Climate Change(d)?

[Jimmy Higgins]

In the news Lake Powell is drying up. It supplies hydro power to about 5 million people.

Smaller things adding up.

So what? I’m sure Lake Mead has dried up many times before the industrial revolution.

So badly you couldn’t even tell it was there!

 

[steve_bank]

In the news Lake Powell is drying up. It supplies hydro power to about 5 million people.

Smaller things adding up.

So what? I’m sure Lake Mead has dried up many times before the industrial revolution.

There are cyclic ice ages,the Sahra has had green cycles, so what?

When you put your head in the ground like an ostrich make sure you put sun screen on your ass.

It is about the rapidity of change.

The pandemic showed how fragile our infrastructure is.

 

[T.G.G. Moogly]

In the news Lake Powell is drying up. It supplies hydro power to about 5 million people.

Smaller things adding up.

So what? I’m sure Lake Mead has dried up many times before the industrial revolution.

There are cyclic ice ages,the Sahra has had green cycles, so what?

When you put your head in the ground like an ostrich make sure you put sun screen on your ass.

It is about the rapidity of change.

The pandemic showed how fragile our infrastructure is.

I know people who don't use the ground when inserting. Saves on the sunscreen.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

In the news Lake Powell is drying up. It supplies hydro power to about 5 million people.

Smaller things adding up.

So what? I’m sure Lake Mead has dried up many times before the industrial revolution.

Earth to Shadowy Man: Lake Mead didn't exist before the industrial revolution. It was created by Hoover Dam!

 

[Loren Pechtel]

In the news Lake Powell is drying up. It supplies hydro power to about 5 million people.

Smaller things adding up.

So what? I’m sure Lake Mead has dried up many times before the industrial revolution.

There are cyclic ice ages,the Sahra has had green cycles, so what?

When you put your head in the ground like an ostrich make sure you put sun screen on your ass.

It is about the rapidity of change.

The pandemic showed how fragile our infrastructure is.

It's not just about the speed of change. Natural variation has gone from snowball (life basically limited to the hydrothermal vents) to hot enough most of the world had nothing that left fossils.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

In the news Lake Powell is drying up. It supplies hydro power to about 5 million people.

Smaller things adding up.

So what? I’m sure Lake Mead has dried up many times before the industrial revolution.

Earth to Shadowy Man: Lake Mead didn't exist before the industrial revolution. It was created by Hoover Dam!

*sigh* Subtly is lost on some people.

 

[Shadowy Man]

Earth to Shadowy Man: Lake Mead didn't exist before the industrial revolution. It was created by Hoover Dam!

*sigh* Subtly is lost on some people.

It’s ok. As long as I’ve been on this forum, I’m still relatively unknown.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

Meanwhile, Germany apparently lost at least 100 people, and maybe several hundreds in catastrophic flooding in record rains.

Meanwhile in NE Ohio, a lesser impressive change is the monsoon July we are having. Probably not breaking the absurd record we had in 2011 (I think, of over 11 inches of rain for the month), but we keep getting these high humidity, 1" rain events. So it isn't all in one shot, unlike in Germany, but this July is wetter than normal, reaching the average rainfall before the mid-point of the month, and consistent more SE US like downpours.

The temperature has been decent though. Some 90+ days, but nothing like it was last summer.

 

[thebeave]

It used to be not that many years ago that scientists warned us that we can't claim that a particular catastrophic weather event was in any way related to climate change. And rightfully so. Have these scientists now concluded otherwise? Because it seems more and more that people are willing to jump to that conclusion, and I have not yet seen that memo.

 

[Tharmas]

It used to be not that many years ago that scientists warned us that we can't claim that a particular catastrophic weather event was in any way related to climate change. And rightfully so. Have these scientists now concluded otherwise? Because it seems more and more that people are willing to jump to that conclusion, and I have not yet seen that memo.

I was wondering the same thing. So I checked around. I found thiis:

Global warming is making some extreme weather events worse.

Extreme weather events are influenced by many factors in addition to global warming. Daily and seasonal weather patterns and natural climate patterns such as El Niño or La Niña affect when and where extreme weather events take place.

For example, many studies have linked an increase in wildfire activity to global warming. In addition, the risk of a fire could depend on past forest management, natural climate variability, human activities, and other factors, in addition to human-caused climate change. Determining how much climate change contributes to extreme weather events such as wildfires continues to be studied.

So it's not an open and shut case. More extremes are predicted, and more extremes are what we're getting. That's my 2 cents.

