Weather musings

[Vinny]

So things had been nice lately. The days were getting longer, clearer, and warmer. In other words, spring was arriving. Then I hear the other day that a "fast moving" storm was going to swing through and dump "8-10" inches of snow. Now this by itself is not totally unheard of in my area. Since I moved up here, we've had snow as late as April 1st.

Yesterday arrives, and I notice that it starts to snow at around 8am. Most of it isn't sticking, and accumulations were not so bad. Even by the time I was heading into work at 10pm, we had only gotten perhaps 3-4 inches at most. When I went outside at 1am to shovel off the walkways, we had gotten another few inches, but not enough to warrent me taking out the snowblower.

Then the proverbial crap hit the fan and began to come down from the heavens in the form of much, much heavier flaky whiteness......

When I next head outside to clear at 5am, I found out the hard way that a good 6 inches had come down in the 3 hours I was indoors! Out comes the snowblower, and I'm clearing away as best as I can, but this was becoming a losing battle. By the time I had finished all the paths, the beginning was so covered that it appeared that I had done nothing.

Rinse, lather, repeat until the day shift made it in and I could pass things off to them.

Final accumulations- 18 inches plus over 25 hours ending on April 5th.
To this I say- "Global Warming? What Global Warming?!?"

[G]

To this I say- "Global Warming? What Global Warming?!?"

Oh, there's global warming all right. For example, it's supposed to rain a lot during winter months where I am. Last year there was a lot. This year, there hasn't been much at all.

Sure, the weather fluxuates. But Global Warming doesn't just refer to warm temperatures as much as climate changing. It's just the phrasing.

[Cory]

Move down South. There's your Global Warming.

I swear we had a good one weeks worth of winter from Dec. to March. Other than that, it was unseasonably warm. Just last week we set high temperature records in the upper 80's low 90's. It's only April...I break out in a sweat walking the 20 yards from work to my car. June and July are going to be killer.


In other words. You take your "snow", whatever that is, and like it!

[Amaltea]

When is that niño gonna grow up?

[Grayson]

I'm with Vinny on this one. Anchorage broke a 100 year record of winter months snow accumulation in January, absolutely shattering it by the end of winter. And it's still snowing now. I'm looking out my front window at snow. Kodiak, where I am, had the coldest winter since '78, and the ice edge in the Bering extended farther south than it had since the mid-60s. Solid ice, not just ice flows.

It's a well documented fact that weather runs through cycles, sometimes spanning hundreds of years. This "global warming" happened approx. 120 years ago, too. Not meaning to offend anyone reading this, but people like Al Gore are friggin' idiots (and major hypocrites, but that's a whole nother topic of discussion).

-Grayson
Laying it all out since July 2nd, 2001

[Grayson]

That was the beginning of March.

[Karen Wilder]

Totally agree with you, Grayson.

The "Middle Ages" began due to warmer weather in Europe... weather so warm that they were growing grapes and pressing wine in England! The warmer weather increased the area that crops could be planted and also generally increased existing crop yields. This led to larger populations, greater tax incomes and the rise of the merchant classes. The "Dark Age" began when that warm weather faded back to "normal"... the crop blights and rat migrations led to the Black Death that wiped out huge swaths of the population.

Climate changes are a scientifically recorded fact... that's why so many scientists jumped off the "Global Warming" bandwagon and changed it to the "Climateological Change" bandwagon.

[Spiffy McBang]

I watched the Al Gore documentary for a class last semester, and while he clearly has an agenda- everyone does- the one thing that caught my attention was this: 53% of normal media reports quote scientists who deny or play down the effects of global warming, whereas zero such reports exist in legitimate scientific journals.

Part of why I noticed this is that I've had no trust in mass media since before it was cool not to trust mass media, but all the same, it also offers an easy piece of meat to throw at the "LOL GLOBAL WARNING" crowd- find an article that proves him wrong. Either side can throw out any number of statistics or scientific terms that 99.99% of the world will either have to accept, deride, or ignore while being ignorant of the truth because they have no way to confirm it. But searching through scientific journals is something most people could do if they cared enough to spend the time. And you only have to find one anti-global warming article to cast doubt on his claim (although a few would be nice).

