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Someone cast Wolven Winter on New Orleans!
It is snowing here! I kid you not. That is like snow in Abysia. The last snow I can recall was when i was in law school back in the 80's. And that was a few flurries. My car is buried in snow and there is snow on the ground!
I blame KO of course. :) Someone from the Nordic North cast a foul spell on us. I had the air conditioner on(seriously) 2 nights ago because it was warm and muggy. And now it is snowing.:eek: |
Re: Someone cast Wolven Winter on New Orleans!
New Orleans? Are you sure? :shock: Damn! It was supposed to be Miami... :doh:
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Re: Someone cast Wolven Winter on New Orleans!
Wow!!
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Re: Someone cast Wolven Winter on New Orleans!
Wolven Winter usually precedes an attack by Niefelheim. Watch out for Frost Jarls!
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Re: Someone cast Wolven Winter on New Orleans!
Bah. That's just some symphatic magic or something. We here in cold north would be happy to take your snow, but it's only rain in here. Damned climate switch.
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Well, in reverse, it's unnaturally warm here in Moscow. When usually everithing is covered with snow since the beginning of November, we had about +7 - +9°C (45 - 48°F) until recently.
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Re: Someone cast Wolven Winter on New Orleans!
"Wolven Winter usually precedes an attack by Niefelheim. Watch out for Frost Jarls!"
Frost Jarls would not have a prayer in New Orleans. We are now ranked the most violent city in the United States. I guess we have turmoil 3 and misfortune 3 scales. In any event the national guard still patrols New Orleans-having never left after Katrina. And yet we are still the murder capital of the known world. Actually I think we are only 3rd in the entire world, but first in the States by a huge margin. But on a more cheery note, Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow,,,,,,, |
Re: Someone cast Wolven Winter on New Orleans!
It's probably caused by global warming.
-Max (Just making fun of the people who link every heat wave and ablating glacier to "global warming." Sometimes trends are *local*, not global.) |
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Re: Someone cast Wolven Winter on New Orleans!
Looks like the snowstorm in India at the beginning of the movie "The Day After"... :cold: Start burning books before ya freeze!! :shock:
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-Max |
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Re: Someone cast Wolven Winter on New Orleans!
It's not possible to link any one event, storm or heat wave or whatever to global warming. Weather is variable and any individual event could happen regardless.
However, one of the predictions the models make is that weather will be come more extreme. Storms, heat waves, cold snaps will all be come more common and severe as the average global temperature rises. So, yes it's quite possible. And I don't know about Kilimanjaro, but the artic and antarctic glacial melting is about as linked to global warming as anything is. Moving faster than predicted, if anything. Trends at both poles and linked to ocean circulation are not "just local" |
Re: Someone cast Wolven Winter on New Orleans!
I guess i can start with burning my dominions manual since it is out of date now!:D:D:D
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That's terrible science, irrespective of whether Seattle will be hotter or cooler 20 years from now (it's hard to tell). There's no way to know why New Orleans has snow but it's not evidence of anything relating to global temperatures, yet. Although I have it on good authority that the Louisiana snowstorm was caused by a Monarch butterfly in Oklahoma flapping his wings last June. -Max |
Re: Someone cast Wolven Winter on New Orleans!
Could you please find another relevant source? One beginning with...
"YOU CHOSE a visit to a wind-farm in early summer 2008 to devote an entire campaign speech to the reassertion of your belief in the apocalyptic vision of catastrophic anthropogenic climate change - a lurid and fanciful account of imagined future events that was always baseless, was briefly exciting among the less thoughtful species of news commentators and politicians, but is now scientifically discredited. (???) With every respect, there is no rational basis for your declared intention that your great nation should inflict upon her own working people and upon the starving masses of the Third World the extravagantly-pointless, climatically-irrelevant, strategically-fatal economic wounds that the arrogant advocates of atmospheric alarmism admit they aim to achieve.*" ...doesn't seem totally unbiased :) *(they admit they aim to achieve pointless economical wounds to their own countries? ma lol!) PS: Quote:
PPS: I suggest a big OT in the thread's title :D |
Re: Someone cast Wolven Winter on New Orleans!
No one claims snow in New Orleans is evidence of global warming. I said it's possible (maybe even likely) it's due to global warming, but that's far different than being evidence of.
Again, no single unusual weather event is evidence, there have always been unusual weather events. A statistic increase in both the number and severity of such events is predicted and would be evidence. Do you see the difference? |
Re: Someone cast Wolven Winter on New Orleans!
