VCCA Home Forums GENERAL DISCUSSION General Discussions Global Warming

We are sitting at -17C (about 0F) here in Bolton Ont. right now. Tomorrow We are getting a new garage door installed, so I need to have both old cars out of the garage and over to the neighbours in the morning. I decided to take the batteries out and start them tonight, just so the gas is run up to the carb for the morning. Both cars started right up with a quarter cup dumped into the carb. It'll be interesting to see if my siding guy will have the same "get up and go!' tomorrow...

Well, they're calling for 6F here by morning! At least we have no snow or freezing rain. Seems some guy called Vortex messed up the air flow well north of here and caused all of this cold weather. He should be shot, if and when they can find him.

This ain't like Chattanooga at all. Gonna set a new record low for the date. We are tired of it and have enjoyed about all of it we can stand!

I sincerely pity all those folks that have caught all that snow and ice, complicated by the loss of power. 'Can't be much fun!

When it's all done, those x sperts will find some stupid way to blame it on global warming!

Gaither:

Its -1F tonight here in WV according to the thermometer on my patio. Can't fault them Global Warming experts, they get big bucks to conjur up "facts". One can only hope that they're freezing their butts off on the way to work like the rest of us caught in this record cold spell.

41Special Deluxe is going the get it too - just talked to my kid in Fayetteville, NC, and its supposed to hit 17 there tonight.

Regards:
Oldengineer

My local radio station this morning predicted -37f for Milwaukee today, you can keep that as I totally dislike the -10c overnight that is a regular here.
Tony

I just came in from walking out to the newspaper box in my bare feet and thin PGs. Just as I do year-round. Before I could dash back in, I like to have froze my little piggies off!

Newspaper said it was below 20 last night and that it was because of a cold front a-coming out of ... guess where? Well, duh! Hint: We get Brewster, et al, from there, as well. I imagine that when one of these blasts come a-streakin south, ol' Brewster grins like a mule eating briars. Does too!

And, oh yeah, speaking of another bad thing coming out of is those model Chevrolets that hardly anything matches with their cousins down here below. ("here below" that don't sound just right. hmmm. Oh, well, can't come up with why right now. It's early and I haven't had my cup of Ghirardelli hot chocolate yet. Speaking of value added).

Anyway, I'm a-leaving. Might as well be in Alaska. Homestead, FL or Brownsville, TX sounds about right. Anyone have another suggestion of a better place? Forget Hawaii. (Wouldn't be anything to look forward after death.)

Charlie

Some more winter fun. My daughter Brenda is principal of St Mary's and just thought I'd share this. Suppose to stay above 0 degrees F tomorrow and have our January thaw this weekend. Life is great.
[img]https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?...2199807.83835.100000334747706&type=1[/img]

Jerry,

Looks like a great, praiseworthy event. I hope all goes well and truck load of $$$ is made.

Maybe they should sell ice picks, too.

Best,
Charlie

Watch the movie "The Day After Tomorrow". It's all explained there about how global warming changes the Atlantic current and melts the glaciers and tilts the earth or something to create a new ice age...

Yesterday's paper said "No warming in 17 years". I haven't tracked it myself. However, if true, do NOT expect it to deter the "Global idiots"! They'll find a way to blame "No warming" on what they are now calling "Climate change" and still want us to quit driving our cars, heating our homes and burning any light bulbs. The only thing that will not change are politically motivated, well paid liars!

Gaither
Well said but I would change the last bit to "over paid idiots".
Tony

Tony, You are right!

A graph of the ups and down along a long trend to global warming represent many, many years. It won't happen overnight. The sientific analysis of out plutting the planet cannot be denied. The only thing wrong with the trend to global warming is the prospective. Complete swings of such change will take ages. Thus "Ice Age" etc.

One colder than usual winter or warmer than summer will not manifest significant change. Nor, by the same token, will a warmer than usual winter or cooler than usual summer.

Where are the deep thinkers among us? Am I the only one? Juuusssttttt kidding!

