Global warming indicator, indeed. Scary! Although where I have been living for almost a year, with two winters in a row having record snowfalls, one might very well doubt 'global warming.' I truly mourn for our planet each time I hear about another huge chunk of ice breaking off from Anarctica. What I wonder about is: Is global warming due to mankind's influence, or is it a natural earth cycle? What do you think?
It's both, blueskyfromnowon. But we have contributed to it significantly. The Earth is quite capable of producing significant change in global temperature itself. It did so during the Jurassic period of the Paleozoic Era. At that time, it was so warm you could swim in the waters of Antarctica and be quite comfortable. Nice for the luke-warm blooded dinosaurs who lived at the time. Not so great for us. Because of the increased energy in the atmosphere, there were unimaginably powerful thunderstorms every single day all across the globe. The Earth's climate was so unstable that our planet almost became like Venus, with a surface temperature of 900° F--hot enough to melt lead.
As far as your record snowfalls, that is a part of the instability that global warming can cause regionally. People thing that global warming means a steady rise in temperature everywhere. WRONG! Climate is a highly dynamic and extremely complex homeo-static process (i.e. a state of equilibrium continuously in flux). Regional weather as a result becomes highly erratic and unpredictable. You could have blizzards and sub-zero temperatures one day and 60° weather the next day. We are in the early stages of global warming. It's only in the latter stages that you have an overall warming of the planet, like during the Jurassic period. And then the planet is in danger of a galloping greenhouse effect or runaway process where the global temperature reaches a point of no return. That's when you get an atmosphere like Venus with 900° F surface temperature and concentrated sulfuric acid rain.
SentientBeing , after reading the second post i thought of something along the same lines as you wrote . it is usually warmer winters that bring more snow.
So do you believe that global warming is a ... you'll pardon the expression ... snow job?
No I believe its a fact. I have no conclusion as to if or not its a man made or a cyclical phenomenum
but in any case, why not do something if we can rather than face the consequences of ignoring it????
I do believe man has a negative impact on the earth and environment. I believe we can do better, much better. I see no reason in this day and age that animals need to become extinct in the wild. Especially such things as Polar Bears for example. We should have a hands off policy for as long as necessary when it comes to the wild places, lets keep some places pure if we can. We need to put more and more land aside while we can. We need to think beyond ourselves and do whaever is needed to ensure a future . We should be caretakers rather than destroyers, we hold the land and seas in trust for the future, we can not use up all the natural resources without looking to the future and making it something hopeful.
In the same way that it's foolish to keep re-enforcing doomed seaside real-estate, it's foolish to believe our planet will retain current climates, sea-levels, atmospheric patterns, etc. We must develop long term designs for our societies infrastructure which can withstand the inevitable changes which are evident in this planets geological record. Not only should we prepare for a warmer wetter planet, but also for a colder dryer climate that could suddenly be imposed by some asteroid collision, or volcanic episode.
We are in training, and these same solutions may someday carry our kind to the stars.
I used to have a house on the beach in Ocean City, NJ, up on great pilings. From time to time, a storm surge would come up under the house. During my time there, the city was engaged in dredging sand from the bay and pumping it onto the eroding sea front beaches. Eventually, the ocean's edge which was about four car lengths from my house was then waaaaay in the distance. LOL Felt like we had to walk miles to get to the water. Then we had another bad nor' easter that coincided with a neap tide, I think it was, and when the storm clouds cleared, and the sun came out, we were delighted to see that Mother Nature had rearranged her sand back to where she wanted it in the first place, and the ocean's edge was once again very close to my front door.
