Ricochet is the best place on the internet to discuss the issues of the day, either through commenting on posts or writing your own for our active and dynamic community in a fully moderated environment. In addition, the Ricochet Audio Network offers over 50 original podcasts with new episodes released every day.
Ice Free Montana
For a century scientists have predicted the Montana Glaciers would melt, and for all this time the stubborn glaciers have refused to comply:
If your scientific theory can not make accurate predictions in the real world… Is your theory wrong?
Published in Environment
Yes.
Those bastards!
What do you expect? They’re cold-hearted.
Yes
Question: If Big Brother tells you that the glaciers are going to melt and they don’t, is he wrong?
Answer: No
(Inspired by the 1984 discussion going on over here)
It is all that warm moist air from the arctic that is dumping snow and growing those glaciers.
There’s nothing global warming can’t do.
Ain’t that the truth!
Man made climate change is something that bothers me when government seeks to collect taxes and impose restrictions under this heading. However, I believe the sun is getting hotter and is affecting our climate in major ways (maybe even within our solar system). Here in NW Fl., we had a really nice spring, only to be rapidly followed by extreme heat (my car registered 100F ) and drought – not a drop of rain or cloud cover for weeks. The above video was recorded in March. If you go to the RSOE.com site, you’ll see a different story. A sudden increase in extreme heat and drought all over the world, and it is affecting people, crops, cattle, everything. Something is going on, and its no joke.
I recently read something, and cannot remember where! The sun is going through a change, either not enough solar flares or too many, and it affects our weather patterns. It is not man made, it is just the way our solar system works and has done for millions upon millions of years. Thus the ice ages vs planet warming. Man adapts.
The sun has an 11 year sun spot cycle. Right now, we’re at a solar minimum with fewest sun spots observed in centuries.
Since the Maunder Minimum kicked off the Little Ice Age?
Or man doesn’t.
The coincidence of Earth and the habitable zone around our sun is going to expire long before the end of the Earth (or the solar system, or whatever). The timescales involved are so massive and it will be some large, natural climate swing in one direction or the other or a large natural extinction event that gets us. Man has no real control over global climate…couldn’t even if he wanted to.
That’s my thought as well. I fully support doing what we can to control pollution. I don’t know who wants a polluted world. And I don’t like waste of any kind either. But if the climate changes in a dramatic way and we can no longer adapt, then we die. As did many life forms before us. And that’s that.
So my philosophy is: Live responsibly, adapt as needed, and try to appreciate the time we have.
A “sudden increase” relative to what? I am (rightfully) suspicious of any such claims and data.
An interesting case: A decade and a half ago there were claims that the number of hurricanes (extreme storms) was on the rise so I started looking through the annual hurricane data on the NOAA site and, sure enough, the number of named storms was generally trending up rather dramatically. But when the data was examined a little closer it was clear that they were now naming everything: hurricanes, tropical storms, tropical depressions, sub-tropical depressions, micro-tropical depressions, and any occurrence of more than three raindrops on the windscreen of my uncle’s boat. (OK, I made the last couple up.) Additionally, many of the now named storms began and ended out in the middle of the ocean never approaching any substantial land mass and would probably never have been noticed (or named) over major parts of the historical record.
So, with all due respect, I am always suspicious of any scary claims and would demand real raw data to be available for scrutiny. In most cases, at least with respect to “climate” (i.e. a very large, almost incomprehensible topic), it is entirely likely that nothing relevant is going on…and while not funny, much of this hubbub really is a joke.
Since at least the Dalton Minimum, 200 years ago.
I hear you and I’m skeptical too – so I may need to do a post to list what I found and then people can take it as they want to. The raw data is one thing but the scale of human suffering due to rapid climate change is another and good enough for me as evidence of a shift in climatic conditions, even if they’ve happened before throughout millennia . The difference is the amount of people living on the earth is a lot more than say thousands of years ago, when conditions may have been similar.
But someone promised us we could be like God, or at least our own little gods.
More, people have concentrated in the most desirable yet vulnerable places. This argues for realistic risk mitigation, along modern lines of the centuries old Dutch response.
Less solar magnetic activity leads to a weaker magnetic field around earth that lets in more cosmic rays, which makes more ions that makes more clouds and that cools the planet. The sun can have a lot of effects, even though its brightness doesn’t vary by much.
Deaths due to weather have dropped by 95% in the last 100 years. Yes, humans are nearly immune to bad weather. Yeah prosperity!!!!!!
California is going to a lot of effort and expense to reduce their carbon emissions, but most of the rest of the country isn’t taking such extreme measures, and most of the rest of the world isn’t cutting emissions, either. So what do California’s efforts amount to? Nothing.
There is no solution for warming proposed that is fiscally and politically feasible that will do a darn thing according to the government climate scientists’ own models.
On the bright side, the climate models used by government climate scientists have never been proven to be accurate, and so far the acceleration of warming predicted hasn’t materialized, so there’s a good chance we won’t end up being cooked after all.
Ah, but the storms are getting more and more devastating – more money is lost every decade to hurricanes.
Of course every decade we replace old beachfront houses from the ’60s with glass-fronted multi-million dollar hotels whose glass faces stare straight into the ocean….
The graph above is difficult to read. The Y-axis charts the amount of squat over time, while the X-axis shows the diddly being done to combat climate change. The diddly-squat points represent the effects of our efforts to date.
Yep. Construction costs have risen dramatically over the years. Why, even house trailer costs are higher!!
Yes, the overall population of beach front counties is much higher than 50 years ago as well… meaning these larger more fragile and more expensive homes are being damaged in far greater numbers.
Sorry, that’s CO2 emissions globally over the last 10 years.
Weather Network – Snow accumulation on the first day of summer
While not in Montana – a good addition of snow this late in the year maybe good news for the Colombia Ice Sheet.