Charlie

Sure could use a little "warming" here in the frozen north. While our weather records are fairly "new" I found while reading some Civil War history memoirs books that the weather then was just as unpredictable as today. BOSTON IN December and warm and no snow at Christmas. Union prisoners freezing in camps in Alabama in January. Floods on certain rivers where cities now stand. History tells us a lot. We just fail to listen.

Maybe we can swap for a while! as down here in Aus we've had up to 125 degree heat and many bush fires.
Chris

I think I would rather have the cold as I can always put another log in the fire. On really cold nights I have two woodstoves going-one for the house and one for the garage which I try to keep around 40 to keep the cars warm and the beer cold.

"Extreme Drought" is what were having in Californie...Send some snow our way...We need it...

Hey Guys! It's all controlled by that big yellow ball in the sky! Don't be like Chicken Little.

Owing to cold air from , it snowed here last night. About 4 inches. Heck fire, I don't even own a snow shovel. I'm upset and I don't know who to take it out on. Hmmm.

Brewster, if you should get a small gift box in the mail it won't be no Christmas present. It won't fit the 50 or the 51, either. It will be symbolic of my thought to all the folks in right now who opened the "flood gates" -again - so as all that cold air can escape and torture h..l out of those of us south of the border .

Before you open the package, give the missus your credit card and tell her that whatever she wants at the mall is authorized with your blessings. Tell her to take her time. Tell her to gather all her shopping friends and take them to the food bar. All on you. Be sure to hug her goodbye. After she leaves drive the 50 and 51 down the street about a quarter mile and leave them there, then come back and open the package. You're right welcome.

Charlie

BTW: Before sending the missus off on her shopping spree, load the models in the trunk. And, oh yes, as to the gift package, just ignore the ticking.

I'M JUST MESSING WITH YOU!

Charlie... use the same shovel to move the snow that you use to shovel all of that crap on us!

No worries on the package... Between your postal/border service that is so nervous and jumpy over every little thing, and our postal/border service that just doesn't care, and is more likely to lose it... I think I'll be fine. You know that your FBI just read that, and is busting down your door anyway!

Isn't funny how suddenly global warming has been re-branded as Climate Change? Where's Al Gore been? He's all but disappeared and now film maker James Cameron (Avatar/Titanic) seems to be trying to take up the global warming cause all while the polar caps and the Greenland ice sheet expand at rates not previously seen. What's funny is all the concern about global warming and suddenly when Alabama and Georgia are paralyzed with snow and freezing temperatures, nobody seems to understand this is what they are asking for as the new normal.

Stopping naturally occurring global warming (like man can control the weather) will give us a lot more polar vortex weather and somehow people want that? I'm paying $4.25/g for diesel because of the heating oil demand and this is good?

The earth is normally a frozen ball of ice and every so often it warms up in an interglacial period briefly before returning to a frozen ball of ice. We've only been here for 30,000 of the last 2,000,000,000 years so it's kind of hard to think that man caused global warming when the earth has had a dozen or more interglacial periods before man ever showed up. What's up with that?

One big tectonic plate slide setting the pacific rim afire or one asteroid will change our climate for thousands of years in just seconds. It's happened before and it will happen again. The earth has a population problem that is causing changes in everything. Doubling the population of this planet every 40 years now; do the math and slide over to make room for your new neighbors because in 40 years, your town will have twice as many people pulling on the same resources of water and food. We have an over-population problem that is far more critical. 29% (1/3rd!) of San Francisco's air pollution is coming from...drum roll please...not California; not San Francisco; no, it is dust and air pollution from China on the other side of the planet. How about we get them to clean up their act and see how that impacts climate change, then worry about our own shores after everybody else comes up even with us.

The Kyoto Protocol passed 17 years ago and was then targeting the ozone layer, but captured CO2 emissions as a prime objective. How has that worked in the last 17 years? Well, take a look: http://www.theguardian.com/environment/blog/2012/nov/26/kyoto-protocol-carbon-emissions China now accounts for 63% of all the CO2 in the world but what is happening there? They are laughing all the way to the iPhone and computer production bank with American dollars.

