Does anybody still believe we are having just "normal" weather anymore?

fuzzybuddy

fuzzybuddy

SF VIP
Location
The Sticks, Northeast PA.
Worst fires, worst hurricanes, record breaking cold, record breaking hot days, and today-the entire Eastern US under weather advisories. Do you believe it's getting harder and harder to deny climate change?
 

I agree with Ken, We have had cold spells, droughts, blizzards, etc... for years but now we have cable news people covering every little thing that happens in a frantic breathless way that makes you feel like the world is coming to an end.

I'm sure that we are experiencing some climate change but from what I understand we can not measure it by these current events. My understanding is that weather is what happens day to day and measurable climate change happens over decades and even centuries.

All I know for sure is that it is cold enough to freeze the balls off of a brass monkey!!!

brass%20monkey_zpsiw3oyg59.jpg~original
 

Its a different year for us here in Houston. Our winters are usually mild but this is terrible. I was hoping for a good freeze to kill the bugs but not for several nights in a row. Finally Sunday we are supposed to hit 70 so maybe I can get out without freezing!!!
 
terry123 said:
Its a different year for us here in Houston. Our winters are usually mild but this is terrible. I was hoping for a good freeze to kill the bugs but not for several nights in a row. Finally Sunday we are supposed to hit 70 so maybe I can get out without freezing!!!
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Gotta take the good with the bad. The bugs are gone. Try living in the artic air and the sweeping noreasters of New England. Or, take Canada. I don't know how those people stand their winters. LoL. I'd pay to leave. No offense to Canada of course, it's a gorgeous country - when seen in the summertime.
 
Last winter, I never had a coat on. Shorts almost all winter. Hardly had the heat on.

Right now, it's colder than a welldigger's....well....posterior. I know that MY idea of cold isn't, say, Buffalo's idea of cold, but IT'S COLD! It may get down in the 20's tonight. That's hard on those of us who have orange juice in their veins. I don't even know where my coat is.
 
Climate this way, climate that way. Means permanent climate change? No. Just climate doing its thing when various atmospheric conditions collide under unusual circumstances.
 
fuzzybuddy said:
Worst fires, worst hurricanes, record breaking cold, record breaking hot days, and today-the entire Eastern US under weather advisories. Do you believe it's getting harder and harder to deny climate change?
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I'm not a climate scientist...I haven't the training and education to analyze all the events that are happening. Therefore, I put my trust in those who make this subject their life's work. It certainly appears that the extremes are getting more and more frequent, and I attribute that to the planet beginning to go through some major changes that will probably take centuries to fully occur. Judging these changes by what happens in just a year or two is of little value....one has to look at a very long timeline....which is what the climate scientists are trying to do. I doubt that any of our current generations will witness much change, but those living in the next century, and beyond, may well experience some major upheaval if just a portion of these predictions come true.
I personally think that a combination of climate change, and soaring human populations are going to combine to create a real mess in the future....and overpopulation is going to reach a "tipping point" well before the full effects of climate change begin to take effect.
 
I lived through Hurricane Irma and now this freezing weather. I am thinking I should have stayed in the cold country with snow and hard freezes throughout the winter. I just hope this weird weather doesn't keep happening.
 
-40 F with the wind chill factor here.

Im not a fan of the AGW theory

Mother Nature has a way of evening things out.

If your average temperature for the season is traditionally a certain temperature it's not going to change that much.

I tracked the temperature in my city for the last 100 years. It has changed 1/2 a degree.

Perception and actual facts are two different things. People will guess our winters are warmer. They aren't. We just have better equipment to deal with it.
 
