Veteran meteorologist: How a warmer Arctic disrupts global weather

As part of a post on the WWF US Climate Blog, meteorologist Dave Eichorn from the State University of New York College of Environmental Science and Forestry has explained in a video report how arctic warming is disrupting weather patterns to the south, especially in winter.

Read more . . .

Yep.  Things are changing.  This is probably going to inconvenience a fair number of people . . .to the point of death in some cases, if we refuse to adapt.  But I continue to maintain that we need to stop seeing this as something catastrophic and stoppable.  Climate change is normal.  It really is.  It's been going on for billions of years . . .or we would STILL be one giant swamp full of primitive lifeforms.  Climate is a driver of evolution.  Climate is a cycle that we have had to adapt to for the entire million or so years of being human . . or humanish.

During past shifts, we merely migrated.  North when it go too hot, south when it go to cold.  And that is our problem now, migration is not really an option when there are nearly 7 billion of us and most of the good land is taken.  So this time, we need to hunker down.  But this isn't hard.  We are in the position to evaluate the evidence, find suitable locations away from the most extreme weather (as we are no longer tied to the shores for easy transportation and access to water).  We can build dense metropolises which can house millions and millions of people.  These cities can be green, sustainable and self contained.

And we can stop breeding.  Seriously.  Why is more of our funding not focused on allowing folks to choose when they procreate?  According to one source, 49% of all pregnancies are unplanned, mostly among the poor and uneducated.  And 82% of all teenage pregnancies are unplanned.  We could halve our population growth by just finding a dependable, easy to use birth control and making it freely available.  (For the US that would mean a declining population, in other countries it would just rein in their out of control growth.)

There are many other things we can do to prepare.  But the one thing we can't do is stop it.  Even if magically we could make the carbon offset scam work, the climate would continue to change.  We have millions of years of fossil records that assure us of that.  We have our very existence to assure us that climate change happens, since it was climate change that ended the reign of the dominant lifeforms 65 million years ago, giving rise to mammals and, ultimately, to humans.

So we have two choices: adapt or die

Your Global Warming Scare for Today

Global warming may reroute evolution

(PhysOrg.com) -- Rising carbon dioxide levels associated with global warming may affect interactions between plants and the insects that eat them, altering the course of plant evolution, research at the University of Michigan suggests.

The research focused on the effects of elevated carbon dioxide on common milkweed, Asclepias syriaca. Milkweed is one of many plants that produce toxic or bitter chemical compounds to protect themselves from being eaten by insects. These chemical defenses are the result of a long history of interactions between the plants and insects such as monarch caterpillars that feed on them.

Read more . . .
Here's what I commented on my Facebook.

1. I tried to find exactly how the research was conducted, because it's implied that they just followed normal plants. Could not find what the experiments actually were. In all likelihood they raised these plants in elevated CO2 environments . . .HIGHLY elevated ones. Remember the cancer scare of the 1960s and 1970s with saccharine . . . where it got banned for a couple of decades because it caused cancer in rats. Of course, to get the same results you would have to drink a bathtub full of soda flavored with it EVERY DAY for YEARS. Same deal. The chances our CO2 levels will ever reach that high are practically non-existent as the Earth is a self correcting system and they can't even tell you were all the CO2 goes now, how can we trust ANYTHING these shills for faux green corporations say? We are running out of fossils fuels. Chances don't see very high to me that we will reach the tipping point MERELY because of human activity.
2. The CO2 levels on the earth today are FAR . . really really far . . .from as high as they have ever been. Here's a chart. That means that most current species have had to adapt to lower CO2 levels and have the mechanisms in place to adapt easily. Could the things that eat them have to adapt. Well, DUH . . but any of those things ALSO had to endure previous climate changes.
3. Change happens. Why are modern humans obsessed with halting evolution? Why do they act like the very thing responsible for our existence is bad? Evolution is good. Change is good. We just adapt. Learn new strategies. We could be using this opportunity to test various ways of creating self sufficient communities. Or finding out how human communities are best facilitated in being flexible and supportive of humans. Instead we run around screaming that the sky is falling.

The bottom line here is that governments and corporations don't want real change to our lifestyles. That's bad for the bottom line. They want us to buy more, to create an ever expanding market. Which is why they don't tell you that the BEST thing we could do to lower our impact on the planet is stop breeding. We could stand to reduce our population by about 50% or more. But that means less consumers. Fewer tax payers. Not as many grunts to do the work and support the lifestyles of the rich and wasteful.