 

[scombrid]

We have had a pretty big shift in the last 15 years in east central Florida. Climate "norms" posted by the weather service are based on 30-year averages. The average low temperature here went up 4 degrees F here when they calculated the 1990 to 2020 data. That doesn't tell the whole story though. 2010 to 2020 was very different from 1990 to 2000. Our weather in Cocoa area has for 1998 to the present been comparable to West Palm Beach/Ft. Lauderdale in the 20th century. The last time the overnight low here went below 27F was 1996. I used to grow southern strain peaches and plumbs. They haven't set fruit in years because we don't get enough chill hours. Meanwhile I am growing mangoes, pineapples, bananas, and papayas west of the northern IRL which is something you didn't do back in the 70s, 80s, 90s...

Our average low in summer has gone up 4 degrees as has the dewpoint. 72F with a dewpoint of 70F at daybreak is sticky but tolerable. A morning low of 81F with a dewpoint of 77F which is what we had today is just miserable. Try running a 10k when the wetbulb temp is that high. Our new average low of 76 is pretty GD miserable. Once the dewpoint exceeds 72 then the human body starts to struggle because evaporative cooling stops working.

 

[skepticalbip]

It used to be not that many years ago that scientists warned us that we can't claim that a particular catastrophic weather event was in any way related to climate change. And rightfully so. Have these scientists now concluded otherwise? Because it seems more and more that people are willing to jump to that conclusion, and I have not yet seen that memo.

I was wondering the same thing. So I checked around. I found thiis:

Global warming is making some extreme weather events worse.

Extreme weather events are influenced by many factors in addition to global warming. Daily and seasonal weather patterns and natural climate patterns such as El Niño or La Niña affect when and where extreme weather events take place.

For example, many studies have linked an increase in wildfire activity to global warming. In addition, the risk of a fire could depend on past forest management, natural climate variability, human activities, and other factors, in addition to human-caused climate change. Determining how much climate change contributes to extreme weather events such as wildfires continues to be studied.

So it's not an open and shut case. More extremes are predicted, and more extremes are what we're getting. That's my 2 cents.

This is an example? You linked an advocacy group's opinion, not a climate science paper.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

I was wondering the same thing. So I checked around. I found thiis:

Global warming is making some extreme weather events worse.



So it's not an open and shut case. More extremes are predicted, and more extremes are what we're getting. That's my 2 cents.

This is an example? You linked an advocacy group's opinion, not a climate science paper.

The point was one hurricane, one rain storm can't be hung on climate change. Breaking an all-time temp record by 9 degrees, record climate averages or totals over the period of a month, unprecedented flooding all happening at the same time... can. The heat dome in the Pacific NW wasn't supposed to be possible. That happens the same year Texas has an insane freezing. These are the data points that are fitting into the climate change puzzle / pattern.

Yes, a roulette wheel can land on the same number 2 or 3 times in a row. When it does it for the eighth time, there are issues!

 

[Tharmas]

I was wondering the same thing. So I checked around. I found thiis:

Global warming is making some extreme weather events worse.



So it's not an open and shut case. More extremes are predicted, and more extremes are what we're getting. That's my 2 cents.

This is an example? You linked an advocacy group's opinion, not a climate science paper.

I'm curious. Why do you say they're an advocacy group. What are they advocating?

 

[skepticalbip]

I was wondering the same thing. So I checked around. I found thiis:

Global warming is making some extreme weather events worse.



So it's not an open and shut case. More extremes are predicted, and more extremes are what we're getting. That's my 2 cents.

This is an example? You linked an advocacy group's opinion, not a climate science paper.

I'm curious. Why do you say they're an advocacy group. What are they advocating?

I say they are an advocacy group because that is what they are. They are not themselves doing any scientific research or study that I have been able to see but they do advocate for funding of the sciences and science education which I certainly agree with.

However any group of people will have opinions on various issues whether or not they have any special qualifications to support those opinions. A group advocating for funding science does not automatically transfer knowledge and understanding of a specific field of science to them. What you cited was an opinion, not a science paper by climatologists.

 

[southernhybrid]

If anyone is interested, I'm going to post a link about the European floods from the NYTimes that you all should be able to read because I haven't used up my 10 articles to share this month.

https://www.nytimes.com/live/2021/07/16/world/europe-flooding-germany?action=click&module=Spotlight&pgtype=Homepage#floods-germany-belgium-europe

“It is the intensity and the length of the events that science tells us this is a clear indication of climate change,” Ms. von der Leyen said. “It shows the urgency to act.”

