Let’s grant that, as the article says, New England’s winters are milder and less snowy than they were 31 years ago. Let’s grant that this is due to a global climate change. My question is this: Why 31 years? Why do they trace back to 1965 and 1970 for the baseline? What was the climate like 100 years ago? 200 years ago? 1,000? 10,000? Was it even warmer? Colder? What caused those shifts?
This is the primary issue of the whole climate change debate for me. Is global climate change a result of human action and even if it is, which I’m not ready to concede yet, can it even be reversed by legislative decree?
I recall reading that in the mid-19th century here were summers in which it snowed in mid-July? Is that preferable? Yet in the Middle Ages, they had years without winters. In northern Europe, they were able to grow grapes for varieties of wine that only live in southern Europe now.
The primary complaint in the hearing of the U.S. House’s Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming held for effect on top of Cannon Mountain in Franconia, New Hampshire, was that the changes will affect the maple syrup and tourism industries by making New England’s climate more like South Carolina’s. Seems South Carolina doesn’t do too bad for tourism. It’s just different tourism and it stinks if you’re a snow skier, I suppose. They could turn the ski resorts into vineyards and make an East Coast Napa.
Seriously though, has anyone definitively determined that these changes are the result of man’s intervention and not the result of a natural global climate pattern of high and lows?
I’m not going to buy the theory just because someone says there’s a consensus. Yeah, there also used to be a scientific consensus that the world was flat. A lot of people agreeing on something doesn’t make it necessarily so. Never mind that there isn’t a consensus, that there are plenty of good scientists who disagree. Ah, but the global warming zealots say that anyone who strays from their orthodoxy are heretics and not to be trusted. And who are the religious extremists?
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I have always wondered why our current temperature is the “best” one according to all these global warming zealots.
We are actually at the bottom end of the Earth’s temperature scale and they have the audacity to claim that the current climate (which is probably most conducive to human life) is the place where we need to somehow set things in concrete.
I read McCollough’s biography of John Adams a coupe years back, and from the descriptions of the winters I recall, they were significantly snowier back in the late 1700, early 1800s, but that was the tail end of the “Little Ice Age.” As for the snow in July, I understand that resulted from a massive volcanic explosion (Krakatoa I think) that threw enough debris into the atmosphere to mess up the weather globally that year. Incidentally, that was the summer that (supposed) established the Old Farmer’s Almanac’s reputation for accuracte weather forecasting: the story goes that the publisher was sick in bed with the flu, but still had to add his weather prediction for the 4th of July. Since the publishing deadline had arrived and he was sick, he jsut wrote “snow in New England” to get it off his hands. Don’t know if it’s true, but I heard in on Paul Harvey some years back.
Anyway, I’ll start taking the human element seriously when the politicians start pushing nuclear power.
Mount Tambora was the volcano … 1816 and subsequent years were affected.
Haven’t checked the article, but comparing to 30 yrs ago sounds fishy. My parents’ old Reader’s Digests of the 1970s were full of the terrifying spectre of global cooling, with dire warnings of how we’re overdue for an ice age. There was a global dip in temperatures around then. I’m not sure it has been properly explained – it wasn’t from a single volcanic eruption.
When I was a child the big fear was ‘the coming ice age’. I can’t understand how people who were alive then could possibly believe the ‘global warming’ hype today. If all the ‘experts’ were wrong then… what’s to say they are right today?
“Haven’t checked the article, but comparing to 30 yrs ago sounds fishy.”
30 years is a mere blip in geological time. If one has an agenda to play with global warming, then such timepoints can be convenient talking points.
Like several articles this past spring about some localitis experience the the warmest winter “ever” (according to the headline, though the article would clarify the coldest on record). The record would be 100-150 years time, again a mere blip in geological time.
The global Chicken Littles are screaming that the world is heating up and pointing to the melting snows of Killamanjaro (sp?) as proof. Sure enough pics over the years show a landscape of dwindling snows. Then happened to watch an old documentary of Killamanjaro last weekend and they notated that the snows would eventually disappear due to their slow gradual melting from the last ice age and that once they were gone, would then happily come back at the next one. Hmmph…the sky is falling, but it’s clearly supposed to! Our miniscule meddlings can’t interrupt God’s plans…
You asked if global climate change is caused by humans. Well, there were no humans for the first few ice ages and the climate of the mid-continental US was sub tropical with a lovely shallow sea for several million years before the ice. So I’d have to say No, it isn’t. (But you knew that.)
“Yeah, there also used to be a scientific consensus that the world was flat.”
When? No seriously, when?
Another nail in the coffin of “Global Warming” is the fact that other planets are experiencing it too.
For example, Soviet astronomers have found that the Mars polar ice cap is shrinking. Jupiter has another storm brewing like the Red Spot, and the outer planets are showing signs of warming too. Pluto is now a balmy -230 degrees C; three degrees down.
Lets take the billions spent on global warming and attack Global Poverty…
The ‘scientific consesus that the earth was flat’ is an urban myth. Google it in and see what comes up.
I’ll believe there’s a problem when climate change proponents forget about “carbon trading” and “carbon offsets” and get serious about serious lifestyle changes that would supposedly make a difference.
Either climate change is a problem or not, and so far we’ve not seen any high profile activists do anything a other than fly all round the world, live in big mansions and have other ones to spare.
IIRC, the South Carolina part applies to summers and to an extended growing season, but with the risk of more labile/severe winters, albeit shorter.
“I’ll believe there’s a problem when climate change proponents forget about “carbon trading” and “carbon offsets” and get serious about serious lifestyle changes that would supposedly make a difference.”
This is a good point in consideration of some who claimwe are 10 years from a tipping point. It seems seems logical then that drastic action is needed TODAY such as banning automobiles, shutting off power plants etc.
If we are facing such dire consequences following 150 years of carbon-spewing industrialization, then turning carbon emmissions to 1990 levels (as I believe—correct me if I’m wrong—as called for in the Kyoto accords)is useless.