global warming

[SandChigger]

My uncle mentioned Atlanta expecting snow when I talked to him last night (about 10:30 AM Xmas morning your-all's time). Said, "They're all excited down there that they're gonna get some snow." Might be that media bias, huh?

Looks like they've had a snow on (off and on) up in Ohio for about two weeks now. Started snowing again on Xmas Eve and they had about an inch or two (with six inches expected total) by morning.

Over here we got sunshine and hurttight nipples.

[Freakzilla]

I hope my kids remember it, if they live the rest of their lives in the South they might never see another white Christmas in their lifetime.

I don't remember ever even seeing flurries, much less accumulation on Christmas.

[Superdog]

Or the squid of the moon?

HBJ

Or space whales?

[SandChigger]

Keeeeewwwl!

(Can't wait to tell Marilyn about them!)

[D Pope]

Keeeeewwwl!

(Can't wait to tell Marilyn about them!)

I knew Star Trek IV would've been based on a true story!

[Freakzilla]

Captain, thar be whales here!

[chanilover]

– Wed Dec 8, 12:34 pm ET
PARIS (AFP) – Heavy snow briefly shut Charles de Gaulle-Roissy airport, paralysed the Paris bus network and forced the operators of the Eiffel Tower to close the landmark tourist attraction on Wednesday, officials said.

Motorists were warned that all motorways in the Paris region had become impassable and truckers were ordered to pull off the highways and wait until conditions improved.

The Interior Ministry said it had mobilised 5,000 paramilitary gendarmes, including 2,000 in the Paris area, to deal with traffic problems as roads were expected to become increasingly icy overnight.

French meteorological authorities said that 11 centimetres (over four inches) of snow fell on Paris on Wednesday, the most since 1987.

Roissy airport was closed for around an hour and a half, preventing around 100 flights taking off or landing, while workers tried to clear the runways of the heavy snow that began falling around midday, airport officials said.

One in five flights at Roissy had already been cancelled at the request of France's civil aviation authority (DGAC) due to the poor weather forecast.

The runways at Orly airport were earlier shut for about half an hour to allow workers to clear snow but there was no immediate information available on how flights at Paris' second airport were affected.

Only a handful of the 350 Paris bus routes were operating because of the snowfall in the capital, which had previously escaped the heavy snow affecting much of France since the start of the month.

The metro and overland suburban rail network were functioning normally.

The operators of the Eiffel Tower said they had already shut the first floor of the giant monument that is one of the world's most visited sites.

"But since late morning the Eiffel Tower has been completely closed and will certainly not reopen today," said a spokesman.

Salt cannot be used to fight snow or ice at the 324-metre (1,063-feet) tower because it would damage the iron structure that at this time of year gets around 12,000 visitors a day.

An early cold snap has caused severe transport disruption across Europe over the past week.

just to remind you and even people in Paris that France is slightly bigger than its capital, and while national media were crying their hearts out over the worst winter ever in 25 years(in truth the same as last year but hey gotta find an excuse why a bit of snow wrecked havoc), the French South was enjoying much more sunny weather.

two pics taken the same day

Paris is a bit like London. It's the only part of the country which counts. Watch out for Le Demon de Midi!

[Freakzilla]

[lotek]

Paris is a bit like London. It's the only part of the country which counts. Watch out for Le Demon de Midi!

this one ?

[Freakzilla]

There was snow on the ground in every state except Florida this morning.

[Drunken Idaho]

Hmm, can I formally request that we split this thread into two topics? "Climate" and "Weather" please.

[Freakzilla]

Hmm, can I formally request that we split this thread into two topics? "Climate" and "Weather" please.

One could not exist without the other.

How about we change the title to "Climate Change"?

[merkin muffley]

Could I just say,

""

[SadisticCynic]

Speech marks?

[SandRider]

I wish you'd change the title to something, I keep meaning to look into that virus-scare and the Norton AV rant I tossed down on somebody
awhile back - I wasn't ready to sit down and try to explain more clearly (and more politely) WTF I was talking about ... and I still ain't, but
I recall being rude to a regular member w/o apologizing and/or blaming it on drugs and/or alcohol ....

but, well fuck, that wasn't in either of the two titled "global warming" threads, one of which I hijacked for my Own Personal Jihad
against Calvin Woon and his Yellow Horde of Buzzing InternetMarketers .... and I don't know if all that is in this thread or the other,
and simply cannot be bother to check right now ... or later ... fuck that, y'all get the point ... Calvin Woon and the Indonesian People
are the festering cancer on the rectal tissue of the innertubes ....

and again, then, I'd suggest changing the name of the thread in Freak posts snow-day photos to refute the theory of Global Warming
to "Yes, it gets Cold in Winter." ......

[Freakzilla]

Come one, it's never snowed in Atlanta as long as I've been alive... or anybody else else, I think.

Admit it ,it's bullshit.

It's getting COLDER.

[SandRider]

A&M's still sticking to the forecast of a warmer, drier winter in West Texas than "average", due to the El Nino's drunken, whorish sister, La Nina ...
(Pinta and Santa Marie have apparently been shipped off to a Convent in Guatemala)

as a farmer and a rancher, I'm gonna take the kids' word on that and act accordingly ....

