Global Warming or a New Ice Age?

Preface: I did a brief search of ATS archives on this subject and found some references but nothing related directly to the links I will be referencing here. If I overlooked something, I apologize.

I live in east central Alabama.

Winters here are usually, generally mild affairs with but a few days that could be called really cold. But over the last two years, the months of January, February and March have brought increasing colder temps with ice/snow events.

This morning’s temperatures are in the teens with wind chill factors in the single digits. Forecasts call for sleet and snow within 48 hours. In fact, our current and forecasted low temperatures for today, 5 January 2010, are colder than that of Bowling Green, Ohio which is just a few miles from Toledo.

Global warming?

The next ‘Little Ice Age’ may have already begun!
By Climatologist Cliff Harris

Excerpt: Several top observatories around the world, which have been measuring solar activity for more than 200 years, are predicting that "global temperatures will continue to drop by as much as two or three degrees in the next two decades or so between now and about 2030."

The National Solar Observatory in Tucson, Arizona, has recently predicted that "sunspot activity will all but vanish by 2015."

Link: www.longrangeweather.com...

This isn’t to dismiss the notion that we are pouring just way too much crap into our breathing air. In truth, we could stand to clean up our act on a global scale with or without there being any warming trend. But if evidence is what one applies when assessing any question, then how many layers of thermal underwear does it require to take this hint?

Record cold grips Europe, North America and Asia

Excerpt: 4 Jan 10 - In the US, Montana residents are bracing for blizzard conditions with snowfall of 12-20 inches in parts of the state, while oranges are freezing in Florida - the so-called "Sunshine State."

Link: www.iceagenow.com...

I have no wish to argue this topic but rather, I am looking for input and proof (links, quotes, etc.) in either direction that can be applied to forming an opinion that is based on real-time fact as opposed to petty, political expediencies.

Stay warm

…

reply to post by redoubt


this has been my contention for some time. I feel that since most people who pay attention are understanding that global warming is a farce, there will be a large group of people who will not even think of the environment anymore. The global warming alarmists have killed the movement. When in reality we need desperately to clean up our act. Greed needs to take a back seat to clean energy. How is it not posible to use solar energy to produce hydrogen? I think that technology is already in the works. If we could use the completely renewable resouce of the sun to produce another renewable recource like hydrogen, and power all the automoiles with a zero emission fuel.

reply to post by network dude

I feel that since most people who pay attention are understanding that global warming is a farce, there will be a large group of people who will not even think of the environment anymore. The global warming alarmists have killed the movement. When in reality we need desperately to clean up our act. Greed needs to take a back seat to clean energy. How is it not posible to use solar energy to produce hydrogen? I think that technology is already in the works. If we could use the completely renewable resouce of the sun to produce another renewable recource like hydrogen, and power all the automoiles with a zero emission fuel.

I think there is a fear that if the world has a cheap (if not entirely free) access to energy, there would be some kind of economic catastrophe. Here locally, the energy barons have been jacking the rates for the last 3 years and the oversight farcically called the Public Service Commission, is nothing more than a rubber stamp organization to legitimize the theft.

You are right... it is human greed that holds us all captive.

Thanks for the thoughts!

I live on the SE coast of the UK and for the last 20(ish) years thought the seasons were all mixed up... almost as tho we were moving a month every 10 years.. in my youth Winter snow came in December and January... then for about 10 years they came in Jan - Feb, then Feb - March and more recently the snow arrived in March.. hence why I thought the seasons were all messed up (does anyone else feel the seasons are all messed up?)

Last year the snow arrived late Jan, and it got down to -10 (which is unhead of here on this part of the coast) and this year the snow arrived in December so I now have absolutly no idea where I stand on which way this is all going, except the feeling that it is completly messed up

To be honest I was really looking forward to the UK becoming more tropical so I could plant some jasmins :-( and get my lilly white legs tanned.

reply to post by thoughtsfull

I live on the SE coast of the UK and for the last 20(ish) years thought the seasons were all mixed up... almost as tho we were moving a month every 10 years.. in my youth Winter snow came in December and January... then for about 10 years they came in Jan - Feb, then Feb - March and more recently the snow arrived in March.. hence why I thought the seasons were all messed up (does anyone else feel the seasons are all messed up?)

Yup... it's been really crazy here too. This past summer was one of the mildest and wettest on record. Things moderated until just before Christmas when there was a decided turn colder that hasn't really let up.

Last year, we had something of a minor blizzard (for us here in the south) that came through on 1 March! Now this year, it is only early January and we're expecting an ice/snow event in a few days.

reply to post by redoubt


the weather is bizzare, the seasons appear to not hold to any rules any more, which I find very freaky (worse than it simply getting hotter or colder)

And as someone who loves my garden, I now can't grow flowers/plants I used to as they are getting killed off by the cold.. I also have to protect plants from the weather, which is also something I've never had to do before.. So my leaning is towards an ice age, but that is only my gut feeling rather than concrete knowledge

I worked implementing EU enviromental directives, looking at cause/effect etc and to be honest none of the work I did will have any impact on the enviroment (if it does it will only be by chance).. Nothing I have read while working at EU wide level has demonstrated to me this is man made, or that anyone really knows what is going on..

