Someone cast Wolven Winter on New Orleans!

[Tifone]

Originally Posted by MaxWilson

Riiight, and so is the snow melting on Mount Kilimanjaro.

Ehm... yes it is? (82% of snow loss on the top of it in the last century... dunno why but I don't think it's due to Abysia having cast Second Sun )...

[MaxWilson]

Originally Posted by Tifone

Ehm... yes it is? (82% of snow loss on the top of it in the last century... dunno why but I don't think it's due to Abysia having cast Second Sun )...

So you know that it's been shrinking for more than a century. Do you concede that it's been shrinking since 1870, and that the temperature has averaged 12 degrees (F) below freezing all the time we've been measuring it and has never exceeded 3 degrees below freezing? (That is, the snow is *ablating*, not melting. Reference http://www.americanthinker.com/2008/..._viscou_1.html.) If unusual weather is evidence of a global warming trend regardless of what kind of weather it is, and shrinking snowpack/glaciers are evidence of a global warming trend regardless of the cause of the shrinkage, is there anything which does *not* constitute evidence for a global trend?

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

[chrispedersen]

Originally Posted by lch

The joke being that it probably is linked to global warming.

According to the people that take such statistics.. this average global temperature this year is shaping up to be the coldest year in 10 years.

[sum1lost]

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.

[JimMorrison]

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

Originally Posted by NOAA

The average global land temperature last month was the warmest on record and ocean surface temperatures were the 13th warmest. Combining the land and the ocean temperatures, the overall global temperature ranked the second warmest for the month of March. Global temperature averages have been recorded since 1880.

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.)

Originally Posted by NOAA

The global land surface temperature was the warmest on record for March, 3.3°F above the 20th century mean of 40.8°F. Temperatures more than 8°F above average covered much of the Asian continent. Two months after the greatest January snow cover extent on record on the Eurasian continent, the unusually warm temperatures led to rapid snow melt, and March snow cover extent on the Eurasian continent was the lowest on record.

Despite above average snowpack levels in the U.S., the total Northern Hemisphere snow cover extent was the fourth lowest on record for March, remaining consistent with boreal spring conditions of the past two decades, in which warming temperatures have contributed to anomalously low snow cover extent.

[Tifone]

Looks like the snowstorm in India at the beginning of the movie "The Day After"... Start burning books before ya freeze!!

[thejeff]

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"

[Xietor]

I guess i can start with burning my dominions manual since it is out of date now!

[Tifone]

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:

Originally Posted by MaxWilson

There's no way to know why New Orleans has snow but it's not evidence of anything relating to global temperatures, yet.

Nobody here has actually claimed undisputed "evidence" for that.

PPS: I suggest a big OT in the thread's title

[MaxWilson]

Originally Posted by Tifone

Could you please find another relevant source? One beginning with...

Yes, Monckton has an opinion, and I cited him only to support my facts about Kilimanjaro. I never asked you to believe his analysis, because uncritical belief is exactly what I'm criticizing here. But okay, you asked for a more neutral source for the facts. Here's the paper Monckton cited.

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