It's hard to deny that the predicted global warming weather changes are not happening. It is the driest, the wettest, the coldest, the warmest, the rate of glaciers melting, the list goes on and on. The only question is whether global warming is aided by human activity or part of a cycle of climate change. And from either cause, global warming will mean changes in where we are able to live. Granted, we won't see the full effects; but our children, and definitely our grandchildren will.
 
fuzzybuddy said:
It's hard to deny that the predicted global warming weather changes are not happening. It is the driest, the wettest, the coldest, the warmest, the rate of glaciers melting, the list goes on and on. The only question is whether global warming is aided by human activity or part of a cycle of climate change. And from either cause, global warming will mean changes in where we are able to live. Granted, we won't see the full effects; but our children, and definitely our grandchildren will.
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Global warming or not I strongly believe that the various levels of government should be addressing where we can live now. It is madness for people to keep building in locations that have severe weather every few years that destroys property and then expect the government to assist them in the rescue and rebuilding efforts.
 
Pine Bark Beetles are destroying western forests. Normally, there are years when the temperature drops to -50 for a few days straight. This kills most of them However, it's been years since there's been weather that cold in the high country. However, I remember June, 1962 when there was record cold in Death Valley. The temperature was about 70; it should have been thirty to forty degrees higher.

The temperature in Chicago was over 70 on two days in January, 1960. There were snow flurries at the Denver airport in July, 1974. Wyoming has reported snow in every month of the year in every county. Almost all Colorado counties have done the same.We have also reported +70 degree temperatures in almost every county in almost every year. So has Colorado.

One January night when I lived in Colorado. a chinook started to blow during the night. When it began, the temperature was below zero. The temperature at my home went up seventy degrees in five hours. It was warmer than it would have been in July at that hour.

Only one state has never reported a temperature of 100+. Guess which one.

Strange weather is the norm, not the exception. Climate change isn't rapid; it's slow.
 
Aunt Bea said:
Global warming or not I strongly believe that the various levels of government should be addressing where we can live now. It is madness for people to keep building in locations that have severe weather every few years that destroys property and then expect the government to assist them in the rescue and rebuilding efforts.
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For Sure! Whenever one of these disasters occurs, and the news shows the damage, I am amazed that people are willing to build homes and businesses in such a precarious location. Houses built right on the beachfront is just a disaster waiting to happen. Houses built on hillsides surrounded by evergreen brush...like the recent California forest fires...are certainly going to be destroyed in a forest fire. Some time back, I saw a report about a housing development where the backyards were right up against the San Andreas Fault in California...and their backyards were becoming an increasingly large Ditch. If people are silly enough to build/buy properties in such locations, they should be charged a huge insurance premium to cover the costs of what will certainly occur. Everyone has some risk from Mother Nature, but some building sites are obviously of such risk that only the dumbest would consider buying into them.
 
I keep hearing all that tripe about human caused global warming. If the planet is heating up, how is it possible to have, at the same time, record cold temperature all up and down the East Coast.

That being said, it is also true that the earths temperature has been increasing since the last ice age, 12,000 years ago. With man or without man the earth's climate changes, sometimes dramatically, and rapidly. 8,000 yrs ago the entire north of Africa was a lush, verdant, land filled with rivers and lakes. There were all manner of tropical flora and fruit bearing trees. Today we can easily locate the bones of water loving creatures, (radio-carbon dated to 8,000 yrs old) all across Northern Africa. In what is now The Sahara Desert, crocodiles, hippos, elephant, huge constrictor snakes, egrets, flamingos, and early man lived in what could rightly be called a "Garden of Eden".

It has been speculated by scientists that minute shifts in the earths axis of rotation, is the likely cause.
 
I agree with the others, who questioned where we build homes, and cities. I lived in a town, where this family had a home on the river. When I say "on the river", on the other side of his basement wall was the river. So, of course when the river over flowed its banks, that guy's house was wiped out. He was on TV, year after year, saying, "we're going to rebuild". He kept building his house right on the river. And we are doing the same with places that should never have been built, because of the poor sites we built them in.
 