The only thing I do know is that something is going on with the planet to mess up the seasons the way they have and the last few years is demonstrating to me at least that this process is speeding up.

Visit Drudge, he has a slew of links at the top about the record setting cold temps occuring ACROSS THE WORLD.

I'm sure the cold temps are a result of Global Warming though

Just out of curiosity does it have to one one or tother? Hotter or colder?

Isn't that black and white thinking?

-m0r

reply to post by redoubt


Ironic how today we have had almost a foot of snow in the UK. This is the worst snow in decades. Just seen on news that it's record snow in China and Korea - www.guardian.co.uk...

Paramilitary policemen stand guard at Tiananmen Square on a snowy day in Beijing

Police stand guard at Tiananmen Square in Beijing. Temperatures are expected to fall to -18C in the Chinese capital by tomorrow night. Photograph: Joe Chan/Reuters

British commuters may have shivered, cursed and slid as they headed back to work after the Christmas break today, but the UK has been spared the worst of the cold weather that is gripping much of the northern hemisphere, bringing freezing temperatures and record snowfalls to parts of north Asia, Europe and the US.

The punishing winter weather has brought transport chaos to China and South Korea and claimed at least 60 lives in northern and eastern India.

Reports suggest that the states of Punjab, Bihar, Haryana and Uttar Pradesh have borne the brunt of the freezing temperatures in India. "We are looking into the deaths and in the meantime have asked local authorities to arrange bonfires in the evening for the homeless," said a government official in Bihar, who added that all schools had been closed.

A heavy blanket of fog in New Delhi forced airport authorities to cancel or delay dozens of flights from the capital and train services were also disrupted.

In China more than 2.2 million pupils in Beijing and nearby Tianjin enjoyed a day off as officials took the rare step of closing thousands of schools. Temperatures in the Chinese capital are expected to fall to –18C on Tuesday night, with predictions they could reach –32C in the northernmost parts of the country by Wednesday morning.

In Beijing authorities mobilised more than 300,000 people to clear the streets after Sunday's blizzard dumped 8cm (3in)of snow – the most in the capital in a single day in January since 1951.

The city's normally bustling shopping districts were empty. "It's been a real pain," said He Wenhua, 19, from the south-western city of Chengdu. "I'm here on holiday and I can't get to any of the main sights."

Changping, near the Great Wall, saw more than 20cm of snow, according to China's National Meteorological Centre.

A wholesale market in Beijing told state media the prices of several vegetables had risen by 10% to 50% because of transport problems. There were also concerns that the weather could destroy crops and cause other economic damage.

But Yi Xianrong, an economist at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences in Beijing, told Reuters there would be no significant damage. "This won't have any impact. It's too small and local," he said. "In fact, all the snow could be a positive thing for agriculture in northern China, which is usually so dry … the melted snow will help feed crops in spring."

Officials will also be concerned about the strain the cold weather will place on China's gas and oil supplies. There have been gas shortages in the last two months as demand has risen in the unusually cold weather. More snow is expected this week.

In Seoul a blizzard dumped more than 25cm of snow today – the heaviest snowfall since Korea began conducting meteorological surveys in 1937, the state weather agency said.

In Switzerland police said three people were still missing after two successive avalanches hit the Bernese Oberland.

They declined to give the victims' nationalities, saying only that three people had died in the first avalanche, while the doctor sent to help them had become engulfed by the second and had died later in hospital. Eight people were rescued, some seriously injured.

The US is also experiencing an unusually chilly winter, with cold and windy weather along the east coast and record low temperatures in southern states such as Georgia, Alabama and Florida.

[edit on 5-1-2010 by john124]

Originally posted by jjkenobi
Visit Drudge, he has a slew of links at the top about the record setting cold temps occuring ACROSS THE WORLD.

I'm sure the cold temps are a result of Global Warming though

Thanks for the link :-) tho I beleive in Global warming/cooling is something that is certainly happening to our weather, but I can't say for sure which or why, and in my job, I should know which and why.

I've not seen/read anything in my profesional capacity that led me to feel that anyone else knows for sure what the problem really is to help me define a workable solution (that is my job defining and implementing solutions as per EU directives)

To be honest all the papers I've read it still feels like guesswork, which gave me a blinding headache to resolve.. how to implement a practical solution when no one can give you definitive answer as to what the problem is..

You try defining a business case to coporate HQ when the evidence is all fluffy guesswork. I've had my ass kicked so many times by coporate legal teams over that issue.. (sorry, I don't mean to rant, but I just found the whole thing so frustrating)

Is this thread serious?

No, not a new ice age. It's an old one we've seen often before. We generally call it winter.

Yes, of course it is winter. Duh. But all things being equal, we do have winters and then there are WINTERS.

Was just thinking... recent movies, 'The Day After Tomorrow' and then even 'War of the Worlds' began with freakish weather anomalies.

