Posted on 03/30/2008 9:42:15 AM PDT by blam
American West Heating Nearly Twice As Fast As Rest Of World, New Analysis Shows
Colorado River, Utah. The West's most pronounced temperature increase is in the Colorado River basin, which has warmed more than twice as much as the global average, with effects that put at risk a major water supply. (Credit: iStockphoto/Eric Foltz)
ScienceDaily (Mar. 30, 2008) — The American West is heating up more rapidly than the rest of the world, according to a new analysis of the most recent federal government temperature figures. The news is especially bad for some of the nation’s fastest growing cities, which receive water from the drought-stricken Colorado River. The average temperature rise in the Southwest’s largest river basin was more than double the average global increase, likely spelling even more parched conditions.
For the report, the Rocky Mountain Climate Organization (RMCO) analyzed new temperature data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) for 11 western states. For the five-year period 2003-2007 the average temperature in the Colorado River Basin, which stretches from Wyoming to Mexico, was 2.2 degrees Fahrenheit hotter than the historical average for the 20th Century. The temperature rise was more than twice the global average increase of 1.0 degree during the same period. The average temperature increased 1.7 degrees in the entire 11-state western region.
“We are seeing signs of the economic impacts throughout the West,” said study author Stephen Saunders of the Rocky Mountain Climate Organization. “Since 2000 we have seen $2.7 billion in crop loss claims due to drought. Global warming is harming valuable commercial salmon fisheries, reducing hunting activity and revenues, and threatening shorter and less profitable seasons for ski resorts.”
The Colorado River Basin is in the throes of a record drought, shrinking water supplies for upwards of 30 million people in fast-growing Denver, Albuquerque, Las Vegas, Phoenix, Los Angeles and San Diego. Most of the Colorado River’s flow comes from melting snow in the mountains of Wyoming, Utah and Wyoming. Climate scientists predict even more and drier droughts in the future as hotter temperatures reduce the snowpack and increase evaporation.
To date, the governors of Arizona, California, Montana, New Mexico, Oregon, Utah and Washington have signed the Western Climate Initiative (WCI), an agreement to reduce global warming pollution through a market-based system, such as cap-and-trade. The WCI calls for states to reduce their global warming emissions 15 percent below 2005 levels by 2020. Conservationists say the states should commit to meeting these targets, and that there should also be a firm target of an 80 percent reduction by 2050.
A growing chorus of leaders across the political and economic spectrum says more aggressive action is needed at the national level. Supporters say the Lieberman-Warner bill, “America’s Climate Security Act” (S. 2191), is the strongest global warming bill moving through Congress. The bipartisan bill is the first climate legislation ever to be passed out of a Senate committee. The full Senate is expected to vote on the bill by summer, by which time supporters are optimistic about strengthening the bill even further.
“We need strong leadership from western senators to pass America’s Climate Security Act,” said Spencer. “The longer we wait to put a concrete cap on global warming pollution, the greater the threat to all Americans.”
The NRDC-RMCO report, “Warming in the West,” analyzed temperature data from Arizona, California, Colorado, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, Oregon, Utah, Washington and Wyoming. The report is available online at http://www.nrdc.org/globalWarming/west/contents.asp.
Adapted from materials provided by Natural Resources Defense Council.
Somebody is making series money from this GW scam. One route to wealth could be webpages following the example of viral politics.
How can Global Warming/Climate Change be selective?
Must be from all of those nuclear tests in the desert 50 years ago. They are finally catching up with us. < /s >
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(Wink, wink) Lots of cars in California and Nevada. Lots of lights in Las Vegas.
Is it following the exodus of Californians as they despoil the closest states first or is it the influx of from our southern neighbor?
What area of the North American Continent has always been considered a desert? Duhhhhh. ummmm I bet it is the West!
What happens in a desert? It gets HOT. And it rarely RAINS.
That makes water SCARCE. What did the people expect to find otherwise?
The desert heat has hard boiled a lot of BRAINS.
Maybe the urban areas are growing up around the NOAA thermometers?
At least we’re making progress; we got the rest of the world cooled down now we only have to freeze out the west.
Just like your kitchen, how far apart are your stove and your refrigerator?
It’s been averaging about 8 degrees below normal here for the last week.
Maybe the temperature monitoring stations in the west are suffering from the urban heat island affect. Move them from downtown Las Vegas, Phoenix and such into the country and your temperature increase will disappear. Easy fix to the problem of Globull Warming these nuts are talking about.
I’d say it’s the large collective of Global Whiners in that part of the country. (somebody’s fudging the results?)
So the temp is rising fastest in the areas with the least inhabitation and automobiles?
I believe the very first headline in a newspaper that “Humans caused global warming” was int he New York Times in 1865.
Can someone verify for me? Thanks.
SIMPLE:
Hollywood’s hot air, and SF’s gay friction.
When alarmist stories like this come out, I’ve come to treat them as lies. The polar bears drowning was the last straw. I learned the GW crowd will tell any lie, stab any back to push their socialist agenda.
Ya know, this could be solved if everyone would just dump out their ice makers and take the ice to the river. We could call it Earth Hour II.
I live in one of the hotter areas of the Colorado River Basin, this article maxed out my BSometer.
Pretty funny, huh?
Bet none of the people panicking over this have been very far out of their offices in LA and SFO.
We drove the 10 to PHX from LA the other day. I couldn't stop laughing. It's still devoid of habitation from Indio to Buckeye, except for the ludicrous wide spot in the road known as Blythe. Global Warming? From what? Gopher farts?
And indeed it's a desert, and it's hot.
Just like it was when I was a kid, 50 years ago. Maybe hotter then.
The Southwest is heating up? We used to call them droughts. Happen all the time. Bout every 7-10 years or so.
