Global Warming?

tombig

It's the first time in over a decade that four of five Great Lakes have frozen over! Must be all that hot air from Chicago blowin all the way to the U.P. that kept Lake Michigan from freezing.


Tombig

Tony Conner

I'Think...

> It's the first time in over a decade that four of

> five Great Lakes have frozen over! Must be all

> that hot air from Chicago blowin all the way to

> the U.P. that kept Lake Michigan from

> freezing.

>

> Tombig



...that there are some cloud covering some open water on Lake Ontario. Big parts of that lake are over 800 feet deep.

Tony Conner

I'Think...

...that there are some cloud covering some open water on Lake Ontario. Big parts of that lake are over 800 feet deep.

I've been waiting for a "global warming" article as well. I can't wait to see how they spin this winter into the theory.

Mark A. Custis

It is an easy sell

I have walked the 75 miles from my house to Canada, I really took my sleddog team, in my life time. I have lived within hearing distance of Lake Erie and the Knickle-Plate line all of my life. I swam in Lake Erie when it was dead, and I did not die. I have drunk lake Erie for all of my life.

I am just learning to move BTUs with lake Erie water.

THIS IS A NORMAL WINTER.

Mark

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Tony Conner

I Think...

...that we've got many of the same bunch who can't predict tomorrow's weather with any degree of accuracy, claiming that they've got a crystal ball that lets them see out 10 years or more on global climate change. The "great excitement" over recent (last number of years) "record high/low temps" is just so much nonsense. One average volcanic eruption releases more energy, and spews more crud into the atmosphere than most people can imagine. There was a HUGE one in the late 400s AD. It screwed up the weather, world wide, for 150 years, and was the kick-off to the Dark Ages.

We shouldn't dump crap into the air & water, and we shouldn't waste resources, but we're a LOT less in control of what happens than we normally take responsibility/credit for.

Tony Conner

So...

...how can we have a "normal winter" in the face of the doomsayers cry of "global warming"?

I would suggest that what you call a "normal winter", is normal in the frame of reference that is your lifetime. The Vikings settled Greenland, and set up sheep farms. They had "normal winters" for a couple of hundred years. Then "normal" went back to what normal REALLY was for thousands of years before that - and that normal was a LOT colder. Those that didn't bail out, starved or froze to death.

And when what the Greenland Vikings thought was normal was a global warming trend - before cars, and coal fired power plants, etc etc.

We've got people in lab coats running around waving their arms crying "The human race has triggered global warming - it's the end of the world!" These are largely the same guys who can't accurately predict tomorrow's weather. (I can't say for sure about the ones on your side of Lake Erie, but the ones on the north side missed predicting this winters biggest storm COMPLETELY - even hours before it hit.) I've got a hard time believing that these folks have any more idea about what's going on than Tarot card readers.

B. Tice

What they are saying

The icecaps melting in the Artic are sending cold water down toward the Pacific ocean resulting in the northward flow of warm Pacific water to not make it as far north as it once did resulting in a lack of warm Pacific air flowing across the US. I'm not making this up, I read it in a newspaper.

eleft_4

newspaper?

Did you ever meet anyone who writes these articles and if so what do you think?

tombig

Ocean Warming

I saw a very interesting show about deep ocean flows which convect around the globe in a multi ocean belt. They even discussed the effect on salinity change in the North Sea. These flows are changing. Global Warming? Or is it a return to what the vikings exerienced in Greenland way back?

Tombig

Tony Conner

Think About....

... the number of articles with predictions you've read over the years, and how many had any degree of accuracy.

We've been going to run out of oil every year since about 1980 to the present. Remember "Nuclear power - electricity too cheap to meter!" 15 or 20 years ago, Taiwan was so polluted, that it was going to be un-inhabitable in 10 years. That was at least 5 years ago, and the island still seems to be inhabited. It just goes on and on. You could throw darts in the dark, and be right as often.

