At least seven people have frozen to death as the coldest air in a generation sweeps down over the US.
This global warming's a real bugger.
Cheers, Tony
The Belmont Bear said
06:46 AM Feb 1, 2019
Unfortunately tonyd there is a difference between the weather that people experience day to day and global warming which is a trend over time. There is no doubt that the average temperature on the planet is rising the argument is more around how much of it is being caused by the burning of fossil fuels etc. and how much of it is due to natural variation which would have occurred anyway..
Cheers
BB
Yuglamron said
11:16 AM Feb 1, 2019
I expect most people on the planet have heard of the book and Movies "Jurassic Park" By Michael Chricton.
He has always written stuff based on scientific facts.
One of his recent books is called "State of Fear"
It's based on Climate change.
It is a novel, but at the rear of the Book he has pages and pages of Scientific references from reputable scientists from around the world giving alternatives to the scaremongering claims of doomsday.
One of the biggest scientific researches quoted is actually Australian.
Australia has been taking Ice cores in Antarctica for over seventy years. They check the gases held in the snowcap that date back many thousands of years. It includes the CO2 levels over centuries. It can also show massive volcanic ash deposits that coincide with known massive eruptions such as Krakatoa and Santorini.
The CO2 levels show that it has hardly changed and peaks slightly after major volcanic eruptions. The CO2 levels over the last 100 years are just the same as the last few centuries.
It will take a few hundred years of further snowfall to give a more accurate level but at the moment it's pretty normal.
I can understand why he wrote it as a novel instead of a Scientific Treatise.
Anyone who speaks out about "Global Warming" gets howled down by the media.
Personally I think the jury is out and will be for a long time on the issue but I do think we need to look at waste, plastic and Chemical pollution and cut down our pollution in all ways.
LLD said
06:37 PM Feb 1, 2019
These extremes are cyclical. Some of these extremes are described as worst in a generation. That's 25 years. Which means we've been thru all these extremes before. I can remember extreme winters and summers back in the late 1950s / early 1960s. That's 2 generations ago. Global warming is a lot of scaremongering as most people at the top are paid to say there is global warming and the lefties believe it - it's trendy.
In a documentary that I saw recently quoting real facts and figures we definitely have a small climate change, no worse than we've been thru for the last 4-5000 years. It's just that we get extremes we are out of our comfort zone. Climate change that will destroy earth will actually take millions of years. Not ours, our children or their children but in a future that is entirely unpredictable (have you heard of the butterfly effect).
The documentary looked at Pacific Islands that were being effected by rising sea levels. Apparently there were falling sea levels in the 1960s, housing was built on the land that appeared as a result of the falling sea levels and now the rising sea level is taking back that land. And it's Australia fault that the sea levels are returning to levels of 50-60 years ago.
And I agree entirely with Yuglamron final sentence:
Personally I think the jury is out and will be for a long time on the issue but I do think we need to look at waste, plastic and Chemical pollution and cut down our pollution in all ways.
LLD said
06:42 PM Feb 1, 2019
And interesting email I received recently.
======================================================
Ian Rutherford Plimer is an Australian geologist, professor emeritus of earth sciences at the University of Melbourne, professor of mining geology at the University of Adelaide, and the director of multiple mineral exploration and mining companies. He has published 130 scientific papers, six books and edited the Encyclopedia of Geology. Sounds pretty learned/credible, don't you think?
Where Does the Carbon Dioxide Really Come From?
Professor Ian Plimer's book in a brief summary:
PLIMER: "Okay, here's the bombshell. The volcanic eruption in Iceland. Since its first spewing of volcanic ash, it has, in just FOUR DAYS, NEGATED EVERY SINGLE EFFORT you have made in the past five years to control CO2 emissions on our planet - all of you.
Of course, you know about this evil carbon dioxide that we are trying to suppress - it's that vital chemical compound that every plant requires to live and grow and to synthesize into oxygen for us humans and all animal life.
I know....it's very disheartening to realize that all of the carbon emission savings you have accomplished while suffering the inconvenience and expense of driving Prius hybrids, buying fabric grocery bags, sitting up till midnight to finish your kids "The Green Revolution" science project, throwing out all of your non-green cleaning supplies, using only two squares of toilet paper, putting a brick in your toilet tank reservoir, selling your SUV and speedboat, vacationing at home instead of abroad, nearly getting hit every day on your bicycle, replacing all of your 50 cent light bulbs with $10.00 light bulbs.....well, all of those things you have done have all gone down the tubes in just four days!
