Does all this Snowfall Disprove Climate Change?
This has been one heckuva (helluva) weather year on the east coast. I’m sitting here while a three and half foot drift of snow is piled against my front door while snow continues to fall on a town where yearly records have already been shattered (I think I read that somewhere). We’ve had a very white Christmas, a dumping of two feet in January, and now another monster storm leaving us working from home (yeah right) and writing mediocre blog postings just to maintain the small bit of sanity that remains within us.
I was also in Orlando, Florida in January of this year when the high temperature was thirty five degrees Fahrenheit. I don’t know where these people got all these hats and gloves, but I certainly didn’t have any and I was freezing my rear end off.
Needless to say this winter has turned the Carolinas into a fishtailing frenzy of wintertime extravaganza.
Every time we get this abnormally cold weather or excessive snowfall, people start saying things like, “How ’bout your global warming now John?” And then start snickering and fist-bumping with their conservative buddies, and muttering things like, “dumb tree hugger” under their breath.
I often try to explain to them that global warming has only increased the Earth’s temperature by about 1 degree Celsius, and that climate change can actually result in more extreme weather on both sides of the temperate spectrum. This is usually countered with some kind of belly laugh and big sigh. I doubt we’re getting anywhere with this argument.
“ln the simulations I’ve analyzed, you can get some quite big blizzards up until the year 2040,” said Raymond Pierrehumbert, professor of geophysics at the University of Chicago. “But between 2040 and 2080, it starts to get too warm to have much snow at all and it gradually sort of peters out.”
Experts say precipitation will likely increase in many parts of the country, while others experience drought. In Illinois, storms with extreme precipitation have become more frequent by 3 percent each decade from 1931 to 1996, according to a study by the Illinois State Water Survey and the National Climatic Data Center.
Of course global climate change hasn’t been proven beyond an absolute doubt, so there is a chance that we could be creating a big fuss and of course, a better World, for nothing. But evidently in the minds of nay-sayers the consequences don’t outweigh the sacrifices.
However, I think it is safe to conclude that snow storms and abnormally cold weather does nothing to disprove or discredit theories of global climate change. And if these large groups of scientists are correct, we could be in store for some more extreme weather in the upcoming years, so hold on tight and enjoy it while it lasts, for it may not be around forever.
Tags: Climate Change, Construction blog, Construction Economics, John Poole, snowfall climate change, weather global warming
I took a course in 2003 at the University of Nevada on Global Environmental Policy. The bulk of the course addressed problems that we will face if global temperatures continue to rise. Much of the science presented predicted weather anomalies and extremes. Larger than usual wildfires, hurricanes, tornadoes, drought, floods, and other non-typical weather events throughout the world.
I think we’ve witnessed much of that. My opinion is that warming is real! The melting of the polar ice caps alone should end that debate. The cause is a little more debatable, but I believe that if anybody doesn’t believe combustion exhaust is bad for animals and the environment, they should breathe in the exhaust of a running automobile for two hours.
After that, we can discuss the merit of greenhouse gas reduction.
– Jason Martin
http://jasonmartin530.com/
From what I understood from listening to yet another expert on warming, the weather trends will all be moisture based. Increased or decreased snow or rain.
Too bad the experts never agree, both sides of this argument have merit in their studies and even though their scientists, models and hypothetical theories are not the same as fact. We know the ice shelf is getting smaller, but only 10,000 years ago we were in an ice age, you can’t blame that change in climate on auto exhaust.
Even here in Houston this winter has been especially cold and wet. We have been below freezing on at least 10 separate days and even got snow. It effects different business’ differently….restaurants with outdoor seating hate it but coffee shops love it. The business is little effected temperature but rain is our enemy! Hard to stain a deck or in the rain!
There is indeed global warming or we would still be in the “ice age”. Glaciers have been melting for thousands of years and now the IPCC wants you to believe that the cause is manmade. It wasn’t manmade for thousands of years but it is now. The polar ice caps are melting. Sea level will rise. Get used to it because there is nothing you, or anybody else, can do about it. Even if we all move into tee-pees and walk every where we go, global warming will continue…we might be able to postpone or extend the impact but it will occur. Is a disaster better because it occurs later?
If anyone still believes in the myth of man made climate change (i.e.: global warming, let me know, I have a bridge in Brooklyn to sell you.
After the revelations about the corruption and outright fradulent data at the University of East Anglia, I would find it really difficult to take any proponent of this “theory” seriously.
Exposed as liars, these ideologues would ruin economies, and set back the human standard of living centuries in order to cry wolf in the name of their new religion…(Environmentalism). Or is it really facism?