One good volcanic eruption will release more energy, and spew more crud into the atmosphere than most people can imagine. There was dandy one in the late 400s AD that changed the climate, worldwide, for 150 years. That one was the kickoff to the Dark Ages.

tombig

Mother Earth

She can inflict more damage on herself than we can inflict on her short of global nuclear war. Whether recent weather changes are climactic or man made it doesn't change the fact that we need to reduce greenhouse gasses, seek alternative fuel sources, etc. Think green. It only makes sense. Besides St.Paddy's day is just around the corner.

Mark A. Custis

Mother Earth news

was started by a fellow Ohioan, named Jon, in Madison, OH, I hope he is enjoying his retirement in SC last I knew.

Before any additional ranting occurs, please check out your local records on Intellacast. I have a dear uncle, a glaceral geology proffessor at Syracuse University, now in his 80's, and has watched the alaskan glaceres melt for awhile (lick 60 years), and he says he is concerned, but not allarmed.

I went across the lake at the islands, but would not risk my dogs.

Mark

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Steve Ebels

RE: global warming

I don't know what the long term trend will be (and neither, it seems do the weather guys) but it has been one cold mother of a winter. I just looked up temp averages for Falmouth MI on accuweather.com and confirmed what I already knew. January averaged 2.3* below normal. February avg 6.8* below normal and so far in March we are 10.2* below. Peoples heating bills look like house payments around here.

Tony Conner

You Can't Really Effectively Measure...

...climate change in terms of a human lifespan. The times involved are just too great in comparison. Even looking back at all of the recorded information in North America is really only "recent events". There was one very small article in the local paper earlier this year about the records kept by fur trading posts in the early 1700s. The temps then, were pretty much what they are now. It wasn't really in keeping with the current popular thinking on "global warming", so it was buried on about page 10.

Gavin Pitchford

When chunks of ice are breaking off Antarctica

That are the size of England, then global warming is a FACT.
Global sea rise is a FACT. Georges Bank - (formerly) the richest fish grounds in the world used to be an island - and is now well under water. The rate of ice melt in the arctic is ACCELERATING.

Wake up and smell the roses. For years, the experts have been saying the weather will be weird. I call no snow for the Iditerod Sled Race in Alaska weird. This year - as others have pointed out - is a weird one based on ocean currents pushing weather into weird places. No snow on the west coast or in the north - and a bumper crop in the east.

And BTW, Lake Ontario did not freeze over - or anywhere close. There were some Bays and harbors that did - but not the lake as a whole. Can't comment on the others.

Tony Conner

The Earth..

...has heated up and cooled down repeatedly before this. Ice ages have come, then retreated. Who knows why? How many times have big chunks of Antarctica broken off, prior to satellite photo technology? Nobody knows. It could be something that happens every couple of hundred years, like clockwork.

Predictions and calculations are always based on "if present trends continue". Present trends almost never continue, for a variety of reasons that are usually impossible to predict. There was a calculation done about 10 years ago that indicated that, "If present trends continue", within 20 years every other person on the face of the earth would be an Elvis impersonator. Obviously, at least around here, for whatever reason, the trend did NOT continue.

"All the experts", as reported in the media, are wrong at least as often as not. Global warming may be occuring, but if it is, I suggest anything it has to do with what has been calculated by "the experts" is purely coincidental. The same arm of science that can't accurately predict tomorrow's weather, is telling me, beyond any doubt, what the weather will be like in 10 years. Sorry, but I'm having a little trouble with that one.

Jamie Hall

Brrrr...

It has been a cold winter. Snowy, too -- at least here in New England. But a word about global warming, if I may, and first, a little note: I was one of the first to construct a computer model for this type of thing, and I have devoted a lot of thought to it (it was my Ph.D. dissertation in Physical Geology).

