I like how this picture clearly showing the country being warmer this winter was completely ignored. But, but... it snowed in Houston and we're getting a cold front!!!!11
Please Oh Please Liberals, save the planet! You're the planet's only hope. What would it do without you?
What most people fail to understand about "global warming" is that it is not linear, meaning constantly getting warmer. There are colder years and warmer years, but the overall trend of the last 50 years has been one of global warmth. However, the earth can only take so much warming before the trends reverse. Higher levels of CO2 (mainly human-caused) led to our current warming but plants/trees need CO2 to grow. More CO2= more plant growth AND increased photosynthesis of foraminifera. This will help lower global temperatures. Increased SO2 also helps cool the planet because it reflects much of the sun's solar rays, although it is more regional in scale. Dusiter lands contribute to cooling because the dust contains nutrients which go into the oceans and cause carbon pumps. So, don't take one year as an example that things are "bad." It simply goes in cycles. Nature has a way of balancing things out.
If you take this out thousands of years to the last ice age, hasn't the earth been getting warmer and warmer even though there have been some cool periods? I went on an Alaskan cruise in September and my ship went into Glacier Bay National Park. There, the park ranger showed how the glaciers retreated at a record rate before the industrial revolution. Most glaciers there are still retreating but not as much as they did during that historic glacial retreat and still other are actually expanding right now. I think the expansion is more due to greater snowfall amounts on the mountain not cooler temperatures.
I'm making my mission to promote global warming. After waking up this morning to 28 degree weather in Texas i think a warmer climate would be better. I'm trading out my car for a big truck. I'm starting a pro-global warming movement! Screw the polar bears and the hippies!
whoa! damn humans, sabre-tooth tigers and wooly mammoths and their methane have been warming the world for too long!
You know, it's so cold that I saw some poor red states with their hands in their own pockets instead of mine and other productive blue-staters.
True the temperature of the Earth has been fluctuating its whole history. The issue with Global Warming isn't whether the Earth warms or cools but how much, what rate and how much human activities contribute to it. Our civilization has developed in a fairly narrow climate band and if the planent is getting warming beyond the rate our civilization has developed that can have very negative impats on us. In regard to glacier growth my understanding is some glaciers are growing due to increased snowfall which is one of the predictions of global warming. At the sametime though most of the non-arctic or non-antarctic glaciers are shrinking rapidly such as the glaciers on Kilamanjaro.
I'm no scientist, and won't debate the data (which is inconsistent at best) regarding whether Global Warming is occurring, speeding up, whatever... I have read (look, I'm not saying they are right, but here's an older link that goes into it), however, something about the influx of massive amounts of freshwater from melting glaciers causing a situation that might make for colder weather long term or even cause an ice age. Maybe it's earth's way of balancing things out... or maybe it's bunk. Point is, no one really knows long term effects of ... well... a lot of things. I post this only because of the OP implication. If it isn't obvious that a snowstorm doesn't prove or disprove anything, it should be. Might mean there is no long term warming trend and this just a valley in the curve. Might mean the second ice age is coming. Might just mean it's winter. I tend to think personally (no scientist) that we shouldn't freak out about warming, but that we should be trying to do less damage to our ecosystem. My guess would also be that we have more to fear from the planet's reaction to any man-induced warming in the form of extreme weather events than we do from warming in general.
Right, but the most drastic changes occur in the polar regions of Antartica and Greenland. The lower in latitude these regions are and its closer to proximity to water, the more net ice melting there will be. However, in the higher latitudes there has been more ice accumulation. This is due to warming temperatures. The temp has to warm up just enough so that there is precipitation in the air otherwise it would be too cold to snow. Antartica only has only a few inches of snow per year whereas Greenland has several meters.
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