Dead of winter temps at poles rising

a reply to: Phage

Thanks for the addition, Phage.
The Arctic looks really awful with all that intake of warm air. Atmospheric rivers in action:

earth.nullschool

How did we get to this place, where 20°C temp anomalies in the Arctic are supposed to be cool?

It might be time for an episode of jet stream threads for crossing the equator and all that odd polar vortex actionism. Completely nuts and thoroughly under-reported.

a reply to: chiefsmom

I'm 100% for a cleaner environment, but getting there in a logical way that does not in the end do more harm than good and is based on reality and not the idea you can just solve it by using tech that most of the world can't afford.

Driving electric cars charged using power generated by coal like China is lauding right now, won't do a damn bit of good.

LINK

But new data on the world’s biggest developers of coal-fired power plants paints a very different picture: China’s energy companies will make up nearly half of the new coal generation expected to go online in the next decade.

These Chinese corporations are building or planning to build more than 700 new coal plants at home and around the world, some in countries that today burn little or no coal

LINK

China’s automakers are hardly household names in Europe or the U.S., but industry watchers are speculating that may change. The reason: China’s government is putting its might behind establishing the country at the forefront of new-energy vehicles. Already, Chinese drivers buy more new cars -- and more electric vehicles -- than anywhere else. With the major automakers all preparing for an electric future, there’ll be no shortage of competition, including within China -- as underlined by the purchase of a stake in Daimler AG by a Chinese car billionaire.

Obviously there is a disconnect here.

originally posted by: Blaine91555
a reply to: wantsome

I don't think the real argument is about whether or not climate change is real, but it's about the cause and whether or not it would happen even if humans did not exist. It's also about if things like Carbon Credits are / were scams which even the advocates admit was a huge setback for them, due to how obvious it was it was just a money making scheme by phonies.

Climate change has been the norm for the planet all along. Lucky for us, we can adapt unless we are idiots.

Man caused or not, I don't think anyone is saying climate does not change.

The cause is pretty obvious. It's us. There is no real debate on this.

It's simple physics, recognized more than a hundred years ago - forget Al Gore. Forget 'adjusted temperatures.' Forget Carbon Credits, and so on.

CO2, water vapor, methane, etc. absorb certain wavelengths of radiation. That radiation is partly sent back towards the surface. The surface then warms at the expense of higher parts in the atmosphere; input energy must equal output energy, so the heat is actually redistributed in the atmosphere. That is the greenhouse effect.

If this did not occur, no life would be here, because input energy is insufficient on its own to warm the planet as a whole beyond -18.15°C; well below what water freezes at. Of note, this actually is the mean temperature of the Earth's atmosphere; it's just that the surface is warmer. The atmosphere cools substantially with altitude up to the tropopause, where it reverses - ozone is another greenhouse gas, one which exists quite high up and it heats the stratosphere.

This effect is seen on Venus as well - despite being nearer to the Sun than the Earth, and despite having the hottest surface temperature of all planets in our system, carbon dioxide freezes in its atmosphere - this does not happen in Earth's atmosphere. That's what the greenhouse effect does.

As CO2 is a greenhouse gas, increasing it will increase the greenhouse effect, ceteris paribus - this is something we are doing, and it takes a long time to cycle out of the atmosphere. Fortunately for us, we're also polluting other gases that reduce the amount of solar radiation striking the Earth's surface. This is buying us time, or we would see significantly more warming than we have so far measured.

Physicists determined this well over a century ago. Climatologists started to catch up over half a century ago; some oil companies knew about it almost as long - and some of those oil companies project multi-degree Celsius warming in the next half century. Meteorologists started to catch up more recently.

Again, there is no debate on the cause. There is no debate that temperatures are rising. There is also little we will do to mitigate things, partly due to people believing complete nonsense. It is disappointing, but not surprising, to see how common it is for people to fall for such propaganda on ATS.

Yet, there is little I can do beyond state those facts - because I rather doubt anyone will change their opinions. People would have to first be willing to accept that they might be wrong, and that seems to be something people have difficulty with.

a reply to: Blaine91555

I don't think the real argument is about whether or not climate change is real, but it's about the cause and whether or not it would happen even if humans did not exist.

The thing is we do not really know the answer to this. As the stakes are we should be precautionary in principle and reduce the possible causes. We should not be taking the gamble.

a reply to: Blaine91555

Driving electric cars charged using power generated by coal like China is lauding right now, won't do a damn bit of good.

electric cars give you more options for clean energy than petrochemical cars. Thats a no brainer..

