Can you say global warming?
Lewis DiuguidStep outside and feel the balmy warmth.
That’s not normal. As we approach winter, temperatures are threatening to reach a record high today of 70 degrees in Kansas City.
Can you say global warming? Meanwhile Northern California got hammered over the weekend with a powerful downpour with accompanying strong winds.
It’s the third storm system to hit the area in less than a week. Some parts got up to an inch of rain per hour.
Can you say global warming? And there is the ongoing problem of the drought gripping the bread basket of the United States.
The human-fed climate-change condition is melting polar ice caps, raising ocean levels, swamping beaches, putting more water vapor in the air and causing weather conditions overall to be more extreme.
Some are taking the fear-generating conditions too far, pointing to the Mayan calendar, which supposedly foretells the end of time on Dec. 21. Certainly global warming and the acceleration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere are concerns.
But the deadline to act to reverse the damage is likely further off than a couple of weeks. Congress President Barack Obama can’t even figure out a solution to the fiscal cliff before then.
Global warming, greenhouse gases, more Superstorm Sandys — they’ll just have to wait.
Mark Robertson
5 months, 3 weeks agoTotal nonsense. The claim that mankind causes harmful global warming is one of the greatest hoaxes ever perpetrated on society. The arctic was actually warmer in the 1930s. The global warming(Now often called climate change because the earth has actually been cooling since about 1996.)movement is about power, control and cash. As many have said, the new red is green. Thank you. Mark Robertson
Mark Hastert
5 months, 3 weeks ago“Total nonsense.”
Yeah, like gravity, germs, bacteria, the age of the earth. If they can’t see it it doesn’t exist.
Science is so annoying.
Matt Henry
5 months, 3 weeks agoOn October 6th in Kansas City the high temperature was 47f, 25 degrees below the historical average temp of 72f. The low was 38f, 14 below the historical average of 52f. The record high was set in 1963 at 95f, the record low of 31f in 1991. Why didn’t you write this column on October 6th?
Two days later (October 8th) the record high of 91 was set in 1928. In October! In 2012 it was 64f, 7f less than normal. If only Lewis had been around in 1928 to tell them that they should be panicking.
On the 17th of October the temp was 68f, exactly matching the historical average. The low showed some extreme behavior; it was 53f, 4 degrees higher than the historical average. The historical highs and lows are 88f and 25f, both set in those super-high carbon years of 1950 and 1976. I think it was ‘76 when Newsweek ran the cover story warning us of the upcoming ice age. Why didn’t you write this column on October 17th? Isn’t extreme normal something to worry about? Is it too hard to freak people out when the temperature is exactly right or colder than normal?
Credibility, indeed.
George Hunsucker
Northland
5 months, 3 weeks agoBoo…. the global warming gooblins are out…
Steven Fetter
66223
5 months, 3 weeks agoSo, for the record, we are back to “global warming” and not “extreme climate change”? Perhaps we should just refer to this as “that which will not be named”.
Again, and for the record, there have been fewer hurricanes and tornadoes than average over the past 10 years.
Superstorm Sandy was not even a hurricane, merely a larger than normal storm that needed a convergence of a strong cold front and high tides to do its damage.
According to the Huffington Post, the build up of the Antarctic cap is not statistically significant and mainly caused by wind.
The Arctic ice cap’s brief return to near historical levels last winter was said to be influenced by wind conditions.
Perhaps we are in a global wind event? I suggest we coordinate a world wide movement of people moving against the Earth’s rotation in order to slow down wind currents and try to return to normal levels.
Mark Hastert
5 months, 3 weeks agoDon’t confuse climate change with weather.It’s a global long term trend. It’s measurable, it’s scientifically supported. 170+ years of industrial pollution the the exhausts of 1 billion+ cars & trucks can’t be dismissed with simple minded platitudes. The best scientific consensus available points to this as at least being exacerbated by human activity. Until there is convincing consensus to the contrary we need to take mitigating action. One by one even the paid skeptics have changed their thinking.
JR Beillenhouser
5 months, 3 weeks agohttp://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2217286/Global-warming-stopped-16-years-ago-reveals-Met-Office-report-quietly-released—chart-prove-it.html
This is all that needs to be posted. Mark - please dispute this.
William R. Nelson
5 months, 3 weeks agoI can say it, but can anyone define it - man made or otherwise?
Or more to the point, can anyone propose a pragmatic solution that a species of hairless, bi-pedal primates with 1600 cc brain can effectively implement on a planetary scale??
The idea that mankind can affect such a drastic climate change (for good or ill) on a big blue rock whirling through the solar system veers dangerously close to ‘hubris’ territory.
Based upon ice core sample taken around the world during the previous 50 years, we do know that our planet has been much warmer in millennium past.
No SUVs or nasty coal power plants were required. But there appears to be plenty of hubris to go around.
Phil Cardarella
5 months, 3 weeks agoLet us assume that climate change is a mirage. Let us assume that human activity in burning fossil fuels has nothing to do with that mirage. God is in his heaven and all is right with the world.
And, the downside to conserving fossil resources and switching our energy sources as much as possible to renewable sources is…?
Yes, it will require some economic shifts — but a consistant policy will minimize that. For example, gas & deisal are $6/gal in France — but cars comparable to a Chevy Malibu get 50+ MPG and travel easily at 100 MPH over roads paid for by those taxes. This is not because the French or Germans ar smarter than us. It is because their policies are. The high taxes on fuel forced higher milage standards. Now, that would be impossible in the US — the high taxes, not the high standards — but we can reward good capitalist behavior with intelligent tax policy.
There are some things that it may not be possible to do without fossil fuels — jet planes spring to mind. Perhaps it would make sense to conserve the earth’s supply of a limited fuel for those uses in which it cannot be replaced. Use renewable for all we can. Conserve in every reasonable way.
None of this is brain surgery or rocket science — something that we bi-peds already do quite well, thank you. It is merely the extension of the lessons our ancestors had to learn: Don’t over-hunt or over-fish or over-farm. conserve and protect your environment. Waste not, want not.
And, if the climatologists are right, we shall have done the right thing.
William R. Nelson
5 months, 3 weeks agoYour assumption being that govt. intervention is somehow wise, magnanimous and beneficial for all the children and resources it cares for, which is simply not always the case.
Being good stewards of resources is common sense and the responsibility of citizens to voluntarily undertake. It’s not the same as govt. regulation via taxation or market manipulation - which frequently results in SNAFU.
JR Beillenhouser
5 months, 3 weeks agoPhil - your argument is flawed.
It is illogical and a waste of time and money to throw money at non issues. If global warming is a problem and man is affecting it, and we can actually make a difference, then let’s do something about it. However, there are legitimate problems that are certain. Logic dictates that that is where we should put our resources. It makes no sense to throw money at something that may not be an issue to begin with and waste the opportunity of fixing known problems.