(this time last year they said above average warm w/ above average rainfall & were dead-on right and I planted a shitload
of garden vegetables and grew tomatoes the size of my head and cantaloupe - and cantaloupe is something you just don't
see out here - and the spring cotton paid for all the dumb shit I did the rest of the year .....)

[Freakzilla]

last winter we had a 100 year flood. Before that we had a drought. But it hasn't been any hotter than usual in the summer, a few weeks over 105 F at 85% humidity is normal.

I don't think THEY don't know what the fuck they're talking about beyond a week or so and "we're between ice ages" is about as accurate as you can get.

I don't care how much shit we burn it won't stop the next ice age.

[Freakzilla]

[SandRider]

I don't care how much shit we burn it won't stop the next ice age.

I agree, and if you are protesting some SIG's use of "global warming" for whatever their agenda is,
neo-luddites who want to stop technology, third world governments and hippie communists who want
to either slow-down the industrial nations or atleast get some shakedown cash, NASA scientists at
budget time, the "wind-energy" factions who want to stop construction on a coal-fired plant, and so
forth, say that ....

putting up photos of snow in a Southern State in December is not a refutation of the major global climate change that is underway ....

also, and god knows how many times I've tried to get this across to you, become more objective & less emotional in your politics ...
"global warming" is like the "race card" .... from a moralist viewpoint, it is a bad thing, not positive or of benefit to society; from a
political POV, it's just another tool, like radio ads, and Op-Ed pages and hookers with cameras .... I am a realist in that I understand
that the nature of human society is ultimately unsustainable, and has been since we set out on the road of cities and urban centers,
some fifteen thousand years ago ... and altho the exponential rate of technological advances indicate that the saturation point of human
societies on this planet is closer rather than farther, and closing in at an increased rate with every passing second, I'm pretty sure I'll
be dead when the thing starts collapsing, much less actually collapses, so I don't give a fuck .... and if that sounds selfish & such, well
of course it is, but the point is that this is the end result of the current path of human society, and nothing in the world can or will change
it ... so beating your head on the brick wall and wailing and gnashing teeth are useless ...

what is not useless is using these types of issues to further your own agenda in the present - the example I mentioned above is one that
is being used right now, and I support it - we finally got the okay from the State to construct a shit-load of new power distribution lines
in West Texas, which is an immediate Win for my boys, who are getting that Work, and was a Win for the international corporate
conglomerates that finance the construction of new windfarms who hold massive land leases out here for new projects, but can't
distribute all the power the existing farms are producing, and so can't greenlight new ones .... until the State okayed a coal-fired plant
up by Lubbock, again a Win for some of my boys who will get the construction work and one or two may end up with permanent employment;
new windfarms are shit out of luck, tho ... the coal-fired plant will eat all the new lines and then some ... and personally, while I think
windfarms are a waste of time and money, and not atall feasible for long-term power generation needs, I love the fuckers and want more ...

so when the lawyers went up to Lubbock for the hearings to talk bad about coal, I was right there with them, and when they started talking
about the environmental impact of coal, from the destruction and downstream disease from flat top mining to the air quality when burned, and
the impact of "Green House Gas Emissions", I nodded my old gray head sagely and hollered out "Right On, Brother!" like the good hippie
communist I am ....

is any of it true? who cares? this is politics and there is never any truth in politics; if there was, we'd never get anything done, and the
citizens would recoil in horror and there would be one armed revolution after another and we would fall into a state of perpetual anarchy ....
(which I am not against either, BTW ...)

[Freakzilla]

I don't care how much shit we burn it won't stop the next ice age.

I agree, and if you are protesting some SIG's use of "global warming" for whatever their agenda is,
neo-luddites who want to stop technology, third world governments and hippie communists who want
to either slow-down the industrial nations or atleast get some shakedown cash, NASA scientists at
budget time, the "wind-energy" factions who want to stop construction on a coal-fired plant, and so
forth, say that ....

putting up photos of snow in a Southern State in December is not a refutation of the major global climate change that is underway ....

I know that.

also, and god knows how many times I've tried to get this across to you, become more objective & less emotional in your politics ...

Sorry, I didn't think I was being emotional.

"global warming" is like the "race card" .... from a moralist viewpoint, it is a bad thing, not positive or of benefit to society; from a
political POV, it's just another tool, like radio ads, and Op-Ed pages and hookers with cameras .... I am a realist in that I understand
that the nature of human society is ultimately unsustainable, and has been since we set out on the road of cities and urban centers,
some fifteen thousand years ago ... and altho the exponential rate of technological advances indicate that the saturation point of human
societies on this planet is closer rather than farther, and closing in at an increased rate with every passing second, I'm pretty sure I'll
be dead when the thing starts collapsing, much less actually collapses, so I don't give a fuck .... and if that sounds selfish & such, well
of course it is, but the point is that this is the end result of the current path of human society, and nothing in the world can or will change
it ... so beating your head on the brick wall and wailing and gnashing teeth are useless ...

