Global squirming

[melchar]

For the love of Dog people - what does it take to get through to the masses that 'global warming' doesn't mean 90 degrees in wintertime, but that weather systems become more active?

Rainfall patterns change, you'll have tornadoes in January and storms will become more violent as it gets warmer, with worse flooding in low-lying regions. Surely THIS can be communicated in a sound bite.

Comments

[maestrodog.livejournal.com]

The problem is that the country has become such a greedy capitalistic society intent on avoiding consequences(just look at the stock markets lately and lame-duck "stimulus" package for proof!) that until someone finds a way to show that there will be some immediate gratification or advantage by taking measures to prevent the global warming, the truth is too inconvenient for people to care about. Live it up now and pay for the damages later...it's the American way, yes? We have individuals living here who spend more on just themselves in a year than the entire GDP of many countries out there.

EDIT...oh, and just wait until the Northwest Passage opens and Siberia starts producing bumper crops...I'm sure THAT will start encouraging people to take more drastic measures...ya right.

[aeto.livejournal.com]

And the big one people forget...

Global warming means, *on average* the globe is warmer. One of the potential side effects (it's unclear if this is actually the most likely scenario or not, though) is that the some of the areas of colder climate actually get *colder,* but that their drop in temperature is less than the increase in tropical areas.

Basically, it could come to be that midwest winters actually get MORE severe, but don't worry, so do the summers!

[howeird]

If the proponents had stuck with the phrase "climate change" and avoided the misnomer "global warming" I'd be more sympathetic. But noooooo, they wanted scare tactics.

[pbsjones.livejournal.com]

Peepul R Stoopid.

[dancingguy.livejournal.com]

Well, it could be because whenever anything "bad" happens, the people pushing "global warming" claim it's "caused by global warming", despite having no actual proof / justification for the claim.

Then, when the bad things don't continue, they're left with egg on their faces, trying to explain why it is that a "hot December" means that there's "global warming", but having the 2nd coldest January in the last 15 years doesn't say "anything" about whether or not there's global warming.

You, BTW, are entirely guilty of the above. Or do you have any justification for your claim that "Rainfall patterns change, you'll have tornadoes in January and storms will become more violent as it gets warmer"? Recalling that, after we were told that Katrina was so bad because of global warming, and we'd be having a lot more hurricanes because of GW, we had two years in a row of lower hurricane activity?

[melchar.livejournal.com]

Yes, I have justification. I read a huge amount, from many sources - and have been interested in the whole climate 'thing' since the 70's. [This is based on a geology unit in college, where the professor was certain that the current interglacial period we are in was ending - and we were about to go into another Ice Age. Because of that I say 'go full speed global warming' because a warmer earth is a better place for humans than an earth gripped by glaciation.]

The bad part of earth warming is drought, glacial melting and rising ocean levels. Droughts are just bad business pespecially when one lives in a desert]. The rise of only an inch or two or ocean levels will cause more flooding and deaths in low-lying countries [like the Indian sub-continent & much of Indonesia].

The good part of earth warming is expanding growing zones in regions currently gripped by permafrost. Much of Northern Europe, Eurasia & Canada stand to benefit from this.

But it is the overall trend of weather patterns I hearken to. For example, tornadoes have increased in number and severity / intensity on the Fujita scale over the last 100 years. A good chart for this can be found at = http://www.spc.noaa.gov/archive/tornadoes/ustdbmy.html