How pointless.
If temperatures go up it's global warming. If they go down? Yep, still global warming... Though the entire point of the exercise is to link rising temperatures to CO2 anyway, but not the converse... How odd that we listen to non scientists like Al Gore to explain systems as complicated as the global climate, yet ignore any findings which show alternative causes to rising temperatures. Well the dogma has been bought already, no reason to ask for a refund I guess. |
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Look, I'll try to explain it in a non-difficult way :)
Global warming = temperatures go up. Temperatures go up = ice caps melt in the poles (expecially the north pole, this summer for the first time both the northwest and the northeast passages opened) Ice caps melt = lots of cold, fresh water go in the oceans Cold fresh water in the oceans = it disturbs the hot currents which mainly from the tropical/equatorial gulfs go warming the coasts around the world Hot currents disturbed = Heat goes down around :cold: and it is increased the chance of typhoons floodings hurricanes etc. due to pressure jolts The thing is obviously much more complicated. Still it's not that difficult to understand that global warming can make the temperatures go both ways. And btw nobody just "listens to non scientists like Al Gore", (he made a great documentary while not scientifically perfect, and has the merit of having brought "sixpackjoe"'s attention to the problem); still ppl even listen to commissions of top-climatologists and scientists of other branches (including Nobel prizes) which say the problem exists, it's serious and even the Kyoto protocol wouldn't be enough to stop the huge and dangerous climate changes of the next centuries. - http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/conten.../306/5702/1686 Our sons will pay for our greed. |
Re: Someone cast Wolven Winter on New Orleans!
Except that this past winter the arctic had its largest ice coverage in something like 30 or more years (I can look for the citation). But so what?
Oh don't get me wrong, I'm all for better controls on pollution, including CO2 emissions, but not for the ridiculous notions Al Gore lied to everyone about. His documentary wasn't just imperfect science, it was pure bollocks designed to scare based on lies. I think you should take another look at how cold water from the poles would affect the gulf of mexico as well, you seem to be implying that the melt from this summer was both greater than normal, and managed to reach the gulf in some 5 months or so. Also the past two hurricane seasons have been much lighter than what the alarmists were predicting after one anomalous season 3 years back. It's not simple, this much is true though. |
Re: Someone cast Wolven Winter on New Orleans!
It was the Antartic ice. Yeah last winter - just a bit above the average, nothing to go excited about.
This winter instead, among the lower ones ever registered - http://arctic.atmos.uiuc.edu/cryosph...area.south.jpg Al Gore lied? Not so much. Nine errors, nothing really "wrong" but exaggerations on the full synergy of some of the causes/effects and a bit too catastrophic predictions compared to the actual datas in our hands. - http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/news/a...ilm/article.do But we can just say "omg he LIED!!!1!onehundredeleven!!!" and go though it! :smirk: |
Re: Someone cast Wolven Winter on New Orleans!
You know the "Senate Minority Report" now consists of over 650 international scientists who dipute GW. Many of them are current or former IPCC scientists who have turned against it.
Not that it matters anymore. GW has now reached the status of a religion, and it is essentially impossible to convince people on either side of the aisle to join your own side. The only way they do is when they decide for themselves. The most dangerous part of the GW activist movement is the growing lawlessness of it. A bunch of activists in Britain vandalized a factory, but were aquitted on the grounds that it would cause future damage to them through GW. Their star witness was NASA's official GW expert. Just recently a bunch of activists shut down London airport, and its quite possible that they will get the same treatment. |
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I haven't seen anything on what the summer ice coverage looked like? How much of that melted away? |
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http://eclogite.geo.umass.edu/climat...al_2003jgr.pdf Abstract: In the context of investigating modern glacier recession on Kilimanjaro, which began around 1880, this study addresses the glacier regime of the vertical ice walls that typically form the margins of Kilimanjaro’s summit glaciers. These walls have suffered a continuous lateral retreat during the twentieth century... *snip to body* AWS data through July 2002 show that monthly mean air temperatures only vary slightly around the annual mean of 7.1 C, and air temperatures (measured by ventilated sensors, e.g., Georges and Kaser [2002]) never rise above the freezing point. By the way, it looks like Monckton was incorrect about sublimation being the primary mechanism, at least according to Molg. Molg concludes that air temperatures are unimportant, and that direct solar radiation is the driver behind the recession. (I.e. it is "melting" after all. At least I think that's what he's saying.) Do you apply this level of scrutiny to both sides of the global warming debate, or are you skeptical only of the skeptics? If you're skeptical of both, then good. -Max |
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About 15 years ago we often used to have snow so high that I could sink in completely in the hinterland (ok, I was a kid back then but I was not that small :D). Every winter people went ice skating on frozen lakes. Now for several winters we got maybe 30cm snow at max and going onto the ice is madness (except of course if you don't mind walking home in slowly freezing clothes :D ). So here the climate has definitely changed.