what is not useless is using these types of issues to further your own agenda in the present - the example I mentioned above is one that
is being used right now, and I support it - we finally got the okay from the State to construct a shit-load of new power distribution lines
in West Texas, which is an immediate Win for my boys, who are getting that Work, and was a Win for the international corporate
conglomerates that finance the construction of new windfarms who hold massive land leases out here for new projects, but can't
distribute all the power the existing farms are producing, and so can't greenlight new ones .... until the State okayed a coal-fired plant
up by Lubbock, again a Win for some of my boys who will get the construction work and one or two may end up with permanent employment;
new windfarms are shit out of luck, tho ... the coal-fired plant will eat all the new lines and then some ... and personally, while I think
windfarms are a waste of time and money, and not atall feasible for long-term power generation needs, I love the fuckers and want more ...

so when the lawyers went up to Lubbock for the hearings to talk bad about coal, I was right there with them, and when they started talking
about the environmental impact of coal, from the destruction and downstream disease from flat top mining to the air quality when burned, and
the impact of "Green House Gas Emissions", I nodded my old gray head sagely and hollered out "Right On, Brother!" like the good hippie
communist I am ....

is any of it true? who cares? this is politics and there is never any truth in politics; if there was, we'd never get anything done, and the
citizens would recoil in horror and there would be one armed revolution after another and we would fall into a state of perpetual anarchy ....
(which I am not against either, BTW ...)

Look, I'm not against "green energy" or environmentalism or any of that hippie shit, that would be insane. But I do think there's a lot of fear being sold here and that were overestimating our impact on things. We've only been keeping climate records for a relatively short time and since I can't see it I'm not convinced. I'd like to hope we would burn up all the fossil fuel before we fuck the climate up beyond repair.

If we can't figure out how to survive on a planet without cooking or freezing ourselves in our on exhaust then we don't deserve to survive.

[Apjak]

...Malcolm said. "My point is that life on earth can take care of itself. In the thinking of a human being, a hundred years is a long time. A hundred years ago, we didn't have cars and airplanes and computers and vaccines..It was a whole different world. But to the earth, a hundred years is nothing. A million years is nothing. This planet lives and breathes on a much vaster scale. We can't imagine its slow and powerful rhythms, and we haven't got the humility to try. We have been residents here for the blink of an eye. If we are gone tomorrow, the earth will not miss us."
"And we very well might be gone," Hammond said, huffing.
"Yes," Malcolm said. "We might."
"So what are you saying? We shouldn't care about the environment?"
"No, of course not."
"Then what?"
Malcolm coughed, and stared into the distance. "Let's be clear. The planet is not in jeopardy. We are in jeopardy. We haven't got the power to destroy the planet - or save it. But we might have the power to save ourselves."

It may be that I just read this when I was so young that it made more of an impact than it had rights to, but this pretty much sums up all of my thinking on the fear-mongering climate rhetoric.

[Freakzilla]

George Carlin did a good rant about global warming but I can't find it at work... eNazis.

[Apjak]

I liked his rant about how he never got sick because he used to swim in the Hudson growing up.

[Drunken Idaho]

I don't care how much shit we burn it won't stop the next ice age.

I agree, and if you are protesting some SIG's use of "global warming" for whatever their agenda is,
neo-luddites who want to stop technology, third world governments and hippie communists who want
to either slow-down the industrial nations or atleast get some shakedown cash, NASA scientists at
budget time, the "wind-energy" factions who want to stop construction on a coal-fired plant, and so
forth, say that ....

putting up photos of snow in a Southern State in December is not a refutation of the major global climate change that is underway ....

I know that.

Okay, good. I was starting to worry about you... A lot of people really do get this wrong, and as an enviro-hippie who has been following global-warming science since before it was much of a political/media thing, that's extremely frustrating. Seriously, last winter (and I'm sure there will be more this winter) many of the big conservative pundits acted like smartasses saying that the planet is CLEARLY not in a warming state because they got some frostbite on their fat behinds.

Here's the thing... The scientific thing... The earth's average temperature has risen about ONE DEGREE in the last few decades, and is expected to go up TWO OR THREE MORE DEGREES by 2050. These figures are not exact, but the real numbers are equally as mundane. No one who believes in global warming is concerned about the temperature being a tad warmer for future generations. But what climate science tells us is that the subtle warming brings on dramatic Climate Change. Shifts in air currents, as SR was touching on, bring on a variety of unusual weather in certain areas... For instance, while the US was frozen last winter, here in Southern Ontario it was unseasonably warm, and we only got a handful of decent snowfalls. This winter is a little colder here, closer to what we're used to. But what I'm trying to point out here is the futility of saying "but it's freezing! what global warming?" In order for it to snow, it has to be a lot colder than one degree below the average. Similarly, it's also stupid to say in the summer "Man it's hot out! this global warming is serious shit!" because while the added heat may indeed be caused by an unusual shift in air currents brought on by the increase in average global temperature, it would take a LOT more than one degree's difference for anyone to complain.

Take this photo from Australia's third-largest city...



This was taken the other day, and I doubt anyone in Australia is saying "Aha! You see? The earth isn't getting warmer, it's just getting wetter!"