The volcanic ash emitted into the Earth's atmosphere in just four days - yes, FOUR DAYS - by that volcano in Iceland has totally erased every single effort you have made to reduce the evil beast, carbon. And there are around 200 active volcanoes on the planet spewing out this crud at any one time - EVERY DAY.
I don't really want to rain on your parade too much,
but I should mention that when the volcano Mt Pinatubo erupted in the Philippines in 1991, it spewed out more greenhouse gases into the atmosphere than the entire human race had emitted in all its years on earth.
Yes, folks, Mt Pinatubo was active for over One year - think about it.
Of course, I shouldn't spoil this 'touchy-feely tree-hugging' moment and mention the effect of natural solar and cosmic activity, and the well-recognized 800-year global heating and cooling cycle, which keeps happening despite our completely insignificant efforts to affect climate change.
And I do wish I had a silver lining to this volcanic ash cloud, but the fact of the matter is that the wildfire season across the western USA and Australia this year alone will negate your efforts to reduce carbon in our world for the next two to three years. And it happens every year.
Just remember that your government just tried to impose a whopping carbon tax on you, on the basis of the BOGUS 'human-caused' climate-change scenario.
Hey, isn't it interesting how they don't mention 'Global Warming' anymore, but just 'Climate Change.
It's because the planet has COOLED by 0.7 degrees in the past century and these global warming advocates got caught with their pants down.
And, just keep in mind that you might yet have an Emissions Trading Scheme - that whopping new tax - imposed on you by your government, that will achieve absolutely nothing except make you poorer.
It won't stop any volcanoes from erupting, that's for sure.
But, hey, .....go give the world a hug and have a nice day
The myth that a single volcanic eruption puts more CO2 into the atmosphere than all of mankind to date, let alone 10,000 times more, is one of the most pervasive as well as one of the most demonstrably false climatological claims out there. It stems, ultimately, from a geologist named Ian Plimer, infamous for writing a widelydiscredited book titled Heaven and Earth, which attempted to argue that humans have had an insignificant effect on global climate.
rockylizard said
08:01 PM Feb 1, 2019
Gday...
The biggest, and insurmountable, problem with what is really happening to our climate is a combination of scientists, media, politicians.
As with each of us, the general population, each has their own personal opinion, often backed up by facts we have 'discovered', 'read', researched, or were told by 'a reliable source'.
No matter what is written about the 'causes' of our climate there are counter-arguments that are as 'credentialed' as any other.
There are many reasons that large volcanic eruptions have such far-reaching effects on global climate. First, volcanic eruptions produce major quantities of carbon dioxide (CO2), a gas known to contribute to the greenhouse effect. Such greenhouse gases trap heat radiated off of the surface of the earth forming a type of insulation around the planet. The greenhouse effect is essential for our survival because it maintains the temperature of our planet within a habitable range. Nevertheless, there is growing concern that our production of gases such as CO2 from the burning of fossil fuels may be pushing the system a little too far, resulting in excessive warming on a global scale. There is no doubt that volcanic eruptions add CO2 to the atmosphere, but compared to the quantity produced by human activities, their impact is virtually trivial: volcanic eruptions produce about 110 million tons of CO2 each year, whereas human activities contribute almost 10,000 times that quantity.
Very few of us are scientifically trained or sufficiently aware to know who is right or who is wrong - and which media report is factually accurate and not pushing a 'barrow'. Fortunately, or unfortunately, we all are capable of having an opinion.
Leo, I think you best summed up discussions on this topic - "I do think we need to look at waste, plastic and Chemical pollution and cut down our pollution in all ways."
If we all did at least that much the world MUST become a better, cleaner, more liveable place.
Cheers - John
LLD said
08:42 PM Feb 1, 2019
Just watched a small snippet on a factory that makes healthy biscuits in a modern low energy, high efficiency, low waste footprint. But it used massive amounts of glad wrap when proofing the dough before baking. Didn't say where the used glad wrap went. When I do that at home, I use a tea towel or similar, wash it, and use it again & again. The top of the bin used in the factory was smaller than a large bed so a re-useable cotton bedsheet would have done. Now cotton production is a whole different problem.
It's the sheer waste that to me is the biggest issue. The root cause is our throwaway society. Control our throwaway urges and products and that will control our CO2, NOx, O3 etc, The footprint from making throwaway products and then disposing of them is, IMHO, a massive problem.
"When Europeans arrived in the Americas, they caused so much death and disease that it changed the global climate, a new study finds.