Flooding is a complex phenomenon with many causes, including land development and ground conditions. While linking climate change to a single flood event requires extensive scientific analysis, climate change, which is already causing heavier rainfall in many storms, is an increasingly important part of the mix. Warmer atmosphere holds, and releases, more water, whether in the form of rain or heavy winter snowpack.

Frank-Walter Steinmeier, Germany’s president, also blamed climate change for the floods: “Only when we take action against climate change can we keep the events that we are now experiencing within limits,” he said in a televised statement from Berlin.

The impact of climate change is one of the issues that has been fiercely debated in Germany before the September elections in which the Greens party is in the running for second place, behind the conservative Christian Democrats.

“The catastrophic results of the heavy rain in the past few days are largely homemade,” said Holger Sticht, who heads the regional chapter of Friends of the Earth Germany in North Rhine-Westphalia. He blamed lawmakers and industry for building in floodplains and woodlands. “We urgently need to change course.”

It's a fairly long piece with lots of photos and detailed information as to the amount of destruction this and recent flooding have caused.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

All-time records being set. Not daily, but since we've had a thermometer measuring the temperature.

[TWEET]https://twitter.com/NWSWPC/status/1414635183068749825[/TWEET]

As a reminder, Canada set their national all-time high in the NW heat dome. And Death Valley tied it's all-time record from last year, for possibly the hottest temp recorded on Earth.

 

[skepticalbip]

.... And Death Valley tied it's all-time record from last year, for possibly the hottest temp recorded on Earth.

You are still talking weather, not climate. Climate is about LONG TERM changes. Extreme weather isn't climate. Yes, Death Valley measured a temperature of 130F recently and the news media made a big deal about it. However a Death Valley temperature of 134F was recorded in 1913, over a hundred years ago. I can only imagine how a repeat of the 1930s dust bowl (of 80 to 90 years ago) would be covered.

Yes however, long term global temperature averages have risen... that is climate. Long term global temperatures have been rising since the depths of the Little Ice Age (the coldest period of the Holocene) in the 1800s. The question for climatologists is how much of that global temperature rise is attributable to anthropogenic causes and how much is attributable to otherwise natural climate change.

 

[bilby]

.... And Death Valley tied it's all-time record from last year, for possibly the hottest temp recorded on Earth.

You are still talking weather, not climate. Climate is about LONG TERM changes. Extreme weather isn't climate. Yes, Death Valley measured a temperature of 130F recently and the news media made a big deal about it. However a Death Valley temperature of 134F was recorded in 1913, over a hundred years ago. I can only imagine how a repeat of the 1930s dust bowl (of 80 to 90 years ago) would be covered.

Yes however, long term global temperature averages have risen... that is climate. Long term global temperatures have been rising since the depths of the Little Ice Age (the coldest period of the Holocene) in the 1800s. The question for climatologists is how much of that global temperature rise is attributable to anthropogenic causes and how much is attributable to otherwise natural climate change.

And some very simple atmospheric physics, combined with the observations that humans burning fossil fuels have massively increased atmospheric Carbon Dioxide levels; And that increases in global temperature are more rapid than those caused by similar natural variations in the past, makes the conclusion that most (if not all) is due to humans, undeniable.

Models of global climate trends due to influences other than the greenhouse effect suggest that we should be seeing dramatically lower temperatures than we actually see, and some models suggest that we should be seeing further cooling relative to historical temperatures, rather than the sharp warming we actually see.

By the way, the Little Ice Age was more little than it was an ice age, and was a regional, rather than a global, phenomenon. It represented a series of brief down-ticks in European temperatures between about 1300 and 1900, and was over by the end of the C19th. It may well have been caused by, or contributed to by, the significant changes in land use due to the pandemic of the mid-1300s, as cleared arable land reverted to woodland.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

.... And Death Valley tied it's all-time record from last year, for possibly the hottest temp recorded on Earth.

You are still talking weather, not climate. Climate is about LONG TERM changes. Extreme weather isn't climate. Yes, Death Valley measured a temperature of 130F recently and the news media made a big deal about it. However a Death Valley temperature of 134F was recorded in 1913, over a hundred years ago. I can only imagine how a repeat of the 1930s dust bowl (of 80 to 90 years ago) would be covered.

Yes however, long term global temperature averages have risen... that is climate. Long term global temperatures have been rising since the depths of the Little Ice Age (the coldest period of the Holocene) in the 1800s. The question for climatologists is how much of that global temperature rise is attributable to anthropogenic causes and how much is attributable to otherwise natural climate change.

And if my post was simply about Death Valley and not about concentrated extreme events over a short duration, you’d right about me talking about weather.