The basic problem, guys, is the name: global warming. Very misleading. But think of it in terms of steam heat, instead. Suppose you have a steam heating system with a main of a certain diameter, and a certain size boiler at one end, and all the radiation at the other. (Yeah, I know, lousy design. Can't have everything). The steam will move through that main at a certain speed. Now suppose you make the boiler bigger, and the radiation bigger, but keep the main the same size. The steam moves faster, and maybe you get hammer and other bad stuff -- but the temperature doesn't change much. That's the essence of global warming: you have a bigger boiler (more heat coming in in the tropics) and a bigger radiator (more heat going out at the poles) and a lot faster movement in between -- which is what we call weather. Prediction? Not much warmer, but more violent and extreme weather.

That help any?

Mark A. Custis

Yes, it is/was

a great help to me. I hoped I was not going to be hanged for pre-Montreal Potocall activity.

Mark

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tombig

I started a post............

> a great help to me. I hoped I was not going to

> be hanged for pre-Montreal Potocall

> activity.

>

> Mark

>

> _A

> HREF="http://www.heatinghelp.com/getListed.cfm?id=

> 268&Step=30"_To Learn More About This Contractor,

> Click Here to Visit Their Ad in "Find A

> Contractor"_/A_

tombig

I started a post............

and it started the whole Wall talking.......(Sorry... think Bee Gees song) First, about the great lakes freezing over...I was wrong and so was the story accompanying that downloaded pic. Next, whether it's climactic changes or greenhouse gases driving our weather patterns, we, as locally and globally concerned humans need to address issues that affect our environment.
We, as HVAC contractors, recover refrigerant, dispose of mercury thermostats correctly, sell high efficient, enviromentally 'friendlier' equipment hopefully not just to make more money.
Whether or not global warming is really occuring is moot. We know there are many ways to "be green" and we should be leading the way by example as well as spreading the word. Recent natural gas and fuel oil price hikes
(don't get me started on industry induced or non-existent shortages driving up prices) should be enough for us to seriously explore solar, wind, and other options for our customers.
I visit this site becouse I really believe that some of the smartest in the business post here. A couple days with some of them at WSII confirmed my belief.
I welcomed the cold winter before it even got here. When I told a few people that I wanted a long cold winter back in October they looked at me like I was nuts. In Chicagoland we haven't had a decent frost line in years. What we have had is Asian beetles infesting our trees. A loss of life to west nile virus from mosquitoes surpassed only by temperate Louisiana. Many bird species were decimated.
I'm not really a 'tree hugger' but I am a common sensical (is that a word?) human being trying to sort through the data.
Thanks for listening and posting. Sorry for being so long winded.

Tom Goebig

Mark A. Custis

Tom:

No one picked up on my biomass thermal generator.

I could not do this in the late sixties when I chopped wood to stay warm. Saw a bit of your fair city in '68.

Now I can heat my home, make my own cook stove gas and sispose of all the "yard waste" the EPA no longer allows in the land fill, for about the cost of a new boiler. I can save enough on heating and cooking fuel to buy a "Bob Cat" to stir the compost and enough photo cells to do lighting, controls and computers.

When I get the a/c power together I'll give you a call.

It will get together only because it has to get together.

I am druelling to go with Alan and see the biodeisal stuff.

Ya gotta love this place.

Mark

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Mike T., Swampeast MO

Antarctic Ice

The best, MOST BALANCED theory I have read regarding the Antarctic ice sheet is that it is in continual motion.

As the ice builds up (remember much of Antarctica is a desert so this takes a LONG time), the speed of motion increases and larger and larger hunks of ice are pushed into the ocean. This is a NATURAL process. As more "trapped" fresh water melts, the ocean level rises and cools in temperature. This affects ocean currents which in turn affects global weather--ALL whether or not human beings exist and regardless of what they do.

I'm NOT saying that we should not use our resources wisely nor that we should trash our playground with all manner of trash. I AM saying though that we should be MUCH less arrogant regarding our importance to the universe.

The more we learn about the history of our planet the more it seems that catastrophe is the true driving force for improvement. This is NOT a defeatist attitude--merely a realistic one.