European settlers killed 56 million indigenous people over about 100 years in South, Central and North America, causing large swaths of farmland to be abandoned and reforested, researchers at University College London, or UCL, estimate. The increase in trees and vegetation across an area the size of France resulted in a massive decrease in carbon dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere, according to the study.
Carbon levels changed enough to cool the Earth by 1610, researchers found.
Before this study, some scientists had argued the temperature change in the 1600s, called the Little Ice Age, was caused only by natural forces."
LLD said
12:04 AM Feb 3, 2019
And another one. The most unsustainable city in the world causing its own micro climate is Phoenix. A close second is Las Vegas. Another case of the US saying do what we say not what we do.
The headline is misleading. "City" actually refers to municipal property, not private property.
"All Las Vegas city facilities -- from government buildings to streetlights -- are now running entirely on renewable energy, city officials have announced."
"The energy achievement touted by Las Vegas encompasses only municipal buildings and facilities, it does not include private businesses (such as casinos), and city spokesman Jace Radke pointed out that most of the Las Vegas Strip actually lies outside of city limits in an unincorporated area ..."
That said, many of the major casinos are using green energy.
LLD said
03:36 PM Feb 3, 2019
By unsustainable I should also mention water. The US have had to move to nuclear and renewable energy as there are no more rivers capable of being dammed for Hydro. California pumps water from underneath Edwards Airforce Base faster that the water can be replaced that had resulted in the airstrip cracking and dropping as much as 25 feet.
I notice that the Yanks in the ultra-cold areas have been asked to turn down their central heating to conserve power. They tend to have their heating set at 24C/75F. We have ours set at 22C/72F. Additionally a lot of their major cities have outside temps of -10 to zero. We really only have 2 cold cities (Melbourne & Canberra) and the worst outside temps are zero to +10. So the energy required to lift the outside temp to inside in the US is huge compared to Australia. We have also been asked to turn our A/C temp up a bit for similar reasons of power safety.
Where it is hot in the US (eg Phoenix), the A/C is set quite cool due to high outside temperature which are subsequently inflated by the hot air released outside by the A/C units and the cycle goes on. That effect is quite noticeable in Melbourne Central in summer. Also effected by bitumen streets. Climate change is happening (jury is out on exactly who/what is to blame for me) but because it is moving us outside our comfort zone, we need someone/thing to blame. Our desire to live within a very tight comfort zone (we previously lived with a larger comfort zone - no A/C or central heating) seems to be contributing to a perceived/real climate change, plus the extra energy required for us to live within our comfort zone that we now expect, and the flow-on effects of the micro-climates created by unsustainable cities like Phoenix and Las Vegas. The are probably other cities but these two have featured in documentaries - created by the Yanks themselves.
Hewy54 said
04:00 PM Feb 3, 2019
Hey LLD, I'm sure People in Hobart may question one of your comments.
LLD said
05:56 PM Feb 3, 2019
Hewy54 wrote:
Hey LLD, I'm sure People in Hobart may question one of your comments.
Was really talking about larger, colder cities. Apologies. I put in Canberra as it's full of cushy offices, a regional population of about 400,000 and is a cold place. Left out Geelong and Hobart on purpose as their populations are ~200,000+ (depending on where you measure).
At least seven people have frozen to death as the coldest air in a generation sweeps down over the US.
This global warming's a real bugger.
Cheers, Tony
Cheers
BB
I expect most people on the planet have heard of the book and Movies "Jurassic Park" By Michael Chricton.
He has always written stuff based on scientific facts.
One of his recent books is called "State of Fear"
It's based on Climate change.
It is a novel, but at the rear of the Book he has pages and pages of Scientific references from reputable scientists from around the world giving alternatives to the scaremongering claims of doomsday.
One of the biggest scientific researches quoted is actually Australian.
Australia has been taking Ice cores in Antarctica for over seventy years. They check the gases held in the snowcap that date back many thousands of years. It includes the CO2 levels over centuries. It can also show massive volcanic ash deposits that coincide with known massive eruptions such as Krakatoa and Santorini.
The CO2 levels show that it has hardly changed and peaks slightly after major volcanic eruptions. The CO2 levels over the last 100 years are just the same as the last few centuries.
It will take a few hundred years of further snowfall to give a more accurate level but at the moment it's pretty normal.
I can understand why he wrote it as a novel instead of a Scientific Treatise.
Anyone who speaks out about "Global Warming" gets howled down by the media.
Personally I think the jury is out and will be for a long time on the issue but I do think we need to look at waste, plastic and Chemical pollution and cut down our pollution in all ways.