I live in So California and it has been freezing here,down in the 30's,highs only in 50's,that is freezing for here in the winter,can't even wear shorts

a reply to: wantsome

I'm in Il. been one of the coldest and wettest in about 5 years or it's just me, i'll have to actually look at some more numbers here.. but a month of - degree weather and a lot more snowfall// perhaps I just had 1 too many after work and am just sick of winter.. It's so depressing

Both my parents remember equally warm spreads here in MI in the past -- my mom's a W MI native, my dad's a Detroit area native. My dad being in his mid 70's even chuckled and said not to look the gift horse in the mouth, just enjoy it when it comes because it's MI. Both of my parents remember a Christmas in the 60's a few years before I was born, so early 80's. My dad was a farmer at the time, and remembers the "warm Christmas winter" as a warmer one overall with warm temp spells aplenty.

Many years ago, my late grandmother (also a W MI native) used to wow us kids whining about hot FL Christmases by telling us growing up in FL of the warm MI Christmas she remembered from her youth when it was snow-free and warm enough out for shorts & a shirt. I think she said it was around the 60's at that time, too. They ate Christmas lunch outside, lol. She was a Depression era baby, so this was circa the 1940's for her to be able to recall it that well.

So nobody wants to see what's under the ice in antarctica?

One would think that's at the top of a lot of lists.

originally posted by: purplemer
a reply to: Blaine91555

Driving electric cars charged using power generated by coal like China is lauding right now, won't do a damn bit of good.

electric cars give you more options for clean energy than petrochemical cars. Thats a no brainer..

Gotta make the electrocity somehow, eh?

originally posted by: DrumsRfun
a reply to: wantsome

Last year was terrible for ice fishing and this year hasn't been much better.
We get extreme cold and than a thaw,more cold and more thawing,so the ice isn't too safe.

Our area got hit with a major flood last spring from the thaw and rain and I kind of expect that to become the norm in the future.
With all the flooding from last spring...last summers fishing was AMAZING!!
Best year I ever had.

I have noticed crazy weather my whole life so I never really think about climate change much.

Don't everyone get too excited about "global warming". It was only a few short years ago in 2014 the great lakes tied or broke pretty much every freezing/frozen record.

originally posted by: JinMI
a reply to: wantsome

I'm in Michigan and here it is 60* in February. A lot of people seem to be in denial over global temperatures.

We'll have a few inches by Thursday/Friday. I mean, this IS Michigan afterall.

Heh, and sure enough, Winter Weather Advisory 9am-10pm tomorrow for 2-6 inches. The weather in this state will never fail to amuse the hell out of me

a reply to: Nyiah

Indeed, there is no constant here! Which is nice.

However, we are far from the winters of my childhood.

The weather patterns are changing from location to location. Some areas are getting warmer while other areas are getting cooler. If you have instrumentation that measures temperature changes predominantly in areas that are warming then it looks like the whole planet is warming.

But the magnetic poles are moving around as well, this suggests the changes are external like the sun.

a reply to: purplemer

Except what I posted is about a country that is pretending to be environmentally conscious. I was referring to the disconnect of lauding China while they in fact will be powering their electric cars with energy from coal and are building coal plants at an alarming rate.

a reply to: Blaine91555

There's a reason for that, the energy returned over energy invested ratio of coal is very high compared to remaining petroleum deposits. It takes about 1 unit of coal energy to deliver 30 units of energy to the market whereas it takes 1 barrel of shale oil to deliver 5 barrels of oil energy to the market.

Coal isn't going anywhere, it's the most energy dense fossil fuel we have left.

a reply to: SkeptiSchism

I'm personally of the opinion that coal and other fuels could be made clean for less than is spent on the non-stop studies which do nothing. For that to happen though, people would need to knock off the idea that it's possible to go to solar and wind right now, which is ridiculous and impossible at the same time. It's radicals doing the most damage in my opinion.

If coal and other power plants were to get to zero emissions, no doubt the radicals would still not stop. For them it's all about being a thorn in societies side and being the center of attention. They would never accept rational answers.

As long as people are yelling at each other, they can't hear each other, nor do they want to.

a reply to: wantsome


It can be a bit confusing, but the fact is that before a cooling period occurs, their is a significant warming period, whether its man made co2 or not it doesn't make any difference. The arctic ice sheets melt along with Greenland's, This causes the salinity in the water of the north Atlantic Gulf Stream to be diluted, which drops its salt density, then it doesn't drop to the depth and recirculate. This then causes the tropics to get a bit warmer, and the Northern regions to get a bit colder. That's why the storms are getting stronger. Britain is on the same latitude as Nova Scotia and should be as cold, but this stream of water keeps, the winters milder. Or it did up to about 2016 but its been getting colder, same with the eastern USA, taken with a Solar minimum, and the freezing winter temperatures, the trend seems to be another cluster #, which will not do any good with regards to food prices.

originally posted by: Blaine91555
a reply to: purplemer

Except what I posted is about a country that is pretending to be environmentally conscious. I was referring to the disconnect of lauding China while they in fact will be powering their electric cars with energy from coal and are building coal plants at an alarming rate.

Then i think you should do a little more reading before you OP. China is shutting down and replacing its coal plants at an alarming rate!

a reply to: Greven

No a small percentage of it is us and the rest is natural. The highest number I've seen is what I posted earlier.