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updated List of Ping lists vol.III(Get Your Fresh Hot Pings Here!)
Posted on 04/04/2006 1:33:44 PM PDT by Mikey_1962
There are ominous signs that the Earth's weather patterns have begun to change dramatically and that these changes may portend a drastic decline in food production -- with serious political implications for just about every nation on Earth. The drop in food output could begin quite soon, perhaps only 10 years from now. The regions destined to feel its impact are the great wheat-producing lands of Canada and the U.S.S.R. in the North, along with a number of marginally self-sufficient tropical areas -- parts ofIndia,Pakistan, Bangladesh, Indochina and Indonesia -- where the growing season is dependent upon the rains brought by the monsoon. The evidence in support of these predictions has now begun to accumulate so massively that meteorologists are hard-pressed to keep up with it. In England, farmers have seen their growing season decline by about two weeks since 1950, with a resultant overall loss in grain production estimated at up to 100,000 tons annually. During the same time, the average temperature around the equator has risen by a fraction of a degree -- a fraction that in some areas can mean drought and desolation. Last April, in the most devastating outbreak of tornadoes ever recorded, 148 twisters killed more than 300 people and caused half a billion dollars' worth of damage in 13 U.S. states.
(Excerpt) Read more at washtimes.com ...
Absolutely!
I recall reading some leftist turd's comment that the cooling effect was caused by global warming. Apparently that is the "missing link" in the evolutionary chain of scare tactics from the 60s-70s to now...
Escalade? Yuck. F150 4x4 here. I need it to get out of the cul de sac when we get 2 feet or more of snow. The plow can't get into the cul de sac. As for the pumpkin patch, we salvaged one good pumpkin and made a huge pan of pumpkin custard. This year's pumpkin patch will be dedicated to smaller, sweeter varieties.
Failing ocean current raises fears of mini ice age
18:00 30 November 2005
NewScientist.com news service
Fred Pearce
The ocean current that gives western Europe its relatively balmy climate is stuttering, raising fears that it might fail entirely and plunge the continent into a mini ice age.
The dramatic finding comes from a study of ocean circulation in the North Atlantic, which found a 30% reduction in the warm currents that carry water north from the Gulf Stream.
The slow-down, which has long been predicted as a possible consequence of global warming, will give renewed urgency to intergovernmental talks in Montreal, Canada, this week on a successor to the Kyoto Protocol.
What do you think about these dramatic findings?
Discuss this story >> Harry Bryden at the National Oceanography Centre in Southampton, UK, whose group carried out the analysis, says he is not yet sure if the change is temporary or signals a long-term trend. "We don’t want to say the circulation will shut down," he told New Scientist. "But we are nervous about our findings. They have come as quite a surprise."
No one-off
The North Atlantic is dominated by the Gulf Stream – currents that bring warm water north from the tropics. At around 40° north – the latitude of Portugal and New York – the current divides. Some water heads southwards in a surface current known as the subtropical gyre, while the rest continues north, leading to warming winds that raise European temperatures by 5°C to 10°C.
But when Bryden’s team measured north-south heat flow last year, using a set of instruments strung across the Atlantic from the Canary Islands to the Bahamas, they found that the division of the waters appeared to have changed since previous surveys in 1957, 1981 and 1992. From the amount of water in the subtropical gyre and the flow southwards at depth, they calculate that the quantity of warm water flowing north had fallen by around 30%.
When Bryden added previously unanalysed data – collected in the same region by the US government’s National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration – he found a similar pattern. This suggests that his 2004 measurements are not a one-off, and that most of the slow-down happened between 1992 and 1998.
The changes are too big to be explained by chance, co-author Stuart Cunningham told New Scientist from a research ship off the Canary Islands, where he is collecting more data. "We think the findings are robust."
Hot and cold
But Richard Wood, chief oceanographer at the UK Met Office’s Hadley Centre for climate research in Exeter, says the Southampton team's findings leave a lot unexplained. The changes are so big they should have cut oceanic heating of Europe by about one-fifth – enough to cool the British Isles by 1°C and Scandinavia by 2°C. "We haven’t seen it yet," he points out.
Though unseasonably cold weather last month briefly blanketed parts of the UK in snow, average European temperatures have been rising, Wood says. Measurements of surface temperatures in the North Atlantic indicate a strong warming trend during the 1990s, which seems now to have halted.
Bryden speculates that the warming may have been part of a global temperature increase brought about by man-made greenhouse warming, and that this is now being counteracted by a decrease in the northward flow of warm water.