In a documentary that I saw recently quoting real facts and figures we definitely have a small climate change, no worse than we've been thru for the last 4-5000 years. It's just that we get extremes we are out of our comfort zone. Climate change that will destroy earth will actually take millions of years. Not ours, our children or their children but in a future that is entirely unpredictable (have you heard of the butterfly effect).
The documentary looked at Pacific Islands that were being effected by rising sea levels. Apparently there were falling sea levels in the 1960s, housing was built on the land that appeared as a result of the falling sea levels and now the rising sea level is taking back that land. And it's Australia fault that the sea levels are returning to levels of 50-60 years ago.
And I agree entirely with Yuglamron final sentence:
Personally I think the jury is out and will be for a long time on the issue but I do think we need to look at waste, plastic and Chemical pollution and cut down our pollution in all ways.
======================================================
Ian Rutherford Plimer is an Australian geologist, professor emeritus of earth sciences at the University of Melbourne, professor of mining geology at the University of Adelaide, and the director of multiple mineral exploration and mining companies. He has published 130 scientific papers, six books and edited the Encyclopedia of Geology. Sounds pretty learned/credible, don't you think?
Where Does the Carbon Dioxide Really Come From?
Professor Ian Plimer's book in a brief summary:
PLIMER: "Okay, here's the bombshell. The volcanic eruption in Iceland. Since its first spewing of volcanic ash, it has, in just FOUR DAYS, NEGATED EVERY SINGLE EFFORT you have made in the past five years to control CO2 emissions on our planet - all of you.
Of course, you know about this evil carbon dioxide that we are trying to suppress - it's that vital chemical compound that every plant requires to live and grow and to synthesize into oxygen for us humans and all animal life.
I know....it's very disheartening to realize that all of the carbon emission savings you have accomplished while suffering the inconvenience and expense of driving Prius hybrids, buying fabric grocery bags, sitting up till midnight to finish your kids "The Green Revolution" science project, throwing out all of your non-green cleaning supplies, using only two squares of toilet paper, putting a brick in your toilet tank reservoir, selling your SUV and speedboat, vacationing at home instead of abroad, nearly getting hit every day on your bicycle, replacing all of your 50 cent light bulbs with $10.00 light bulbs.....well, all of those things you have done have all gone down the tubes in just four days!
The volcanic ash emitted into the Earth's atmosphere in just four days - yes, FOUR DAYS - by that volcano in Iceland has totally erased every single effort you have made to reduce the evil beast, carbon. And there are around 200 active volcanoes on the planet spewing out this crud at any one time - EVERY DAY.
I don't really want to rain on your parade too much,
but I should mention that when the volcano Mt Pinatubo erupted in the Philippines in 1991, it spewed out more greenhouse gases into the atmosphere than the entire human race had emitted in all its years on earth.
Yes, folks, Mt Pinatubo was active for over One year - think about it.
Of course, I shouldn't spoil this 'touchy-feely tree-hugging' moment and mention the effect of natural solar and cosmic activity, and the well-recognized 800-year global heating and cooling cycle, which keeps happening despite our completely insignificant efforts to affect climate change.
And I do wish I had a silver lining to this volcanic ash cloud, but the fact of the matter is that the wildfire season across the western USA and Australia this year alone will negate your efforts to reduce carbon in our world for the next two to three years. And it happens every year.
Just remember that your government just tried to impose a whopping carbon tax on you, on the basis of the BOGUS 'human-caused' climate-change scenario.
Hey, isn't it interesting how they don't mention 'Global Warming' anymore, but just 'Climate Change.
It's because the planet has COOLED by 0.7 degrees in the past century and these global warming advocates got caught with their pants down.
And, just keep in mind that you might yet have an Emissions Trading Scheme - that whopping new tax - imposed on you by your government, that will achieve absolutely nothing except make you poorer.
It won't stop any volcanoes from erupting, that's for sure.
But, hey, .....go give the world a hug and have a nice day
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/volcano-carbon-emissions/
Gday...
The biggest, and insurmountable, problem with what is really happening to our climate is a combination of scientists, media, politicians.
As with each of us, the general population, each has their own personal opinion, often backed up by facts we have 'discovered', 'read', researched, or were told by 'a reliable source'.
No matter what is written about the 'causes' of our climate there are counter-arguments that are as 'credentialed' as any other.