I won't say that this is due to GW or that we will all die because of GW but I wouldn't dismiss it easily. The main problem is imo that it has been blown up to giant proportions by the media and activists. Quote:
I can see two problems with that (I haven't fully read through the article though): First is that measuring the air temperature at a glacier probably doesn't mean too much. When there's ice involved there will be a thermodynamic equilibrium even if there's warm material pumped into the system. When you have a drink with ice cubes in it and pour in more warm drink the temperature will be the same as before after some minutes only the ice cubes are getting less. I don't know if the glacier situation is exceptional for some reason though. Second point is that it's quite a jump from it's not the air to it's direct sun radiation. What about radiation reflected by the atmosphere (which according to global warming should be getting higher)? Yeah, you could even rise a third point - what about humidity levels? Would be also a relevant factor and the article seems to say they have changed. |
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Your other questions and observations (air temperature, etc.) are good too. Thank you. I wish everyone had your attitude. :) -Max P.S. I actually don't necessarily think the study in question supports the sun-is-getting-hotter theory so much as it supports the local-effects-usually-have-local-causes theory. |
Re: Someone cast Wolven Winter on New Orleans!
The average temperature of the world is gradually, and consistently increasing.
Greenhouse effect (Co2) can perhaps not be 100% conclusively linked to this phenomenon, however observations of nearby planets and their atmospheres, plus empirical laboratory testing shows that this -could- contribute to atmospheric warming. Ultimately, the real point is not whether or not humanity is directly causing the climactic trend. The point is that it is happening, and that if it continues to happen, things are going to get a lot harder for everyone. So you have to ask yourself, are we helping to solve the problem? Just not causing something through deliberate personal action, doesn't absolve you from the repercussions of the situation. Living with your head in the sand isn't going to do anyone any good. And just remember, there is a significant chance that sand will be underwater within the decade, and we wouldn't want anyone to drown out of total ignorance, would we? |
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-Max |
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Actually, yes it is -
http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/climate/globalwarming.html Also, sea surface temperature is rising as well - http://www-das.uwyo.edu/~geerts/cwx/...obal_temp.html Again I can only repeat - at a certain point, the cause of this trend is somewhat irrelevant, what matters is how we respond to the changes, and safeguard the viability of our massive and growing population. |
Re: Someone cast Wolven Winter on New Orleans!
1.) Your chart stops ten years ago. Temperature hasn't been rising for several years now.
2.) It's still not consistent. Quoting from your own link, "Figure 1 shows a rise of about 0.6 K since 1910 and no trend between 1940-75." Sometimes it rises, sometimes it falls. In the 20th century it rose more often than it fell, and there was a net temperature gain. In some other centuries, there wasn't. Global mean temperature is not "gradually, and consistently increasing." (Even if you can come up with a sensible definition of a global "mean".) -Max |
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Re: Someone cast Wolven Winter on New Orleans!
Speaking as someone who does know a bit about it, whether or not you believe it is warming, the environment is taking a hell of a beating from something.
BTW, due to various issues, even a small change in climate is pretty devastating, and for a number of species, we are literally on the tipping point. |
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You can twist and spin all you want, what does it prove?
Yes, one year may be colder or warmer than the last. One decade may or may not show as strong a trend as that before it. We are talking about a simply -massive- system, that apparently is too large for most people to grasp in its entirety. You can nitpick about my use of the term "consistent", but debating semantics will similarly not dispel the reality of the situation. I use consistent in terms of a geological timescale, not an Americanized ADHD perspective. http://www.noaanews.noaa.gov/stories...archstats.html Quote:
If you'd like, we can discuss what makes a trend, and what does not. But since we have started measuring nearly 150 years ago, the temperature has been rising, and as was pointed out, the rate of overall increase dramatically escalated in the last 30 years. (EDIT - adding a couple more quotes from this report, for those who don't want to take the time to read it.) Quote:
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And you're still cherry-picking. "The rate of increase went up dramatically in the last 30 years," you say, but it went to zero in the last ten years. It looks like a worrisome (open-ended) trend only if you cherry-pick your timescale to make it so. I've said enough for now. -Max |
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Ah, skip it. I'm talking like a jerk. Sorry, Jim. I'd delete that post but it's past the 30 minute limit.