I love a good conspiracy theory... though not all.

But... what if the weather was but one sign that something is coming? We examine all of this in minutia individually. UFOs, weather patterns, dreams, Planet-X, etc.

But taken together, the weather, volcanic and earthquake activities, not to mention that there is some evidence that weather on other planets in the local system are in some degree of flux.

Kind of reminds me of that old Flash Gordon flick where Emperor Ming is toying with Earth long distance... and all those freakish things all at once.

**Flash - ah-ahhhh... savior of the universe! **

Who knows?

Let's take a short walk...

First, let's assume for one minute that the governments of the world DO really know a lot more than they tell us about our world and the universe around us. Further, let's assume that the truth is somehow so freaking disturbing that it is kept from the general population... at all costs.

Now, we must consider that there are possibilities that would naturally preclude disclosure, especially if such information was first unavoidable and secondly, so bad that the human race would freak upon learning it.

In a nutshell, if you were going to die a horrible and unavoidable deth sometime in the near future, would you really want to know about it and spend your remaining life worrying about an end you could not avoid?

I personally do NOT trust governments or the corporate to be so caring... but the possibility nevertheless remains.

It could be a Planet-X scenario... or something even worse. The ability of human technology is not all so great that it can respond to things on such an immense scale.

Governments would keep these things from us to maintain order... and despite the right or wrong of it, would go to any end to maintain it.

If we are on the verge of some profound change... be it from climate shift to polar flop or passing brown dwarfs or even visiting RT, if the truth is so very incomprehensible that it would probably destroy order... our governments would sit on it to keep that order until the very end.

Agaian, none of this is defending the secrets. I would myself prefer to know regardless... but, knowing people as I do from over a half century of life amongst my own kind... I don't think that some possible truths would be so easily absorbed without an equal degree of insanity.

Just a few thoughts...

Originally posted by melatonin
Is this thread serious?

No, not a new ice age. It's an old one we've seen often before. We generally call it winter.

Nothing to see here.

Nothing out of the ordinary.

Meteorologists and climatologists have a solid understanding of exactly what is going on... or do they?

January 4, 2010, 5:39 pm
Cold Arctic Pressure Pattern Nearly Off Chart
By ANDREW C. REVKIN

dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com...

Michelle L’Heureux, a meteorologist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Climate Prediction Center, told me there’s simply no explanation for what drives such extremes in the Arctic Oscillation, which she described as both a potent driver of northern latitude conditions and one of the least predictable, and understood, patterns in the atmosphere.

How did the co2 alarmists factor such a major unpredictable variable into their unanimous consenus prediction models?

reply to post by Deny Arrogance

How did the co2 alarmists factor such a major unpredictable variable into their unanimous consenus prediction models?

Because like so many things of importance to the human race, it has become a political playtoy and truth is far less important to these types than immediate reward.

Right now, the PTB want us to buy the global warming scenario. Why? I am not 100 percent sure but it does seem to hinge on energy... and resectoring the boundaries of the planet to make 6 billion humans more easily controllable thus assuring that certain industries maintain a certain profit margin.

Well, try to do some research on the Gulf Stream and how it's affected by warmer weather. The complete physics of it is not entirely understood, for example we don't quite know why it shut down for 10 days a few days ago. It's not impossible (and maybe likely) that accelerated melting of Arctic ice changes water densities and other factors and thus can indeed dramatically alter Gulf Stream, leading to a catastrophic climate change. I live in Long Island and indeed swimming season is shorter than 15 years ago. This, paradoxically, may indeed be the result of global warming that altered the energy patterns in the Atlantic.

reply to post by buddhasystem

Well, try to do some research on the Gulf Stream and how it's affected by warmer weather. The complete physics of it is not entirely understood, for example we don't quite know why it shut down for 10 days a few days ago.

Thanks for the advice. I have been looking in that area, trying to correlate the recent solar minimum, ice melt and the cooling trends but... most places speak a language that makes little sense to the layman.

One thing I have been doing is checking in on the solar weather each day, here:
spaceweather.com...

The sun is still mostly as peaceful as a small pond but because there is a flare rounding the orbital corner, all attention has been to it and applied as a sign that things were about to start jumping again.

LOL... we'll see what happens.

reply to post by buddhasystem


Could you please direct me to your source for the Gulf Stream shutdown?

I'm looking at these recent maps and do not see it.

Thanks.

rads.tudelft.nl...

reply to post by redoubt


Thanks for your kind reply. In addition to what you said (like this science being tough for a layman) I can add that it's not easy for a trained person either.

I've seen how much glaciers receded in the past decades when traveling in mountains (I did a lot of that). Satellite photography also shows that polar ice caps are losing much of their ice cover. Is it likely that huge mass of fresh water alters flow patterns in the oceans? I vote yet. But we need more research.

reply to post by buddhasystem

for example we don't quite know why it shut down for 10 days a few days ago.

Do you have a link to that? I heard nothing about it, and would like to investigate.

TheRedneck


[edit on 1/5/2010 by TheRedneck]