"Many scientists are also worried about a possible collapse of the Atlantic thermohaline circulation, a current that brings warm surface water to northern Europe and returns cold, deep-ocean water south. Hans Joachim Schellnhuber, who directs Germany's Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, has run multiple computer models to determine when climate change could disrupt this "conveyor belt," which, according to one study, is already slower than it was 30 years ago. According to these simulations, there is a 50 percent chance the current will collapse within 200 years."
Makes me wonder if The Day After Tomarrow movie's going to come true. The superstorms and instant freeze isn't likely to happen.
I've noticed that this winter has been significantly warmer than even just 5 years ago. The coldest it's gotten was -25 Celsius. That's usually a warm day for most of the winter. The average this year has been around -10 and -20 Celcius. Not that I'm complaining, 5 years ago the temperature used to hover between -30 and -40 which is generally normal for Saskatchewan, and didn't stop people from going about thier business, working, skiing, snowmobiling etc. I know we got people from all over the world here, have you guys noticed any changes in the climate where you live? I'm interested to see what the summer holds for us. the last couple years we didn't have the usual heatwave that came in the last week of August that suspiciously coincides with the closing of the local waterpark...
-------------------- Grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change. The courage to change the things I cannot accept. And the wisdom to hide the bodies of all the people I had to kill today because they pissed me off.
posted
I live in Sacramento on the west coast, and heck, even our winters have been warmer. I remember when winter days could have been below freezing, and now while they can still come close, it's been above 32 degrees F.
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posted
Kansas has certainly felt different this season- we got a thunderstorm the other day, there are some fruit trees that are budding, certain types of flowers are coming up, and the winter wheat that should also be dormant is starting to grow.
Registered: Dec 2005
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posted
Well last year was officially the hottest year in Australia since records began.
For the last... 4 years we have not had a winter - oh it got cold - maybe winter pyjamas were required on one night - but that was about it. Gone are the lovely cold winter days and nights. In Brisbane, around show-day (Ekka/The Exhibition) we should be getting gusty Westerly winds. We haven't had them or they have come a month late for the last 4 or 5 years. Currently it's the worst drought on record. Our dams are at 33.9% capacity. At 30% we go to stage 3 water restrictions. A Ban on hoses and if you want to water the garden it has to be with a bucket.
We've had a few storms this summer - but nothing like we used to get in the late eighties/early ninties. Usually you'd get an awesome thunder storm every evening - or at least every second evening during summer. (Summer is our wet season).
North Queensland hasn't had a cyclone in a number of years. They maintain we aren't in an El Ni�o.
-------------------- "Bears. Beets. Battlestar Galactica." - Jim Halpert. (The Office)
posted
Discovery or TLC or someone did a show on this several years ago. Ironic that global warming, if it causes this collapse, will hasten the next ice age.
Da_bang80
A few sectors short of an Empire
Member # 528
posted
I don't think Global Warming is the sole cause of the environmental troubles the planet now faces. Mankind has been producing Carbon Dioxide for thousands of years through wood/coal burning stoves and our own exhalations. Yes there are other greenhouse gases in the atmosphere but not at the levels that would affect the entire planet. Other chemical pollutants such as Chloroflourocarbons also contribute but are not classified as greenhouse gases. I'm no climatologist but the Earth goes through a warming/cooling cycle every few thousand years. Everybodies running around convinced that it's global warming when it may in fact be just a natural occurance that people really can't study all that well because the time scales are so different. The Earth has been in existence for over 4 billion years. We can't even begin to comprehend that kind of scale. The 80 or so years we're alloted is like a blink. Over almost before it begins in geological terms. And there's only so much we can learn from looking at rocks and fossils. I'm not so much worried that we'll destroy the planet. It's survived much worse than a bunch of polluting humans. I'm more worried about the human race surviving the planet.
Let's say the Trans-Atlantic current collapses the day after tomarrow. and 20 years from now everything above the 49th parallel is under a kilometer of ice. Thats like 300 million (rough estimate) people displaced. where will they go? say in 40 years everything north of Texas is frozen solid. I can't even begin to guess how many people that is. Lets not forget the south pole either. It freezes too. So that leaves a stretch of habitable land at the equator. How are 6 billion people going to live like that? There will be wars over every conceivable thing. Land, Food, resources. We'll most likely destroy ourselves.
Some day we may fuck up the planet enough that we as a species won't be able to survive. But that doesn't mean something won't survive and possible even thrive. And eventually the planet will adapt. I'm not a tree hugger but I think we as a race should take steps to insure that the planet remains habitable for us. It's the only one we've got. And we're not likely to find another one anytime soon.
