Dramatic and sudden global weather conditions

golok

golok

Joined
Oct 20, 2000
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We all know about global warming but lately the weather conditions around the world are becoming rather extreme.

9.0 quake in Indian Ocean and then the tsunami that claimed more than 200,000 lives. Blizzard in parts of America. Snow in India. Snow in United Arab Emirates. Bush fires in Australia.

Humungus blocks of floating ice-bergs somewhere in the northern hemisphere. Extreme heat in mild weathered countries. The mushrooming of twisters in certain regions

What's happening? The geological experts and weather trackers seem to know something but many of them are either confused, unsure or just plain scared.

Any meteorologists out there who can give a reasonable explanation?
 
Look at the past events, its just a normal time rotation. Ever couple years bad storms pop up,and earth quakes happen. Its just life.


Joe
 
That's pretty much all there is.

There's always been weird weather--we're just reporting it faster and better.

If Hollywood, local news, and the government is worried, I'm not.
 
A program on the Discovery science channel that aired some time ago warned of global warming and it's affect on the melting ice cap, which is a third what it was 20 years ago. Large sections are breaking off and there is a couple feet of unfrozen water covering the polar ice caps.

The other day on the same channel, they were discussing Ice Ages. Seems that the weather patterns cycle out of and back into ice ages, every 1500 years or so. They figure the last one lasted 200 years and affected half the land mass on the planet. They also stated that the ice ages vary in how long they last and how cold and widespread they are.

With all that in mind, a conclusion on yet another program was that man isn't causing global warming, but we may be speeding it along, causing weather to cycle much faster and with more severity.

Where all of this takes us or future generations is a mystery, but one thing is for sure. It's gonna get real cold and for a real long time. What comes from that is anybodies guess.
 
The problem in understanding the problem, so to speak, is that we only just got good at looking at weather. Until the weather satellites improved in the 60s, we didn't even know what clouds looked like from space. In less than forty years, we're doing 10-day forecasts and more.

So to my point: we don't know anything long-term about the weather. The best we have is about 150 years of daily temperatures for various locations around the US. That's about it.

We're smart enough to recognize that lots of things happen to make the weather, but we just don't have the data to do the sophisticated modeling to figure out what it all means.

Based on who you talk to, we're heating up. We're cooling down. We're getting dryer (advancing desertification), and we're getting wetter (another el nino is expected soon).

One thing is for sure: it's pretty unlikely we'd have anything catastrophic happen quickly. Weather changes take many, many years to happen.
 
Watchful said:
...So to my point: we don't know anything long-term about the weather. The best we have is about 150 years of daily temperatures for various locations around the US. That's about it...
Click to expand...

Yea. And how much of that was compromised by differences in actually reading the mercury in a thermometer?

How long have we been taking digital readings?
 
Great point: the US didn't even have have local _time_ figured out until well after we were taking temps! There's no reason to believe some of those record temps in the 1800s weren't screw ups or misreads with primative equipment.
 
Watchful said:
That's pretty much all there is.

There's always been weird weather--we're just reporting it faster and better.

If Hollywood, local news, and the government is worried, I'm not.
Click to expand...


I have to aggree, think about it 100 years ago it would take a month to get the news here about an earthquake in Japan.
 
Below is my response I made in a similar thread from July 2001.
---------------------------------
Understand that geophysical upheavals, diseases, and human portenders of doom have always been existent and will no doubt continue after each of us here is gone. Without getting too metaphysical, IMHO the cosmos is being handled by someone bigger than me and the best I can do is leave that entity to take care of it. My job is to handle the smaller, more immediate tasks I've been given.

Re: your question of what can a person do. I like the overview offered by the credo, "Think globally, act locally" coupled with the Boy Scout motto of "Be Prepared!" From your locale try to see the bigger picture, then keep your individual (local) actions in line with it, hopefully helping it become the reality within the realm of what you do.

On a more practical "what can I do" level:
  • think about & try to prepare yourself mentally for the unexpected or not yet seen emergencies
  • determine what resources you already have to eliminate or limit the damage & trauma of them
  • train yourself & those you're responsible for how to act & react in the face of these occurances. HAVE A PLAN!!
  • acquire & stock up on the resources you anticipate will be needed
  • go back to the top of this list & start over, rethinking what you may have missed

Apply the "Be Prepared" idea on a sliding scale. What small emergencies are you ready for right now?? Kitchen fire? (fire extinguisher)? Electricity goes off for a couple of hours (flashlight, cellphone, battery radio) Car ahead of you slams on his brakes? (attention, distance) Your foot rolls off the rock on the trail? (high-top boots, first aid training, improvised bandage/splint) Then go up to bigger events. House fire? (evac plan, bugout bag, cellphone) Electricity goes off for days/weeks? (generator, alternate light/food sources) And so on.