I suppose the good news, for the Earth, is that when the combination of human influence and naturally occurring climate change reaches the extremes it has in the past, a lot of humans are going to die. It will be brown people . . .and I continue to believe that those in power understand that and are good with that. As long as rich people (of all colors, rich brown people are no better than the whites assholes in charge) live, who cares about the poor of color?

So . . Which is it going to be?

Here's a 2006 report that echoed the common terrorist threats of AGW cultists in the first part of the first decade of the 21st Century:

Global warming to cause massive drought over next 100 years, say climatologists

Global warming is predicted to be the cause of a massive drought that will threaten the lives of millions and take over half the land surface on our planet in the next 100 years, according to Britain's leading climatologists.


Extreme drought, which makes modern agriculture virtually impossible, is seen by a new study from the Hadley Centre for Climate Prediction and Research as possibly affecting about one-third of the planet in the next century. These predictions may actually be an underestimation, said the climate scientists who released the results of the study.

Now, in the first part of the second decade of the 21st Century, they are singing a different tune:

Heavy Rains Linked to Humans


An increase in heavy precipitation that has afflicted many countries is at least partly a consequence of human influence on the atmosphere, climate scientists reported in a new study.
Related


In the first major paper of its kind, the researchers used elaborate computer programs that simulate the climate to analyze whether the rise in severe rainstorms, heavy snowfalls and similar events could be explained by natural variability in the atmosphere. They found that it could not, and that the increase made sense only when the computers factored in the effects of greenhouse gases released by human activities like the burning of fossil fuels.


So which is it?  Are we going to starve to death because there's no rain to grow crops or are we going to drown?  And notice, there's no indication the fearmongers even CARE that we have the power to protect ourselves.  No evidence they understand that there are technologies that could be used to secure our food supply locally and in any eventuality.  No, only the fear . . .only the "omg the world is coming to an end and it's all people's fault . . . only "we have to stop climate change". 


Here's a bulletin, morons.  The climate has changed before, and we adapted as a species.  We are fully capable of adapting again.  So stop trying to sell bogus carbon offsets and faux green goods and start working toward protecting humanity.  Stupid git.

CSIRO should establish if there was medieval warming Down-Under

THE deferral of Australia's emissions trading scheme for three years allows us time for additional scientific studies that may be critical in shaping future legislation.

A touchstone in the debate on causes of global warming is the record of global temperatures of past millennia. Most who follow this debate are familiar with the cooling from the 16th to 18th centuries known as the Little Ice Age; this is generally accepted as a global phenomenon. Most are also aware of the Medieval Warm Period covering much of the 9th to 15th centuries. This has been the source of greater debate because, while it is clear in anecdotal descriptions from Europe, such as Vikings growing crops in Greenland, it is less clear whether it is a global phenomenon. The debate has high stakes because the rate of warming and temperatures attained in Europe during the MWP are of similar order to the warming of past decades. If the MWP were to be proven to be global, then the basis of present science stating that industrial-era carbon emissions are the dominant cause of today's warming would be significantly undermined.

Read more . . .

The Sun Can't Save Us From Global Warming

The sun contributes almost all of the energy into our atmosphere through electromagnetic radiation, so when our nearest star reduces its output, one would think that our atmosphere would cool down (or, at least, wouldn't heat up).

This is true, partially.

But a new study published in the journal Geophysical Research Letters says that even if the sun commenced a very long period of low activity, it cannot put the brakes on the relentless rise of global temperatures caused by greenhouse gases.

Read more . . .

Perspective

This morning one of the blogs I subscribe, Envirovore , to had an article about seed banks that included:

For example, farmers grew more than 7,000 varieties of apples in the 1800s, yet by the end of the 1900s, only 300 had survived extinction.

And I found myself annoyed. The implication is that humans are devastating thousands of plants species and that global warming is threatening native species. FOLKS, get a gripe. When it comes to agriculture, almost everything we grow was selectively breed from native plants and is NO LONGER the same plant. They are all man made! So if they go away, the Earth has lost NOTHING. I responded thusly:

I completely support these seed banks and grow heirloom crops as much as I can. I would like to see us return to diets more in line with our ancient ancestors. And I would like to point out that those 7,000 varieties of apple were NOT . . . well, natural, for want of a better word. They were all varieties achieved through selective breeding over a mere few thousand years and, therefore, man made. The ancestor of all apples is still alive and well and in no danger of becoming extinct in the near future.

Just trying to put things in perspective. It hurts the environmental movement, I believe, to bewail the loss of an artificial crop growing far from it's natural habitat.