-------------------- Grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change. The courage to change the things I cannot accept. And the wisdom to hide the bodies of all the people I had to kill today because they pissed me off.
posted
Well maybe you are right Bang - but what I said is just what I've noticed over the last five or so years. We don't have winter anymore, we are also running out of water.
-------------------- "Bears. Beets. Battlestar Galactica." - Jim Halpert. (The Office)
Da_bang80
A few sectors short of an Empire
Member # 528
posted
Dude, that sucks. Come to Canada. You can have all the water and winter you'll ever want. Seriously tho. Even our water supplies are running low. The water level at thelake that my parents have a cabin at has dropped over a meter since I was last there. And its a pretty big lake. We havn't had any really nice summer thunderstorms here in a while either. Too dry. It's still hot though.
-------------------- Grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change. The courage to change the things I cannot accept. And the wisdom to hide the bodies of all the people I had to kill today because they pissed me off.
posted
The water level most certainly isn't decreasing in New Brunswick. If anything, its increasing. The Saint John River was at one of the highest points on record last spring, lots of flooding. And this winter it hasn't fully frozen over yet. In fact, it was frozen over for maybe a week or so and then thawed up again. We're not getting much snow but every now and again we're getting lots of rain that's flooding some regions. As of late winter still comes, but instead of being a November-February/March kind of thing, its a January-April kind of thing. Only, here it is the end of January and its not even that bad. Temperatures haven't gone much lower than -20, which is odd.
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quote: I'm not so much worried that we'll destroy the planet. It's survived much worse than a bunch of polluting humans. I'm more worried about the human race surviving the planet.
The worst doomsday figures for global temperatures in the next few hundred years are basically what Earth was treated to during the last interglacial period, very recent in both geological and biological terms. The Eem was enough to nudge evolution noticeably forward (or backward), but no threat to the existence of life per se. And the existing record of seesawing interglacials and interstadials shows that there is no major danger of runaway positive-feedback phenomena there.
Detonating all our nukes at once wouldn't make much of an impact, either. Deliberately detonating them so that radioactive soot covered maximal land areas might have a short-time effect, but it would be a fairly inefficient way to cause mass extinctions.
However, blow big enough a hole in the ozone and kill the plankton, and THEN you are definitely speaking trouble... And this is something we just possibly might do without deliberate effort, and take to its fatal conclusion before we ourselves perish.
quote:Originally posted by Topher: The water level most certainly isn't decreasing in New Brunswick. If anything, its increasing. The Saint John River was at one of the highest points on record last spring, lots of flooding.
See that's the thing - that sounds like La Ni�a yet they say that we aren't in one of those periods yet. We get El Ni�o when North America gets La Ni�a.
-------------------- "Bears. Beets. Battlestar Galactica." - Jim Halpert. (The Office)
posted
Here in Western Washington, we're on track for the wettest January on record. We had a couple dry days earlier this month that screwed up our bid for most continuous days of rain. The ground is getting saturated, and trees and utility poles are randomly falling over as their footings become compromised. We've also had a slew of avalanches and landslides. But apart from one day back in December, it's hasn't snowed at all this year.
--Jonah
-------------------- "That's what I like about these high school girls, I keep getting older, they stay the same age."
--David "Woody" Wooderson, Dazed and Confused
Registered: Feb 2001
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posted
El Nino and La Nina are determined by the heat of the water in the Pacific ocean. The large number of hurricanes in the Atlantic is also determined by the heat of the waters in the Atlantic and Gulf of Mexico... there has to be some connection.
-------------------- "Bears. Beets. Battlestar Galactica." - Jim Halpert. (The Office)
"Everybodies running around convinced that it's global warming when it may in fact be just a natural occurance that people really can't study all that well because the time scales are so different."
So, it may not be global warming ; it may just be that the globe is getting warmer?
I hate when people confuse the issue by claiming that global warming itself does not exist. Global warming = warming of the globe. Judging even by what people are saying here, it's getting pretty hard to deny that it's happening.
If you like, you can argue that global warming isn't caused by humans. But don't claim it doesn't exist at all.
Registered: Mar 1999
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Da_bang80
A few sectors short of an Empire
Member # 528
posted
Dude, I think you misunderstood me. What I meant by global warming, is the idea that human pollution is causing the globe to warm. I don't deny the globe is getting warmer. I just don't think it's caused entirely by human pollution. this "Warming of the globe" as you put it might be a natural occurance. that's what I was trying to get across.
-------------------- Grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change. The courage to change the things I cannot accept. And the wisdom to hide the bodies of all the people I had to kill today because they pissed me off.
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