We force American industry into compliance through insanely expensive regulations and the country belching out 63% of all the CO2 on the planet is doing nothing but making money off us? Who's kidding who here?

I wonder how much Al Gore's carbon footprint shrunk this year. From ABC News: Lest Gore not be alone, James Cameron has his own massive carbon footprint that he simply pays to offset with the money he makes off his new climate change film. So the people who are out as self proclaimed champions of saving the planet, are actually leading the pack with pollution?

Attention sheeple; please follow the bellwether into the slaughterhouse.

I’ll start with a disclaimer. I am a scientist, albeit not a climate scientist. That said, I certainly have enough training to find my way around scientific journals and scientific discussions. There are a few points I’d like to add to this discussion to perhaps clarify some of the issues.

People tend to mix up two issues: the ozone layer and climate change. These are two completely separate issues, with different causes and different consequences.

The ozone layer:
Chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) used to be in all kinds of aerosols, in addition to air conditioners, and were released to the atmosphere with wild abandon. They react with ozone and break it down. Ozone is not particularly good for us down here on the surface of the Earth, but in the upper atmosphere, ozone is a fabulous sunscreen, filtering out almost all of the UV radiation from the sun. When you think about the sunburn and skin cancer we get from just the few percent of UV that makes it through the ozone layer, protecting the ozone layer and keeping that other 98% from getting to us seems like a good idea.

Chemists have shown that one CFC molecule can break down many many thousands of ozone molecules. (The CFC acts as a catalyst). Losing any amount of the ozone layer means less protection from the UV radiation from the Sun, and consequently more skin cancer. After years of CFCs being released into the atmosphere, the ozone layer seemed to be thinning significantly. Following a worldwide reduction in the use of CFCs, the rate of ozone loss appears to have slowed. This is a good thing.

Climate change:
Some gases, like carbon dioxide (CO2) and methane, act like the panes of glass in a greenhouse: they allow light to pass, but trap heat, so they are often called “greenhouse gases.” This was where the term “global warming” started. The amount of CO2 in the atmosphere has definitely increased since the onset of the Industrial Revolution, leading some to fear that the Earth would warm up like a greenhouse. The idea was “more CO2, more heat trapped, hotter Earth.” Over time, it became clear that this model was a little too simplistic and so the term “climate change” was coined, as it better described the wide swings in weather patterns that could occur due to increased energy in the atmosphere. This is a classic example of an idea being initially proposed and then refined through further study in science, and it is largely how science progresses. This very week, Stephen Hawking is in the news because he is refining his theories about “black holes” in the Universe.

Is our current idea about climate change 100% correct? No, and no scientist would ever make that claim. Is it our best model based on our current understanding? Yes. So what do we do … gamble that the scientists are wrong and ignore it, or try to address it now before things might get really crazy? That’s a policy decision, not a scientific decision, and you get a say in that by how you vote, how often you write your Congressperson, etc.

Is it even conceivable that humans can influence the environment on a global scale? Well, it’s been done before. By plants. As they conducted photosynthesis on the early Earth, they merrily spewed out “toxic waste” generation after generation. Their waste product was O2, oxygen. Eventually the level of O2 in the atmosphere increased from about 2% to almost 20%. Not bad for some mindless plants. But, given time, and enough organisms, it happened. (The O2 levels plateaued out once other organisms evolved that could take advantage of all that O2, like us!)

Lastly, politics and science do not make good bedfellows, especially where money is involved. Al Gore or some Hollywood star takes up the issue of climate change, and people poo poo the whole idea. Not because they have studied the science, but because they hate the messenger. Or because someone has convinced them the climate scientists are all a bunch of corrupt, pointy-headed twits. It’s worth noting that nobody is calling Stephen Hawking a hack, even though he’s modified his theory about the Universe. But then, there isn’t a lot of money to be made or lost (yet) if he has a new insight and refines his theory.

Paul,

Well done.

I can add nothing to your post. It is straight forward, well written, understandable, void of hype and speaks for itself.

Thanks for your posting.

Charlie