Anyone who would perpetrate a lie and a fraud of this magnitude on the world deserves one fate. To be discredited totally.
If they had any shame, this would be the time for them to ne red faced.
You have to look beyong what is happening in the United States and consider the very real issues being created by lack of snow (or ice pack) in the world. There are very real concerns in areas like Tibet where people are facing drought conditions due to lack of snow or percipitation. The concern regarding glaciers is not that they are melting, but the RATE at which they are melting. I am always amused when people say well we have had extreme snow in the East so that must mean global warming is a lie?
From my readings on the subject I think we can dispel the notion that human beings have anywhere near the influence that we attribute to ourselves. Typical human hubris. Cosmic phenomena are more of a factor and sorry to inform my fellow mortals but we can’t do much about that. “Climate change” is a constant and should not be surprising to many clear thinkers. Direct attribution to “man” is something different. I need to be convinced further. Given the current climate (no pun intended) in the “scientific” community I don’t see definitive data forthcoming any time soon.
The current weather doesn’t really say much either for or against climate change. What is evident from the weather is the demonstration that weather patterns are cyclic. 10 years ago (+/-) we had a blizzard, 20 years ago (+/-) we had a blizzard, 30 years ago… you get my point. Droughts, hurricanes, etc. follow the same patterns. On a very large scale, the earth is warming up. It’ll reach a point where it’ll start cooling down, long after we are all dead and forgotten. The ice ages have cycles as well.
Next thing to consider is whether man is having a positive or negative influence on the greater trend of global warming. Some scientific evidence suggests that because we control wild fires and eliminate large areas of woodlands/brush, we are reducing the natural increase in carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Hence, the rate of increase is less than normal.
What upsets me in this issue is how we allow our government to over burden industry with regulations and excessive emissions controls while other countries continue to increase their production of green house gases. Our industry and economy suffers. And, the biggest proponents of “Climate Change Regulations” are getting wealthy from it. Look at the money Mr. Gore has made from this issue. Do you think he would be pushing the issue if there wasn’t such profit in it for him?
I think we need to keep the air we breath clean and start moving to higher ground. Remember, the planet is still warming up from the last ice age.
I would like to back up the fraudulent data which global warming was based on and the fact that the Earth has been warming for 10,000+ years. The Earth warms when it is closer to the Sun in a circular orbit and Ice Ages occur when we are in an egg shape orbit. We just left the circular orbit and are moving into the egg shaped orbit now. So we have 10,000+years of global cooling ahead – see if Man can change that? Plus the Sun just left its hot cycle – which is why Mars has excessive global warming too – or did our pollution just extend to Mars?
Only an ego as big as man’s can suggest that our species is somehow destroying the balance of nature on a global scale. The very same nature that has had sweltering global climates followed by ice ages over and over again throughout the roughly 4 billion years of earth’s existence. One, I repeat ONE eruption of a super volcano such as Yellowstone produces more affect on the global climate than ALL of man’s green house emissions since his existence. Geologists have estimated the Yellowstone erupts about every 100,000 years, and they have found at least 7 super caldrons worldwide.
The development of the huge hole that developed over Antarctica in the eighties and nineties led to bans on fluorocarbons and development of alternatives. We (according to the Environmentalist) were soon to lose our ozone protection layer resulting in more global warming and doom mankind to live underground for eternity to avoid the torrent of UV radiation. Now, scientists agree that the ozone hole soon resulted in a layer of high clouds that (in fact) are not only blocking UV rays, and COOLING the earth, not WARMING it.
Global warming and its disciples have a political agenda, not a meteorological one. If one studies the “fixes” discussed at Kyoto and Copenhagen the truth of the Global Warming dogma is quickly revealed. It is an attempt to redistribute the wealth from those countries that have to those countries that don’t, Socialism on a global scale.
I am certain that MANY will take issue with my position. For those that do, google “terra farming”. Even a deliberate attempt to change climate on a global scale would take generations and generations. As for the ice caps melting, be not afraid. If enough of the ice melts it will shut down the Gulf Stream, which will lead to an ice age of catastrophic proportions. How do we know? It has happened over and over again many times BEFORE mankind even existed.
Al, you brought up an interesting point … the Global Warming disciples, more and more, are not referring to Gloval Warming. Now, they are calling it Climate Change. That way they have covered all their bases, whether they step outside and it is really Hot, or sit inside with their electricity off caused by an ice storm. They are so disingenuous it would be hilarious if it were not such a good chance that they will eventually wind up making everyone pay for their paranoia.