Strongest El Niño since 1997 may trigger soaking winter storms

Ice Age Now ^ | 12AUG2015 | Robert Felix

[laplata]

Thanks, outofsalt.

[laplata]

Good point.

I think they were saying that it is worse than need be because of poor management.

[Parley Baer]

Yes he does.

[tet68]

Heavy rain....global warming.

No rain......global warming.

[HereInTheHeartland]

Droughts are always broken by above normal rains and wild weather.
One thing is certain; there is a 100% chance the wackos will blame the inevitable flooding and damage on climate change.

[Jack Hydrazine]

But, but, but the climate is ALWAYS changing for better or worse. When did the Leftists determine it was a static system?

[laplata]

Do you know when he puts it out?

Thanks.

[dragnet2]

I wasn’t really referring to heat but rain.

My point was anyone alleging rain is July in the LA/OC/SFV/SD area So.Cal is not unusual, has not a clue what the **** they’re talking about.

[shotgun]

They keep claiming drought here in eastern Washington too. However I always come back with the fact that before they built all of the dams and irrigation projects in the 30’s and 40’s that eastern Washington was a flipping desert with annual rainfalls of less than 8 inches.

It’s only a drought now because of the reliance of irrigation water to agricultural industry and to the communities that sprung up out here to support them.

When I first came to Eastern Washington in the mid 70’s it was nothing but sage brush and sand as far you could see with a smattering of orchards and hay fields. Now everywhere you look between the cities and towns its orchards, row crops, and hay fields. Even the old relief maps showed this region as brown but today that brown has turned mostly to green.

[Parley Baer]

No I do not. I just watch the Saturday update every week.

[commish]

The most the lawns look horrible, brown, dried out and lunar-like.

This right here will be a key piece come this winter if the rains are higher than normal. The drought has left hillsides all over the state barren and short of undergrowth. Prolonged heavy rains will lead to epic landslides when they finally come.

[justa-hairyape]

Energy removed equals energy generated plus conversion loss. As long as the wind farms are small and spread out it should not be too significant. The large wind farms however can affect climate change regionally. The wind is blowing for a reason. Physics is trying to create equilibrium.

[justa-hairyape]

Should add that the concept of wind farms affecting climate change is impossible for a progressive to grasp. They simply do not have the mental capacity.

[justa-hairyape]

Yep. That is factual correlation. Also evidence that large El Nino events can occur in the early ice age years.

[A CA Guy]

And I would think the FBI at least giving the impression of Hillary Clinton being investigated for crimes against the people would be another sure sign of hell freezing over.

[justa-hairyape]

Well, we did try to prosecute Bill Clinton right after the big El Nino in 98. There is your proof. Just like high levels of CO2 cause warming, prosecuting a Clinton causes warming. At least until one of the Clinton actually swims with the fishes and discovers how cold the polar and deep oceans are.

[Smokin' Joe]

Physics is trying to create equilibrium.

It will, but in doing so, will that mean altered wind patterns and circulation patterns?

Almost surely (path of least resistance) it will, whether that means changes in air currents at different altitudes to compensate, or shifting of the wind patterns geographically (provided surface features don't interfere).

Any shift in circulation pattern could conceivably shift moisture uptake, storm development, and severity of weather phenomena in localized settings, if not on a larger scale. (The largest wind farms will be where the 'best' wind is.)

The question is one of what will cause a shift significant enough to create an effect severe enough (or with cumulative effect) that could cause problems, not for sunbelt coastal real estate developers, but for the human population in general.

For instance, North Dakota produces the following percentages of US agricultural production:

Spring wheat 50%

Durum 56%

Barley 35%

Sunflowers 43%

Dry edible beans 34%

Pinto beans 56%

Flaxseed 95%

Canola 90%

Honey 24%

We're also the nation's second largest oil producer, something complicated by foul weather.