Nothin' new under the hot Arizona sun.
That was my thought...they speak of it like a dragon of old folk lore who wields it fire breathing talents at some places while seemingly ignoring others (like MN for instance)...how blinded are these people?
IT’S NATURAL FOR SOME PLACES TO BE WARMER AND OTHERS TO BE COLDER AT TIMES...UGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Seriously......sigh, it just baffles the mind...
So since the “rest of the world” actually cooled in the last 5 years, the American West is staying the same?
This is good news if true. My vacation home on the Colorado River could use an easier winter. We hit -22F there sometimes, and we are still waiting for 5 foot drifts to melt around the house now.
McCain’s fault.
Duhhhh...it’s a freakin’ DESERT! It’s SUPPOSED TO BE HOT!
This is like publishing a finding denying an increased breast cancer risk from abortion, with materials provided by Planned Parenthood.
Wyoming! Anybody checked out the effect of the Yellowstone Super-Volcano? That melted rock is pushing the surface up.
The only reason I go to this church is because my wife likes the choir. I might be too hungover the next few weeks to attend.
How long is the music portion of the free concert you are attending?
You don’t tithe to their political yakfest do you?
Perhaps you should look into when their choir holds evening concerts. Many sing at other times, not just during the service.
Sheeple with short memories forget the global cooling scam of the seventies, when the same weather frauds who perpetuate the warming scam were convinced an ice age was coming. What if they were right then, and man’s little contribution to CO2 levels has been just enough to tip the scales for awhile? Is there a climate expert out there who can prove that isn’t what is really happening? The weather around the world, and in my neck of the woods, sure does seem to be getting cooler. I love the cool summers and mild winters we’ve been having, and from an extreme variance point of view, cooling is winning. Climate kooks should leave things alone.
Cows that burp less seen helping in climate fight [fart less?] LONDON (Reuters) - Manners aside, getting cows to burp less can help reduce global warming. Using modern plant-breeding methods to find new diets for cows that make them belch less is a way to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, scientists said on Monday. The key is developing new varieties of food that are easier for cattle to digest...
5 Die on Virginia Farm From Deadly Methane Gas in Manure Pit RICHMOND, Va.—Deadly methane gas emanating from a dairy farm's manure pit killed five people, including four members of a Mennonite family, authorities said. Emergency workers speculate each of the victims climbed into the pit in a frantic attempt to rescue the others. "It was a domino effect with one person going in, the second person going after them," Sheriff Don Farley said.
How Farm Odors Contribute to Global Warming: New Research Happening in NYS Corning, N.Y. -- You can definitely smell it, but you can't see it. The United States Department of Agriculture has released reports stating that when you smell cow manure, you're also smelling greenhouse gas emissions....
But WAIT...
Plants revealed as methane source Scientists in Germany have discovered that ordinary plants produce significant amounts of methane, a powerful greenhouse gas which helps trap the sun's energy in the atmosphere...
New source of global warming gas found: plants German scientists have discovered a new source of methane, a greenhouse gas that is second only to carbon dioxide in its impact on climate change. The culprits are plants. They produce about 10 to 30 percent of the annual methane found in the atmosphere...
In conclusion, anything that lives, uses oxygen, poops or decays is destroying our world! Auuuuuuurrrrrggggggghhhhhhhhh! Soylent Green is people! It's people!!!
That depends on if my refrigerator's runnin' or not.
nyuk nyuk nyuk!
To counteract the cooling in Antarctica.
No question we’re in a drought cycle. It’s happened before, according to tree ring data, within the past thousand years. Unless the Hopi and Navajo were tearing around in SUV’s back then, it’s hard to see what “human global warming” has to do with it.
We are seriesly domed, now it gets darker at night and whiter at day. It is getting hugh, chulren and wimin hit hardest, powerty getting wiped out! Bush’s fault.
Obamaramadingdong to the rescue, with Hellary right behind, fixing hellcare. Developeeeing!
Idiots. Arizona’a hottest day on record (122 degrees F) occurred in June of 1990. We have not come close to that temperature since then. If it’s “warming” then why isn’t getting warmer???
I remember reading somewhere that there was a 100-year drought in the Southwest during the 1300s - the same drought that cleared out the pueblos and caused all sorts of problems for corn-growing Native Americans in that part of the world. Interestingly, in western Europe, that’s the start of the period called “The Little Ice Age.”
There must be global warming around here somewhere.
More like a release of gas from the rear end of illegals! They says as many as 1 in 10 are illegal in LA. That is a lot of fumes!
The people that lived through this winter there will be glad to know that what they thought was a rough winter was but an illusion
If you flipped a coin a thousand times, it would come up heads half the time, and tails the other half. If you were an AGW priest, you could write a story about the time it came up heads four times in a row, and that would prove "global heads-up". The same is true for global warming. There is always somewhere on earth that has data to support your agenda.
“American West Heating Nearly Twice As Fast As Rest Of World, New Analysis Shows”
I know why.
It is because when the western part of the U.S. gets close to 12 noon, the earth starts to rotate much, much, much slower, hence more sun and more hours of heat.
Just like AZ - years ago I’m told it was a place for people with TB - hot and dry. Then people from the East coast moved in, wanted their lawns and trees and now the humidity is sky high because of it ....
women and minorities hardest hit
Follow the money. First, find the biggest stream of cash flow, oil. Then, create a reason to control it, global warming. And, then invent a means of taxing it, carbon credits. Now come the second tier of hustlers, the injured. Who can argue the west isn't hot, death valley and other arid Southwest territories with the history of dust bowls. So why shouldn't the locals make a fuss and turn global warming into a cash cow for them.
So- according to recent climate data, global temps have DROPPED- so does mean that the American West has dropped at aexponentially related amount?
What humidity is that ?
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