The weather

[Eastside Parkway]

As I write this, it is 70 degrees here in Boston. 70 DEGREES. In January. Yes, I am complaining. I like snow, and I like winter. I look forward to it. Especially this year, because I spent all of last winter in the southern hemisphere and therefore have not had a proper winter in nearly two years.


The world is officially coming to an end.

[Robert86]

As I write this, it is 70 degrees here in Boston. 70 DEGREES. In January. Yes, I am complaining.

One of the associate producers at my workplace just came back from that area and was also complaining about how hot and warm it was over there. He was saying that global warming is starting to become apparent.

[spunknoid]

As I write this, it is 70 degrees here in Boston. 70 DEGREES. In January. Yes, I am complaining. I like snow, and I like winter. I look forward to it. Especially this year, because I spent all of last winter in the southern hemisphere and therefore have not had a proper winter in nearly two years.

You are more than welcome to have the snow we're having here in Colorado.

[Eastside Parkway]

I'll take it. Gladly.

[AllAroundFilmLV]

Global Warming is a hack

[Isaac_Brody]

High of 71 in NYC today. Kind of surreal.

[J.R. Hudson]

Hotter than Haitti in Carolina Beach today

Inconvenient , wouldn't you say ?

[bosindy]

talk to me in Feb when people are killing each other because they shoveled their car out, put a lawn chair where their spot use to be so no one steals it and then come home to find another car in the spot they dug out. Good times in most Boston neighborhoods.

[Eastside Parkway]

talk to me in Feb when people are killing each other because they shoveled their car out, put a lawn chair where their spot use to be so no one steals it and then come home to find another car in the spot they dug out. Good times in most Boston neighborhoods.


Either that or they'll come back to find the snow melted and someone getting a tan in their lawn chair. Could go either way at this point.

[William_Robinette]

global warming is ridiculous. remember that really cold period about 10,000 years ago?

yeah, the ice age.

earth came outa that one ok.

climate shift is a natural occurrence.

(that said, of course we are polluting the air and such, but come on people...)

[Brandon Rice]

He was saying that global warming is starting to become apparent.

LOL! There was a period of two weeks that it didn't break 50 degrees here in SoCal... that IS COLD!

[Erik Olson]

60 meters gets John H. a submarine and me beachfront property. Melt, I say! Melt!

Mwaa-haa-haaa!

e

[wabbit]

Bennis, come on. I realize this topic has already started to take that nasty shift towards the political. And it is truly a shame that in this country this issue has become a political football, but man, calling global warming ridiculous is pure flame bait.

To add to the main conversation; we do have cyclical warming trends that have zero to do with global warming. I remember summer temperatures for weeks during December and January in NY back in '83. I was wearing shorts to school and witnessed a snake out of hibernation sunning itself on a rock right before Xmas. The effects of global warming cannot be measured in one particular area over a couple year trend.

In other words, don't despair Northeasterners, you have plenty of harsh winters to look forward to. Your children however....

Cheers

[Erik Olson]

I think any thinking, reasoning person can say that if mankind has had anything to do with climate change, it likely accelerated in the years since the industrial revolution.

Let's not take it into Lockdown Land.

e

[mcgeedigital]

Like most "scientific" problems, the key thing needed to get correct from the onset is having the right question. To me, this issue involves actually four questions:

1. Is the climate warming?
2. If so, is human activity contributing?
3. Again if so, by how much - i.e. the rate of warming? And finally,
4. What will be the effects?

1. Geologists look at rocks and other things that we call the "geologic record", from which we think we can tell some things about earth's past. Not everything, just some things. (Any good geologist will admit that there is almost certainly a lot more that has gone on that we can't tell anything about, because no evidence for it was ever preserved.)

Compared to many geologic problems though, there is relatively ample evidence that the earth has been warming significantly and fairly steadily for at least the past 18,000 years, long before any human activity could have been a factor. This may sound like a long time, unless compared to what we believe the entire age of the earth to be of at least 4.5 billion years. Nonetheless, given the past trend, it doesn't make basic sense to think that this warming has suddenly stopped during the millisecond of our modern time. So to me, Question 1 is really a no-brainer.

2. "Are we contributing?" Another no-brainer. Everything we do produces heat in some form, and mostly from energy that was stored in coal, oil, and gas from solar radiation over many millions of years. Along with a simple little idea called the "principle of conservation of energy", which basically means that what goes in must come out. Well, we're taking it out.

3. "How much?" Ah, now we get to the real meat of it. Is what we are doing a whisper in a hurricane, or is it the hurricane itself? This is what most people are actually trying to answer, and what most of the debate is about. And honestly, we will never have 100% iron-clad proof because the inherent nature of the evidence is circumstantial. One can look at things like temperature changes alongside pollution emissions, wave their arms and say something like "They're both going up, so the one must be causing the other". But obviously this isn't proof and never will be. People just have to realize that there simply is no "smoking gun", at best just the sound of shots in the distance. If all this sounds like a cop-out, then consider....

....4. "What effect?" On this one, I believe we mere mortals are really out of our league. One thing my experience has impressed upon me is the sheer enormity and complexity of the earth, and by comparison the meager grain-of-sand insignificance of our feeble human brains. If trying to answer Question 3 is difficult, than trying to address things like the disappearance of glaciers, shifting of weather patterns, and extinctions of species requires true leaps of the imagination, and likely always will.

So then what do I think we should do about it? I am not an economist, politician, or social engineer, but I do believe that there will always remain a lot more about this problem than we have the capacity to understand. In that light - and purely from a practical standpoint - I think we can and should try to continue to maintain a broad basic effort, using reasonable means we can live with, to reduce unnecessary energy consumption. And a lot of what I'm talking about is simple stuff we can do as individuals (turning off lights, adding insulation, etc.). Again drawing on that "principle of the conservation of energy" - translation: every little bit helps.

Beyond that, only time - geologic time - will tell.

I cannot remember who said it, but: "One of the ultimate follies of mankind is to think that he can influence, on a cosmic scale, the earth."

[Isaac_Brody]

talk to me in Feb when people are killing each other because they shoveled their car out, put a lawn chair where their spot use to be so no one steals it and then come home to find another car in the spot they dug out. Good times in most Boston neighborhoods.

Ha. I remember the snow two years ago when I lived in Boston. I shovelled my spot and kicked over many a lawn chair. Them were vigilante times. :kali: