in summary, I think it is fairly likely that the planet will warm in the range of 1 to 2 oC in the next 50 years. But I think it is possible that the negative feedback mechanisms will be strong enough that the temperature increses could be much less severe.

If climate models are correct, we will need to make draconian reductions in our CO2 emmissions in order to a) reduce the trends and b) allow the rest of the world economy to develop. Technologies for making these reductions are not in place. Given the degree of uncertainty, I am not in favor of trashing our economy to make draconian reductions now. I am in favor of continuing to invest in technologies to make meaningful and economically viable reductions in the CO2 emissions in the future, should that need become necessary.

And that will almost certainly involve a larger role for nuclear power in this country.

It was savagely fucking cold up here for most of December, and we had a shitload of snow. Right at Christmas it warmed up, and it's been unseasonably warm ever since. Today it was in the 50s.

We're supposed to 2" to 4" of snow tomorrow night, though.

Man, I had a close weather call with the apricot Beemer today.

I had a meeting about 20 miles out of town today, and while I was there, we had a bunch of snow and ice, making the drive back a pain in the neck. Several wrecks on the highway, some cars stuck, etc.

I finally got off the highway, and crept along a city street. Eventually, I ended up at a stop light that went up a rather steep hill. The light was at the top of the hill, and I was about 200 feet back in dense traffic, right at the bottom of the hill. I'm sitting there waiting for the light to change and hoping I can get up the hill, when all of a sudden "AAAAAAAAAAAH!"

This dude coming the opposite direction in an old 280Z lost control at the top of the hill, and he was doing 360s coming down it, moving over from his lanes to mine. There was no way in the world he was controlling his car, and there wasn't any place for me to go. I had left a fair amount of space between my car and the one in front of me, but that was exactly where he was headed.

He finally got traction and the car stopped about four feet to the left of the car in front of me, in a turn lane. If he hadn't managed to hit traction at that point, he would've ended up right in my front grille. I was seriously bumming as he was spinning down toward me.

A tiny bit more snow it would have been curtains for the beemer. You can put yourself down as one of those who benefited from global warming.

Discussion of feedback. OK. The most obvious feedback that counters temperature rising is the creation of clouds. Like snow the clouds reflect radiation without changing the frequency. A second big inhibitory input would be the cessation of the Ocean Conveyor System that moves heat from the Pacific to the Indian Oceans to the north Atlantic. This is driven by salinity density and could be stopped if the fresh water glaciers flood the n. Atlantic. This would leave Europe vulnereable (including western Russia) to much colder weather in line with the latitude you find these countries.

The direct results of the higher temperatures now is melting of the fresh ice. And this has in the past and would most likely now mean much colder weather for Europe much warmer weather forming typhoons in the Pacific and Indian. This also means that the sea levels will rise. If just the northern supply of ice than a couple of meters. (27 meters if the Anartic ice melts but that is a more intense distant discussion) This will mean coast lines (Florida) will be impacted.

So we are going to have a draconian result if the ice continues to melt. And as we measure the ice low and behold it is melting. Glaciers everywhere in the world are retreating at record paces. And the southern extension of winter ice in the north has also been retreating alarmly.

In any complex (I mean mathematically as in Chaos systems) the final outcome is dependent upon initial conditions. But general understandings can indicate the more likely outcomes.

There are present studies about cloud involvement in the tropical regions. The production weather in the tropics is different then more well studied temperant regions we live in. So heat and cloud movement is getting intense study now. I have not heard yet how the refinement will be added to models and what will be the overall general effect.

My eight ball says maybe. :)

Having discussed the inhibitor feedback it would be important to mention positive feedback. You mentioned that ice lost would mean positive feedback. The big concern amoung climatologists is frozen methane. As a enviromental chemist you should have some introduction to this. The methane tied up under the ocean is quite large. But the exposure is more close to the shore (and includes shore in Siberia and Northern Canada) in higher latitudes. Methane with increase in temperature of a few degrees will become gaseous and not trapped. Methane ultimately adds to the COtwo but even as Methane it will as heat trapping gas. And this conversion could be cataclysmic. It is a real concern as ice retreats in the northern latitudes.

In the scale of millions of years this burb may have little effect (though a similar event is tied to the Permian Extinctions). But within the lifescales of human civiliztion of 10,000 years the 100 years of displacement as the climate shifts wildly even more so than now before settling down into some quasi equilibrium would be dire.

It would seem prudent to cut back rather than accelerate the gamble. And as the most advanced country it would seem we could choose to do the hard and right thing rather than the easy and profitable notion.

One of the hardest human understandings is to recognize when the status quo is an extreme position. To understand and anticipate when to change as opposed to reacting and being behind in changing.

Most studies in behavior whether it is economic, biological or otherwise tend to indicate we wait to long in accomodating change to our harm. We don't have confidence in the prediction of the future vs the evidence within our life. Well this thread is all about how we use to have snow and winters in Kansas or Iowa or Missouri. And now we have a blistery December and winter plays out for the rest of the season. So we have indications of change already, not just predictions.

So go back and look at the timing for prediction of change of even the most conservative predictions. And understand how large a ship that we will need to steer clear of the danger. And it is your responsibility to calmly ask for a more conservative direction in the economy rather than the rather peculiar outlier now (compared to so much of human history production) of such huge production of hothouse gases. I do think opportunities for industry will still exist. But energy plants don't want to lose their cash cow.
Reform in the energy economy requires distributed energy production. But that would mean the trend would be everyone producing their own energy. This parallels the distributed process in computing. We do have the technology to make a difference. The solutions are easily democratic and not autocratic. But it does require we all move in the general direction. And so this plea.

I just put a call in to the grand inquisitor and he put the question to the turboencabulator and the answer was: No winter this year, break out your swim suits and refill your pools.

Winter will return in the year 2012 in the form of Hell freezing over.

WOOOHOOO! That must mean the Arrowhead will indeed be covered with a dome! :D

When it's hot outside during the time when it's really supposed to be cold, it's because of global warming. Silly.

Of course there are other phenomenons one should be aware of...

When it's cold during the months when it's really supposed to be warm/hot, that's called global warming.
If it rains too much....global warming.
If it doesnt rain....global warming.

There is a very large and growing contengincy of scientists who think global warming is bulls**t. Of course the media doesn't cover them much like they don't cover this story:

"Bob, I'm standing down here at 8th and Quindero, where nothing happened today. Nobody was shot, nobody was robbed. Nothing. Back to you Bob."

Take Y2k for instance. During that whole media fantasy I probably couldn't count the number of reporters that called to interview me. Guess how many times I was quoted. Zero. Not once. Why? I told the truth: Y2k was a big scam being perpetrated by the media and some people who desperately wanted their 15m of fame. I think global warming runs a lot of parallels.

My grandma used to fart a lot.

Finally, the 'It's warmer AND cooler because of global warming" argument comes out.

ROFL

Y2k wasnt a 'scam', it just wasnt as big as the hype it got from the media and people who didnt know what they were talking about. There were systems that had to be updated to handle a 4 digit year.

I stubbed my toe this morning....global warming.

There was work that needed to be done, but by the time the media caught on and coined the term "Y2k" by and far the majority of the work had already been done. What little was left was blow out of proportion to be planes falling from the sky, total collapse of the world's monatary systems, cats and dogs, sleeping together...

Yes, there was a digit significance problem that had to be dealt with. Y2k as a named issue was a pure fabrication, however.

Ding ding ding!
The media has to justify their purpose somehow. But we all know the media would NEVER manufacture a story, riiiiight? :rolleyes:
Sometimes I think the mainstream media get its jollies from scaring the peeps.

I agree, the media overplayed it. Heck, even in my company/industry it was blown out of proportion by people who knew better--that's what happens when you have people with not enough to do with a desire to justify their overpaid positions as nothing more than a coporate wonk.

It is cold a blah here today. It sucks.

If it all comes to pass we will make adjustments to the situation. Human's are remarkably adaptable.

And the idea that everyone will be generating their own power is just ludicrous. Here on campus they have demo wind/solar unit. The people who sponsored it were disappointed that on what they considered a windy day (think breezey) that the wind mill wasn't really turning. It takes a lot of wind to drive a windmill. The solar units were not efficient enough to keep the batteries at the site charged. Once you are generating enough power for your house and to recharge your electric car and are completely disconnected from the grid, you can tell me about your experiences and maybe I'll listen then.

When you start advocating the construction of hundereds of new nuclear plants, I'll consider that you are serious about CO2 emissions. If we are going to shift our energy supply away from fossil fuels, nuclear is the only current enery source that will be able to bear the burden. Some other technologies such as wind can contribut 10 to 20%, but nuclear will lead the way.

I say we go completey Nuke, and put all the waste on a rocket and launch it into the Sun.

Yeah, that wouldn't be bad when a ring went faulty and it exploded in the atmosphere.

You doubt the quality of our space program? ;)
Maybe wave action (oceans) is the answer.