Global Warming Thread

[adelatorre]

With the glaciars disapearing from my home city's local volcanos ( Popocatepetl, Iztacihuatl and Ciltlaltepetl) I have a constant reminder of global warming.

I think we've reached the point in which global warming is an undeniable fact.
The causes of global warming are still a matter of some rather "heated" debate.
For some people this is part of a natural cicle which can't be altered by man.
For others the warming is caused by human activity.

Whatever the causes some measures and planning must be taken to cope with the rise of global temperature.

Feel free to post any evidence supporting your viewpoint ( that is , including a view point which denies global warming ).

[adelatorre]

There seems to be a tendency for longer droughts in both central US and Central Northern States of Mexico


http://www1.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/c...adm-201211.jpg

[charismatic megafauna]

Global warming, or climate change, is coming our way. "The causes of global warming are still a matter of some rather "heated" debate." That's really the case only among those who also deny evolution, and/or claim making the rich richer will be of benefit to us little folk, and/or claim ever more guns is the solution to the gun violence problem, and/or claim it's all caused by a lack of religious fervor. Use your amazing powers of statistics to pull up a chart showing the correlation between the human caused increases of carbon dioxide and other heat retentive gases and the gradual increase of temperatures since the start of the industrial age (circa 1800). Those I've seen match up pretty well. Course the deniers will claim it's all a coincidence or a conspiracy cooked up by liberal scientists for some nefarious reasons never delineated by the denier nut cases.

Some personal anecdotal evidence from the front lines. At the end of last March the north central and eastern areas of the US experienced what was referred to as "summer in March". Temperatures (I'm going to use Fahrenheit degrees, because I'm too lazy to do the transition to Celsius), ran some 40 degrees above norms for a period of about ten days. Record highs were broken for days on end (an unprecedented occurrence), in some instances the overnight low was higher than the previous record daytime high. Some trees and other plants leafed out more than a month before their normal occurrence. Truly a weird, unprecedented (in the historical weather records) event. This was followed in my north central area by both a record heat wave in June and July, 90 degrees plus for weeks on end, usually we get no more than a couple of 90 degree days, and virtually no rain for a month and a half, not without precedent, but rare in my area. Indeed, the whole summer was extremely dry. This resulted in the deaths of many trees and other plants that depend upon regular summer rains, agricultural crops were affected. In my lifetime in the area (40 years of adulthood), I've noticed an appreciable lessening of the length and severity of winter. In the last 20 years the summers have become both hotter and drier, though still with a good deal of variation from year to year.

So global warming/climate change is here. How it will play out in any particular area is yet to be seen. I'm just glad I don't live in a low lying coastal area.

[adelatorre]

Charismatic Megafauna ,
Well , the correlation is not perfect and of course correlation doesn't imply causality. Nevertheless, I do have the impression that global warming is caused by human activity.

Use your amazing powers of statistics to pull up a chart...

Now , just don't start going [Mr Hugo] on me . I am a simple culture Citizen "wannabe" exposing the possible dangers asociated with unlimited co2 and methane emissions.

And merry Christmas... I am really agnostic, but anyone who allegedly turned water to wine is in for a big celebration.

Anyway here are the charts you requested :

[dunkoveru]

It snowed a foot here today.

[charismatic megafauna]

When doesn't it snow a foot in in northwestern Iceland? Snowed about a foot and a half here Thursday night, Friday morning. Winter.

[adelatorre]

Interesting dunkoveru,
But what about glaciars? Are they getting larger or smaller or there is no change at all ?
In Mexico City the pattern we have is hotter summers ( 30 degrees vs 25 degrees) and winters with the usual "cold" (2 to 4 celcius degrees in the night).
When I was a child the glaciers of the volcanos were visible all year long. Now only the ciltlaltepetl has a tiny glaciar left , and that volcano is 5700 meters high.

[adelatorre]

This is an image from the plane crash taken 40 years ago :
The image is from december 1972 (summer). Getting down was an ordeal.


Apparently this is an image of the same site taken in 2008. Now getting down from the same site doesn't look like an appalling task.


This is another photo from 2009

[adelatorre]

Now we have methane escaping from the artic. Things might get a bit warmer in the near future.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencete...n-dioxide.html

[adelatorre]

Here is an interesting chart, showing previous hotter periods in the past. Apparently there have been three periods in history with hotter temperatures :
Medieval warming
Roman warming
Bronze age warming.

If we do go beyond the -28 C mark it will sure be a warning of trouble ahead.