It Continues

[poliphilo]

The pundits are scurrying around the TV studios to assure us that present conditions in no way challenge their theories of global warming. I don't believe them.
 
Yesterday temperatures in parts of Britain dropped to within a degree or two of the temperature in Antarctica.

We had to go shopping yesterday or we and the in-laws would have run out of essential supplies- which In my father-in-law's case means Muller fruit corners. The car was nestled into a sort of a bunker outside the house- and I had to dig it out. Then, when we came home at the end of the afternoon, I had to dig it back in again. The roads round town are dodgy and they haven't gritted the sidestreets since the last fall of snow. They haven't collected the rubbish either. We didn't risk driving down Dot and Eric's street. Ailz parked at the top of it and I carried their groceries the final quarter mile on foot.

I'd been warned we might find the supermarket shelves stripped back to the bare metal. This wasn't the case. Sainsbury's Oldham  had all the essentials. A cheery,  "look at us surviving the blitz" spirit was in evidence. A sales assistant we know by sight proudly told us about her walk to work. Christmas puddings were on sale at 75% off- and I treated us to what would have otherwise been a very expensive one. It gave me vivid dreams. 

Comments

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Clearly our climate is- and always has been- unstable. The big question is whether our carbon emissions are having any effect on it- and my suspicion is they're not.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

The climate will change. It always has done. The big question is whether any of the shifts we're seeing now are our fault.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I don't have a problem with climate shift. The historical/geological record shows it's happening all the time. The question is whether the present changes are caused by human activity. I suspect not.

[redatt.livejournal.com]

The pundits are scurrying around the TV studios to assure us that present conditions in no way challenge their theories of global warming.

Well, since current theories of global warming/climate change predict, if I recall correctly, colder winters and wetter summers for the UK, I guess it's true, the present conditions in no way challenge their theories. Quite the opposite.

[litchick.livejournal.com]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/in_depth/8447023.stm

I think I can see you guys driving to the store! ha.

[jfs.livejournal.com]

Apologies for mixing up my data-centres. And the refusal to release the data comes under my heading of 'stupid and irresponsible'.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

That's such a gorgeous image!

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Fair enough. :)

[daisytells.livejournal.com]

If the Gulf stream is changing its course and feeding warmer waters into the Arctic, then would that no account for the melting that is going on up there, along with the freezing that is happening here, and especially in the UK?

[daisytells.livejournal.com]

We have had more than our share of frequent and severe hurricanes, even this far north, during my lifetime. The worst one on record was the hurricane of 1938, the year my parents got married, about two and a half years before I was born.

[petercampbell.livejournal.com]

All the fuss about global warming reminds me a bit of the dire warnings of how the world's computer networks would crash in the year 2000, and we'd all end up dying in a computer generated nuclear holocaust (or something like that).

I think, as a species, we just like to scare ourselves with the thought of impending catastrophe sometimes.

[arielstarshadow.livejournal.com]

Sole cause? No.

Exacerbating/Accelerating? Yes, I believe we are.

Re: A great piece about fear, witches and global warming

[daisytells.livejournal.com]

This is excellent! I copied it out and saved it on desktop for frequent reference, and perhaps to pass on to others....

[daisytells.livejournal.com]

Now that I can agree with -- "shift" -- because that is what it looks like from here.

[daisytells.livejournal.com]

I dont believe it's caused by human activity either. I believe it is Nature at work.

[daisytells.livejournal.com]

Hurrah for the puddings! So you did not miss out on Christmas entirely - just had it a bit late. Seriously, avoid shoveling snow as much as you can. People suffer heart attacks shoveling heavy snow. By the way, it was not predicted, but it is snowing rather heavily here right now. The forecast had been for "flurries". I remember once forty years or so ago when they predicted "flurries" and we got a blizzard!

[oakmouse]

Good point. I think we as a species also like to be able to flex our muscles and boast about how important and dangerous we are. "Look at us --- we can completely muck up the climate of the entire planet and still take time off for lunch!" *g*

[pondhopper.livejournal.com]

Exactly!

[oakmouse]

Yay for the bargain Christmas pudding!

The weather is being rather epic here too. We're having temps in the teens Fahrenheit, and people are terrified that the snowstorm predicted for Sunday, with wind chill factors in the below-zero F range, is going to be the Snowpocalypse. The old guard down at the Masonic lodge, though, say this used to be normal in the 1940s and 1950s, and that it's only since some time in the 60s that the winters got milder than this.

I'm enjoying it except for the task of keeping our steps and walk clean of snow, which we have to do as they're so steep that otherwise the mailman won't come up and we can't get down. But then I work from home and haven't got to commute in it.

[ideealisme.livejournal.com]

Well now that we've cast off the shackles of primitive belief in the Imaginary Friend and are self-actualised beings, we have to have somewhere to put our strange, unslakeable fear of encroaching Armageddon...

[heleninwales.livejournal.com]

Yes, that's it exactly. The warm current has done a bit of a wobble and got sucked up into another current that has taken it further north than normal. I think this is what happened during the winter of 1963 when we had a big freeze. As far as I know, it should wobble back again during the summer. It's done it before because there was a mini-warm period in Greenland some hundreds of years ago when the Vikings managed to settle there for a while. I don't know whether anyone's looked to see if Britain had particularly cold winters at that time.

Global warming is actually a deceptive name. Climate turbulence is probably a better description of what's going on. As the planet warms, there is more change and more extremes. My husband has local date going back decades that clearly shows that the wet period has definitely moved by a few months.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I did as much shovelling as I needed to do to get the car running. Otherwise I'm going to leave it alone. It seems to me that the best way of coping with this sort of weather is to sit tight and do as little as possible.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

One of the advantages of growing old is that you acquire historical perspective: you've seen it all before and things just don't scare you as much.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Yes, that's another reason why I'm a sceptic. Human beings seen to have an inbuilt predilection for apocalyptic scenarios. The world is always about to end for one reason or another- and it never does.

[michaleen.livejournal.com]

If the scientists win this one, then we get a somewhat cleaner world, along with a - hopefully - reduced dependency on oil and thus a reduced interest in those contentious parts of the globe in wch oil abounds. We are also likely to make some useful and unexpected technological innovations along the way, as we work to increase efficiency and develop alternative energy sources.

If you and the oil companies win then what's in it for the rest of us? The smug satisfaction of putting those uppity climatoligists in their place, perhaps? It's going to make a lot hippies cry, so I suppose there's always that.

I'm sorry, but even if the science were 'dodgy' - a claim for wch there is no credible evidence - I just don't see how your rebellion makes any sense at all, even stylistically.