There are numerous reasons for Climate Change....both Natural, AND man-made. The earth has gone through several periods of warming and cooling in its history. The BIG difference is...in the past there weren't billions of people and trillions of dollars worth of infrastructure and cities built, and living in potentially disaster prone areas. Today, fully one third of the global population and major cities are at risk if the oceans continue to rise. In the U.S., everything from Houston, Texas to the entire Gulf and Eastern seaboard may well face disaster 100+ years from now.

A good example is New Orleans. When the French settlers decided to build in that area, the Native Indians told them that was a bad idea, because that area was prone to floods....but, the French knew better. Hurricane Katrina showed that the Indians were correct....some day, another Hurricane will finish the job.

Thousands of years ago, the sparse human populations could fold their tents and easily move to more favorable climates. Today, the millions/billions of people living in the coastal regions are living on 'borrowed time", and will lose everything when their cities begin to flood.
 
We all know, quite well, that the earth has gone through hundreds of climatic shifts: ice ages followed by global warming. Over and over again, in a never ending cycle. Long before the rise of humans, the earth was going through dramatic climate changes. Scientists speculate that the cause of those changes is the ever changing shifting of the earths axis. Long after humans have disappeared from the earth, the planet will continue to go through those changes.
 
fuzzybuddy said:
It's hard to deny that the predicted global warming weather changes are not happening. It is the driest, the wettest, the coldest, the warmest, the rate of glaciers melting, the list goes on and on. The only question is whether global warming is aided by human activity or part of a cycle of climate change. And from either cause, global warming will mean changes in where we are able to live. Granted, we won't see the full effects; but our children, and definitely our grandchildren will.
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Well no. That's only what you remember. The Earth has been warming gradually for centuries. Our problem is we only go year by year which is a drop in the scheme of things.

For instance. Where I live now was a glacier about a mile high about 10,000 years ago that helped form the Great Lakes. It melted without any significant humans to cause it.

It's continuing gradually. No big change in temperature globally on average.
 
I remember, as a small boy, asking my father about huge rounded boulders, some the size of small houses, which were sitting in the fields of upstate New York.
He replied that they had been formed by being pushed ahead of advancing glaciers thousands of years before, and then , as the earth warmed and the glaciers retreated, the boulders were left behind.
 
Big Horn said:
Pine Bark Beetles are destroying western forests. Normally, there are years when the temperature drops to -50 for a few days straight. This kills most of them However, it's been years since there's been weather that cold in the high country. However, I remember June, 1962 when there was record cold in Death Valley. The temperature was about 70; it should have been thirty to forty degrees higher.

The temperature in Chicago was over 70 on two days in January, 1960. There were snow flurries at the Denver airport in July, 1974. Wyoming has reported snow in every month of the year in every county. Almost all Colorado counties have done the same.We have also reported +70 degree temperatures in almost every county in almost every year. So has Colorado.

One January night when I lived in Colorado. a chinook started to blow during the night. When it began, the temperature was below zero. The temperature at my home went up seventy degrees in five hours. It was warmer than it would have been in July at that hour.

Only one state has never reported a temperature of 100+. Guess which one.

Strange weather is the norm, not the exception. Climate change isn't rapid; it's slow.
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Just for laughs. Track the average temperature in your location for the last 100 years.

I did that for my location. In 100 years there has been 1/2 of a degree difference although if you asked people they would say our winters are much warmer than before. Perception is not facts.

Today it's -40F with the windchill factor. That sort of evens out any warmer weather we have experienced before.

I think it's more comfortable living now with central heat and more reliable vehicles.

We went through wood heat, then coal, then oil, then natural gas.

Interesting about the Pine Bark Beetles. We seem to get an invasion of insects migrating north. Right now we have seen the Emerald Ash Borer for the first time.

I'm wondering about insects adapting themselves to be able to feed. I also wonder about forest fires. We try to suppress them. That has changed. Now they let the fires burn and let the forest regenerate.

We had previous invasions of the army worm so bad the train tracks were covered with them impeding the engine traction.

We also had the spruce budworm which we haven't seen for awhile and I attribute that to allowing the forests to burn killing the eggs and larvae.
 

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