Where I live, shifting incoming air masses 100 miles could have a serious effect on precipitation, and with a continental climate (about as far as you can get from the ocean), moving a low pressure system north could mean a significant increase in precipitation: Moving a high pressure system south could drop winter temps by 20 degrees or more. Considering the amount of food grown in the North Dakota, plus the rest of the region, that just might affect overall food supplies, and unusually heavy snowfall here is a prerequisite for flooding in the Missouri and Mississippi River basins--those agricultural effects could span the continent as crops down river are flooded out, too.

If there is sufficient shift of precipitation northward, it is conceivable that it could be sufficient to raise albedo enough to retard thawing in the spring (in a severe year now, the snow doesn't melt in shaded areas until June), which could be the beginning of the next ice age.

Snow accumulation on the Canadian Shield will make the next continental ice sheet, just like the last one.

We're on the front lines of the next ice age--where I am sitting was once under 2km of ice.

I'm not being alarmist here, but it appears that due to the politically correct nature of wind farms and solar projects, potential climatic effects are being ignored, just as their effects on wildlife.

(That discrepancy was made obvious when the US tried to prosecute seven oil companies over 28 dead birds found floating in reserve and waste water containment pits in the spring a few years back, but the windmills and solar arrays get a pass for shredded/roasted protected/endangered species and other wildlife.

I think it is possible that if the wind farms are extensive enough, they will pull enough energy from the system or alter circulation patterns enough that the effect they have on climate could far outstrip any greenhouse effect from human generated CO2. But that won't generate grants for research in the current iteration of green mania.

[justa-hairyape]

Primarily what causes the ice age is less energetic output from the sun that weakens the energy in the Earth's atmosphere. So the equatorial trade winds weaken and the equatorial oceanic currents weaken. Exactly what happens during El Nino. So heat from sun leaves the ocean water as water vapor instead of flowing west and eventually turning poleward or deeper. So polar ocean areas cool and ice expands. Which is what is happening now.

With regards to wind turbines, yes they do the same thing on micro scales. And the effects are less global in scope. If a high pressure system cannot equalize with a low pressure system on the other side of a wind turbine farm, the pressure differential will remain higher. Just like the differential between equatorial waters and polar waters during an El Nino. Unfortunately it will take progressives 10 to 20 years to comprehend this. That is why I currently recommend underground arks.

[Smokin' Joe]

With regards to wind turbines, yes they do the same thing on micro scales. And the effects are less global in scope.

Here's the rub. If that energy conversion (kinetic to mechanical to electricity and heat) removes energy from the air circulation system, or impedes normal air mass mixing processes, certainly on a localized scale that could change mixing patterns leading to the very same more severe storm events blamed on "Global Warming" and coal-fired power plants.

If the 'solution' to the problem is more windmills, at what point will enough energy be removed from the system to cause climate change.

I will grant, readily, that the entire works is driven by solar activity and upper atmospheric albedo (energy-energy reflected) overall. But that system is in balance, one tipped up and down on roughly a 33 year solar cycle. So removing energy from the system could precipitate a decline in mixing energy and a cold cycle just a little sooner, and a warming cycle onset delayed by a little when solar activity returns to previous levels.

As history demonstrates, humans prosper in the warmer cycles and are generally given to starvation, famine, disease, political upheaval, and all the nastier things we had well before nuclear weapons.

So, the question is one of how much energy removed from the system will have a significant effect on how soon TEOTWAWKI happens, provided that the cold cycle is exacerbated at all.

I'm not a worry wart, but humans are overdue for a massive session of 'burning the books' and picking through the ashes.

[justa-hairyape]

Oh this civilization is about to collapse. They all eventually do. Just the proliferation of nukes alone will eventually doom civilization. It takes a village to destroy a village. Concerning wind turbines, yes they can theoretically add to the climate change potential globally. When it would be significant is debateable. There are definite significant regional effects. Solar cells actually affect the albedo of the planets surface and will add energy to the system. Wind turbines take energy out of the atmosphere and transfer it to other areas. Nuclear power plants generate immense heat that must be controlled. So all the renewables have climate change affects. The suns energy output however is most significant. The less significant effects could be easily determined in models and simulation chambers. But that would be real science.