-Max |
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Hey, it's a heated issue, Max! *rimshot*
But seriously, I understand, I was getting a little riled myself, and as much as it's a good thing to maintain control of one's self in a disagreement, it's equally a good thing to not get upset if your opponent gets a bit terse or combative. :p Anyway, all evidence points towards a warming trend that has been lasting for thousands of years now. That coupled with the fact that most life on Earth exists between 35° and 105° Fahrenheit, and it becomes rather important, especially when you talk about an anomolous 1/2 degree jump in 30 years. Globally. That is an enormous amount of material to warm or cool in a measurable manner. The air is warming, we can see there is consistently (there's that word again!) less snowpack than in decades past, and glaciers are very rapidly receding. The sea is warming, we can see that arctic/antarctic ice is melting away from passages never before clear in history, also coral reefs that live in very delicate ecosystems, and took thousands of years to grow, are dying off because the water temperatures are rising. The sad part of all of this, is that everytime any kind of liberal and/or environmental issue surfaces, there is a subculture that is wildly ignorant to any actual facts, who are more than eager to champion that cause, and make total asses out of everyone else who is trying to work off of facts. Meanwhile, this causes a knee-jerk response in more conservative types, who see this obviously reactionary activity, and try to end it. Sometimes the roles are reversed, but for some reason the wildly ignorant conservatives (race-hate-mongers, etc) manage to not scream so loudly as the liberals. :p But it all makes it hard for us to converge on the facts, and come to agreement as to what those facts actually mean. |
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- http://www.ucsusa.org/news/press_rel...g-tobacco.html - http://image.guardian.co.uk/sys-file...ttertoNick.pdf (j/k) Quote:
And about vandals... there are idiots everywhere they can damage something, I think (with full respect) you are making an argumentum ad personam :) And that's not "a religion". Like is not "a religion" believing in evolution or gravity or whatever. That's just a scientific theory which is gathering datas that -for now- mostly point in the direction that us, burning lots of fossil fuels, are significantly helping something that surely has even other causes, and we need to reduce pollution (which would even have other significant positive effects on environment, so many other wins) and move to greener energy sources. :world: |
Re: Someone cast Wolven Winter on New Orleans!
I think global warming wouldn't be remotely controversial if it wasn't so strongly in our interest not to believe in it.
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Ha, sorry, that was another of my cheerfully provocative posts! I think I shouldn't be allowed to post on politics or global warming. So although I do agree with my previous post, please ignore it if you don't like it, because the way I wrote it as just a single sentence makes it more provocation than argument.
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Explaining that one would be welcome instead I think :)
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If we intend to be serious about stopping the man-made effect that contributes to (as opposed to being the sole cause of) global warming, all of us would have to take a massive hit into our lifestyles, is what he means, I suspect.
It just so happens that the 650 skeptics are a drop in a bucket compared to the larger body of climate scientists who have achieved a consensus that humans have a significant effect on global warming, increasing it. That's comparable to some intelligent design proponents who made a lo tof hay about some Steve somebody who was a scientist and backed their crazy ideas. An Australian organization of scientists signed up 700 scientists from that same field whose first name was Steve to refute his bull**** and in the glkobal warming discussion, the 650 denier scientists are a comparable example. The primary cause of global warming is build-up of atmospheric greenhouse gases, notably CO2. The amount of atmospheric CO2 has increased fivefold in the last 150 years and almost all of that carbon has a radiological footprint of being millions or tens or hundreds of millions of years in age. That means that nearly all of it is of fossil origin, i.e. coal. Unless that is taken out of the atmosphere by some means, there is no way to return to the same mechanisms that caused the early medieval warm bump and the mini ice age in the 1600s. The increase of the greenhouse gases leads to less reradiation of heat into space, so the earth absorbs more from the sun than it emits back out on the night side. Increase of temperature causes the ice caps to melt, which reduces albedo, which again reduces the amount reflected and reradiated out. If there are slight dips and and bumps in a curve that overall has an upward trend, the individual dips and bumps don't mean much. Likewise, a transitory local weather phenomenon does not mean much, because the heat distribution throughout the world is not even by a long shot and local variation can be significant without impacting the overall trends at all. There are also some other factors that cause variation. Large volcanic eruptions cool temperatures because of the obscuring effect the ash has on the sun, causing less heat to reach the ground. Another factor on the geological timescales is continental placement. The earth has been much warmer at some points, because during those periods there was no Central American isthmus to block the warm equatorial current that would have counteracted the effect of the cold currents circling Antarctica and some other continents were likewise in other places. The fact that things have been warmer in the past is also not at all an argument for why warming back up to those temperatures would be beneficial for humankind as a whole, because our current societies were built during a colder period and the warming is causing a LOT of damage to the environment. That is an undisputed fact and only a fool would argue nothing should be done to mitigate that damage. |
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Lol, I knew Edi was about to arrive in the thread ;):up: (I remember a previous discussion on the topic)
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Warm is better than cold for crops, for animals, for people (as a general statement). As you say, only a fool would argue the contrary. |
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Yeah, expecially animals love superior temperatures! That's why WWF likes so much the climate changes! Umh, wait... no.