After warming Europe, this flow comes to a halt in the waters off Greenland, sinks to the ocean floor and returns south. The water arriving from the south is already more saline and so more dense than Arctic seas, and is made more so as ice forms.
Predicted shutdown
But Bryden’s study has revealed that while one area of sinking water, on the Canadian side of Greenland, still seems to be functioning as normal, a second area on the European side has partially shut down and is sending only half as much deep water south as before. The two southward flows can be distinguished because they travel at different depths.
Nobody is clear on what has gone wrong. Suggestions for blame include the melting of sea ice or increased flow from Siberian rivers into the Arctic. Both would load fresh water into the surface ocean, making it less dense and so preventing it from sinking, which in turn would slow the flow of tropical water from the south. And either could be triggered by man-made climate change. Some climate models predict that global warming could lead to such a shutdown later this century.
The last shutdown, which prompted a temperature drop of 5°C to 10°C in western Europe, was probably at the end of the last ice age, 12,000 years ago. There may also have been a slowing of Atlantic circulation during the Little Ice Age, which lasted sporadically from 1300 to about 1850 and created temperatures low enough to freeze the River Thames in London.
Journal reference: Nature (vol 438, p 655).
The earth is running out of food and everybody's going to starve...no wait, there's TOO MUCH food and we are all getting obese!
The earth is running out of fuel and we are all going to be riding bicycles...no wait, I am still stuck in bumper to bumper traffic getting to work each day and everybody's still buying SUVs!
All the jobs have gone overseas and there is nobody in America who is still working...no wait, unemployment is still under 5% and I have to wait in long lines at the supermarket because they are understaffed and can't hire people fast enough.
Nobody in America has any discretionary income, it's the worst economy ever and it's all George Bush's fault...no wait, I can't find a parking space at the mall because everybody's shopping and I can't get a table at Outback on a Friday night without waiting two hours.
Nobody in America can get health care because big bad George Bush won't socialize it...no wait, my son had to go to the emergency room and had to wait four hours because there were about 100 welfare recipients and illegal immigrants with headaches that were there because they know they have to be waited on and don't have to pay a dime. Meanwhile, my aunt can't get an operation for five more weeks because all these people are coming down from Canada - where they have socialized health care - because they'd have to wait five years up there.
It says, "vote Democrat!"
http://www.breitbart.com/news/2006/04/04/060404150343.0ufe6r2g.html
Experts believe the latest record hurricane season was part of a cycle where periods of relative calm alternate with decades of intense activity. Some scientists also believe global warming plays a crucial role by further increasing the temperature of warm ocean waters that provide fuel to the hurricanes. But the Colorado State University study played down the theory. "No credible observational evidence is available or likely will be available in the next few decades which will directly associate global surface temperature change to changes in global frequency and intensity," it said.
Adapting to your conditions. I'll be looking at a Super Crew Cab this summer.
Mine is a Super Cab with the split rear doors. It can seat 6 if necessary and doesn't eat any bed length. The bed is topped with a SnugTop shell color matched to the paint on the truck. I just had U-Haul add a class III hitch. The good news is that it still fits inside my garage.
Rights, farms, environment ping.
Let me know if you wish to be added or removed from this list.
I don't get offended if you want to be removed.
updated List of Ping lists vol.III(Get Your Fresh Hot Pings Here!)
BTTT
Hillarious, isn't it?
Fire, or Ice, or Flood, next time the World ends.
I just turned the heat back on... wish these yahoos would get their stories straight.
Was an imminent Ice Age predicted in the '70's? No
From the latter:
"The state of the science at the time (say, the mid 1970's), based on reading the papers is, in summary: "...we do not have a good quantitative understanding of our climate machine and what determines its course. Without the fundamental understanding, it does not seem possible to predict climate..." (which is taken directly from NAS, 1975). In a bit more detail, people were aware of various forcing mechanisms - the ice age cycle; CO2 warming; aerosol cooling - but didn't know which would be dominant in the near future. By the end of the 1970's, though, it had become clear that CO2 warming would probably be dominant; that conclusion has subsequently strengthened."
I bolded the part about the NAS report, because that's the same report that was mentioned in the Newsweek article.
That's because there was no money to made in doing so.
In fact, it's because climate models available at that time were insufficient to evaluate the Earth's climate state.
Here is NASA's reply to global warming or cooling: insfficient data.
URL:
http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2000/ast20oct_1.htm
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