Try this site -
http://www.sciencetimes.com/articles/2601/20150113/study-shows-volcanoes-may-be-causing-global-cooling.htm
[ignore the video ... it seems to be more ads than information .. although I only watched the first five ads
]
or this site -
https://volcanoes.usgs.gov/vhp/gas_climate.html
Or the following from this site -
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-do-volcanoes-affect-w/
There are many reasons that large volcanic eruptions have such far-reaching effects on global climate. First, volcanic eruptions produce major quantities of carbon dioxide (CO2), a gas known to contribute to the greenhouse effect. Such greenhouse gases trap heat radiated off of the surface of the earth forming a type of insulation around the planet. The greenhouse effect is essential for our survival because it maintains the temperature of our planet within a habitable range. Nevertheless, there is growing concern that our production of gases such as CO2 from the burning of fossil fuels may be pushing the system a little too far, resulting in excessive warming on a global scale. There is no doubt that volcanic eruptions add CO2 to the atmosphere, but compared to the quantity produced by human activities, their impact is virtually trivial: volcanic eruptions produce about 110 million tons of CO2 each year, whereas human activities contribute almost 10,000 times that quantity.
Very few of us are scientifically trained or sufficiently aware to know who is right or who is wrong - and which media report is factually accurate and not pushing a 'barrow'. Fortunately, or unfortunately, we all are capable of having an opinion.
Leo, I think you best summed up discussions on this topic - "I do think we need to look at waste, plastic and Chemical pollution and cut down our pollution in all ways."
If we all did at least that much the world MUST become a better, cleaner, more liveable place.
Cheers - John
It's the sheer waste that to me is the biggest issue. The root cause is our throwaway society. Control our throwaway urges and products and that will control our CO2, NOx, O3 etc, The footprint from making throwaway products and then disposing of them is, IMHO, a massive problem.
Here's a weird one:
https://edition.cnn.com/2019/02/01/world/european-colonization-climate-change-trnd/index.html
"When Europeans arrived in the Americas, they caused so much death and disease that it changed the global climate, a new study finds.
European settlers killed 56 million indigenous people over about 100 years in South, Central and North America, causing large swaths of farmland to be abandoned and reforested, researchers at University College London, or UCL, estimate. The increase in trees and vegetation across an area the size of France resulted in a massive decrease in carbon dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere, according to the study.
Carbon levels changed enough to cool the Earth by 1610, researchers found.
Before this study, some scientists had argued the temperature change in the 1600s, called the Little Ice Age, was caused only by natural forces."
Las Vegas power www.huffingtonpost.com.au/entry/the-city-of-las-vegas-is-now-powered-entirely-by-renewable-energy_us_58594291e4b0b3ddfd8ea4e8
I wish we had Politicians with such foresight.
The headline is misleading. "City" actually refers to municipal property, not private property.
"All Las Vegas city facilities -- from government buildings to streetlights -- are now running entirely on renewable energy, city officials have announced."
Snopes says the headline is "mostly true".
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/las-vegas-now-powered-entirely-renewable-energy/
"The energy achievement touted by Las Vegas encompasses only municipal buildings and facilities, it does not include private businesses (such as casinos), and city spokesman Jace Radke pointed out that most of the Las Vegas Strip actually lies outside of city limits in an unincorporated area ..."
That said, many of the major casinos are using green energy.
I notice that the Yanks in the ultra-cold areas have been asked to turn down their central heating to conserve power. They tend to have their heating set at 24C/75F. We have ours set at 22C/72F. Additionally a lot of their major cities have outside temps of -10 to zero. We really only have 2 cold cities (Melbourne & Canberra) and the worst outside temps are zero to +10. So the energy required to lift the outside temp to inside in the US is huge compared to Australia. We have also been asked to turn our A/C temp up a bit for similar reasons of power safety.
Where it is hot in the US (eg Phoenix), the A/C is set quite cool due to high outside temperature which are subsequently inflated by the hot air released outside by the A/C units and the cycle goes on. That effect is quite noticeable in Melbourne Central in summer. Also effected by bitumen streets. Climate change is happening (jury is out on exactly who/what is to blame for me) but because it is moving us outside our comfort zone, we need someone/thing to blame. Our desire to live within a very tight comfort zone (we previously lived with a larger comfort zone - no A/C or central heating) seems to be contributing to a perceived/real climate change, plus the extra energy required for us to live within our comfort zone that we now expect, and the flow-on effects of the micro-climates created by unsustainable cities like Phoenix and Las Vegas. The are probably other cities but these two have featured in documentaries - created by the Yanks themselves.
Was really talking about larger, colder cities. Apologies. I put in Canberra as it's full of cushy offices, a regional population of about 400,000 and is a cold place. Left out Geelong and Hobart on purpose as their populations are ~200,000+ (depending on where you measure).