- http://www.panda.org/about_wwf/what_...acts/index.cfm - http://www.panda.org/about_wwf/what_...tics/index.cfm You may be interested even in this: - http://www.geog.umd.edu/resac/outgoi...e%20change.pdf And about "men living better with higher temperatures" you are probably thinking about summer holidays, but here we're talking about the possibilities of oceans' level rising, increased chance of hurricanes, not to mention proliferation of usually tropical/equatorial bacterias (dengue fever, malaria) in previously colder areas. But maybe I'm a fool. Oh, I also live in Tuscany, we've plenty of vines for wine here, I think you can ask everyone here around how much plants like very hot summers... (and let's not talk about the chance of progressive desertification of already semi-arid areas, because I'd maybe sound too apocalyptic to some ears - still, http://www.ace.mmu.ac.uk/eae/Global_...ification.html and http://www.greenfacts.org/en/deserti...rsity-loss.htm) |
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A number of animals and plants in various areas live in what, until now, was a remarkably stable climate- equatorial climates, usually. They can't migrate readily and those that normally would are in many cases trapped due to development of surrounding land. There are a huge number of animal and plant species that are likely to go extinct because it will get warmer. Evolution isn't going to save anything's bacon that doesn't reproduce faster than fruitflies, as a lot of this is happening too quickly. Speaking of fruitflies, a trait has been spreading in more northern flies that until recently was only found in flies from southern climates, and that trait was linked to climate. They are winning the race against climate change, but fruitflies are incredibly mobile and have a remarkable level of gene diversity and cross populaiton breeding due to human transportation of them. Most species that have been looked at are not nearly so likely to take it in stride. |
Re: Someone cast Wolven Winter on New Orleans!
:hijack:
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I suspect that it's a little difficult to detect meaningful trends over less than perhaps a 50-year span, and so my feeling is that all these pro/anti GW fanatics wrangling over the last 10 years of data aren't really saying anything useful.
It seems to me that extremists on both sides of the debate are using bad science to back their arguments at times, and that both sides have at times appeared to treat ethics as being less important than putting their message across. As a result I don't really think it's worth my time taking either side of the debate seriously. That said, I have concerns over carbon emissions. After all, we've put out enough CO2 to measurably change the composition of the atmosphere. In the absence of any certain knowledge of what the effects of this on the planet will be, it seems sensible to try and limit emissions. I'd rather have the history books saying it was all a fuss about nothing than detailing how chances to avert future problems were wasted. NB: I don't pretend to know what sort of changes altering atmospheric CO2 levels could actually cause. For all I know, they could be positive. But... not too long ago, no-one thought that halon fire extinguishers and CFC aerosol cans could alter the environment. |
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Don't even tell me you couldn't tell this was a global warming debate, Cleveland. :p
I'm just having trouble getting over my amusement that 2 moderators passed through and did the opposite of trying to squelch the discussion. <3 The Earth is growing warmer, we accepted that? The people trying to convince you that it's not such a bad thing, are the most fabulously wealthy people on the planet - who got that way by selling you the problem. It is directly in -their- best interests to convince you that it is in -your- best interests to either ignore the warming, or claim innocence, so that you can continue in your oil reliant lifestyle as long as possible. |
Re: Someone cast Wolven Winter on New Orleans!
Jim,
:) I just wish folks got as emotional about the science behind, say, heart medication as they do about global warming. The only thing worse than an armchair scientist is one with a DSL line. |
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