An emergency becomes a disaster when you are not prepared for it or cannot survive the consequences (physically or mentally). Lets face it, there is one event in each of our lives we will not survive, since we will all die of something. No point in helping that event come sooner than it must. Be prepared, train, stock up, practice-practice-practice, then carry on knowing you've given it your best. A sense of humor can also be invaluable and it rides very light in your pack. Try to avoid getting cranked up over the small stuff.

Some things you can't affect or change, some things you can. Try to stay focused on the things you can.
 
"Great point: the US didn't even have have local _time_ figured out until well after we were taking temps! There's no reason to believe some of those record temps in the 1800s weren't screw ups or misreads with primative equipment."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Ice_Age

"The Thames river and the canals and rivers of the Netherlands often froze over during the winter, and people skated and even held fairs on the ice. In the winter of 1780, New York Harbor froze, allowing people to walk from Manhattan to Staten Island. Sea ice surrounding Iceland extended for miles in every direction, closing that island nation's harbors to shipping."
 
Howdy!!! (first post on this board)
All anyone has to do is talk to some old timers about how it used to be (guarnteed, they will bend your ear for hours (lots of good pre electricity survival info there too)). The climate is definately warming. Its probably a natural cycle IMO.
What can be done? RokJok has some good points (hint;isn't it the mormons that require all of their members to stock a year's supply of food?) I agree.
My personal thoughts are: prepare for the worst (hope that it won't happen)
and prioritise the preparations to make the expense manageable. Semper paratus!
Enjoy!
 
Planet earth has had radical temp and climate changes up and down the scale over millions of years and there were no fossel fuels then. Hell one large volcanic eruption produces more temperature change than a 1000 years of fossel fuel usage.

Earth has no idea we are even on it. Sit back and enjoy the ride. :rolleyes:

Skam
 
Watchful said:
One thing is for sure: it's pretty unlikely we'd have anything catastrophic happen quickly. Weather changes take many, many years to happen.
Click to expand...

far from for sure. there's plenty of evidence that some past ice ages set on VERY quickly, not gradually. the last ice age, 12 or 13,000 years ago, depending on whose estimate you believe, came on within 5-30 years. "backwoods home" magazine had a great article about it a while back...

also, a couple of quotes i found laying around:

"The truly frightening thing about ice ages is the speed at which they can take a grip, and the overwhelming changes they cause. A Belgian botanist called Genevieve Woillard found that her studies of peat layers showed a complete change in temperatures over only a twenty-year period. During this time, a temperate climate had been transformed into an Antarctic one. "

"As this graph shows, one such jump occurred about 12,000 years ago, as the last glacial period (the Pleistocene) was giving way to our current warm "interglacial" period (the Holocene). Suddenly, possibly in less than five years, average temperatures, which were slightly cooler than today's, plunged by about 27°F, returning the world to near-glacial conditions."

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/warnings/stories/nojs.html
 
The eco-apocalypse doomsters are at it again, selling their version of global socialism. Fortunately, more and more evidence is coming to light that the main engines of global climatic change are beyond Man's control. In the meantime, keeping the populace stirred up keeps politicians busy and gives them lots of excuses to vacuum our pockets. So far Canada has flushed something like $3 billion down the Koyoto toilet and is desperately trying to figure out how to sh*tcan another $3 or $4 billion. As we say in Whitehorse, flush twice -- it's a long way to Ottawa.
 
Tsunami is caused by the geological activity at the bottom of the seabed. Has nothing to do with wheather.

Most scientists are normal people too, so they like to divide into different camps. Some agree, some disagree and some agree to disagree like everyone else.
 
Here's a thought...
Could we survive an ice age? Certainly with the population we have now, fossil fuels would be difficult if not impossible to supply to those areas frozen over. Food production would also take a very big hit as would oxygen producing plantlife.
 
Could mankind survive an ice age?... certainly. Could western culture survive? much more of a problem except possibly in Austrailia. Could the members her survive?..of course.
It would take years for the glaciers to decimate Canada. During that period we could move south. The shorter growing seasons would make world hunger a reality once again, this could lead to a world wide reduction in health and attendant increase in disease.
Existing solar and insulation technology could take care of most home heating issues (as fuel prices increase people will move this direction even without an ice age). Life would get harder and more expensive ... but it would go on.
Enjoy!
 
The problem I see with 500+ million people moving south from Canada and the US, is that maybe the people that are already there won't want that kind of hord invading their lands and taking up the already stressed food and water resources they have.

I don't know if this type of situation occurs with all ice ages, or other extreme changes, but in less than one generation, a minor ice age that occured about 4200 years ago, caused such a severe drought, that the original Egyptian empire callapsed into anarchy. Scientists say they found evidence that it got so bad, they began eating their own children.

I think it's safe to say that we can only guess at how long it takes to happen or what will take place once it has happened. All any of us can do is go with the flow and do what we can to keep us and ours alive.
 
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