I'm not actually asking anyone to do that, just saying you have that opening to work with if you want to debunk Gore's statements- and maybe you'll find that he's right. Frankly, though, there's enough of a logical connection between pollution and global warning (ie. there's a legitimate possibility we're causing it to some degree), and other factors proven to be caused by pollution (ie. acid rain), that if it takes the spectre of global warming to drive the movement for better care of the environment, I'll wave the banner high.

[Deluthan]

To say that unusually high amounts of snow is proof against global warming seems a little short-sighted. I'm no weather expert, but I do know that snow is a form of precipitation, and precipitation occurs when a warm, vapor-rich low pressure system runs into a cool high pressure system; the water vapor rises, cools, condenses, and falls. Warmer air holds more vapor, thus causing more precipitation.

We live at equilibrium with the earth, and, as our population continues to grow, the earth must continue to adjust (eventually something has to give, but that's another dicussion). More people means more consumption and more waste. We've seen how our way of life can affect our environment locally, be it in the quality of air, water, or wildlife. So, to what extent can we affect our environment? All our actions have consequences; we struggle to ascertain the reach and severity of those consequences on a global scale. While I have trouble believing that our activity alone can change climate globally, I do believe it can exasperate natural phenomena already occuring.

[Vinny]

You know, I think people are taking what was a line said in jest to a proportion I had not imagined. I was not trying to make any political point, merely saying something to the extent of, "Hey! Where's the warm weather, because I'm starting to get sick of all this snow!"

[Grayson]

Del,

I'll give you the point on the snow. But the big thing for me is the ice edge in the Bering (can't really speak for anywhere else, so if anyone has that info feel free to chip in). The fishermen up here were livid. They lost about 15% of their fishing grounds due to ice.

[Anjolie Quinn]

I've decided to move to Seattle... if global warming exists then it will be alot nicer than Indiana. If it doesn't exists... well... it'll still be alot nicer than Indiana.

[Wyheree]

Merry Easter!!

At Christmas, it was like fall - 50 degrees, warm enough to allow kidlets to go to the park and run amok!

This past Tuesday, it was 80 degrees - a record high for NE Ohio.. now.. there's 5-6 inches of snow on the ground, and it's barely 25 degrees.

The joke up here is "If you don't like the weather - wait 10 minutes - it'll change!" And.. people were shorts once it's over 40, just because they can!

[Deluthan]

We've had some freak cold weather here lately, and it's been doing some serious damage to some of my young trees that were only recently flashing their baby leaves. It makes me sad. I hope it hasn't affected the local agriculture too much.

[Elijah]

The weather report just said to expect atleast 5 inches of snow here in Denver on Friday.

The planet and the species adapt and evolve based on the everyday factors of life exististing here. Obviously, the human spiecies has had an effect on the earth's einvironment since we're the most dominate species on the planet that vastly alters the geographical face of the planet. From what I've come to understand about the situation is that a human from a 100,000 years ago could not physically survive our ecosystem and us vice versa if we went back that far because of the evolution of how our bodies interact with the ecosystems. To not believe we don't effect the earth's environment in some fashion is completely ignornant I believe.

It's just the age old question of what kind of world do you want to leave for your children's children to enjoy is all. I personally don't think we could ever "fix" what damage we have done, but we could find ways to lessen our impact. But we will always have an impact of some kind and we need to have an impact on the earth to survive.

I personally am of the personal favorite of space exploration to lead to colonization. Eventually this world will either A= won't be big enough to fit all of us, or B= won't be worth living on anyway. I believe it's essential for the surivival of our species to eventually find other planets suitable to sustain our consuming happy arses.

However, I am fond of ole mother earth and I'd like to keep her well kept for as long as we can regardless if we find other rocks to drop a flag on.