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    Global warming

    Someone told me that Columbus is currently experiencing the coldest July on record. That may or may not be fact, but it is distinctly not hot around here. Lows in the 50s the last few nights. Anyone else experiencing similar bizarreness in their corner of the globe?

    #2
    Global warming

    Which Columbus?

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      #3
      Global warming

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        #4
        Global warming

        Toronto, too. But since our weather is highly correlated, that's not such a surprise.

        On the other hand, you may want to look at a recent post of Nate Silver's at 538 before being too quick to pronounce on historical chilliness.

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          #5
          Global warming

          I'm not a climate change skeptic, I'm assuming the worst. These are surely the beginnings of the wild fluctuations before everything goes all Mad Max.

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            #6
            Global warming

            Hot as balls out here.

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              #7
              Global warming

              Incandenza wrote:
              Hot as balls out here.
              "I would fuck you to fuck the weather".

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                #8
                Global warming

                Doesn't that make you homoisothermic?

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                  #9
                  Global warming

                  We're all fucked.

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                    #10
                    Global warming

                    Indeed.

                    I wonder what it will be like in 10 years. Will the American public be outraged that the government kept them in the dark about the dangers of climate change? Will they cry "If only we had known"? Or will we still keep bitching about 'big government'?

                    I think the "God hugging us closer" adherents have mistaken affection for a smothering embrace.

                    But, maybe that's just because I'm in a bad mood.

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                      #11
                      Global warming

                      Well, Maine might actually benefit from this, that's one of the obvious bylines from that story. Florida, not so much...

                      By and large, the Red States are going to bear the grunt of global warming in the US. Places like New England or Minnesota won't be too damaged from global warming. Some might actually benefit from milder weather. Same for much of Eastern Canada.

                      The coastal southeastern US and the midwest are going to suffer on the other hand. Florida is going to become like Holland, it will take a massive dykes and levies network to keep significant parts of it over water decades from now. The midwest and southwest are going to experience severe water shortages.

                      In the very short term, look for a drier and milder winter in the northeast. Three years ago, when El Nino patterns prevailed (as they do this season), I remember swimming in a lake on (Canadian) thanksgiving and doing last-minute christmas shopping wearing a sweater.

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                        #12
                        Global warming



                        in one of these, i bet

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                          #13
                          Global warming

                          Mine said "Bienvenue".

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                            #14
                            Global warming

                            I'm a semi-regular on the Netweather forum, the most popular meteogeek forum in the UK. Talking about climate change there is a guaranteed blood pressure riser such is the amount of people "not believing it". Worse than Joe Public is the geek with some knowledge who thinks the Met Office haven't got a clue...

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                              #15
                              Global warming

                              Still wondering which fucking Columbus. Georgia? Ohio? Any one of the other ten zillion Columbuses in the USA? The one in Canada?

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                                #16
                                Global warming

                                Judging from Bruno's accent, Ohio.

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                                  #17
                                  Global warming

                                  Bruno wrote:

                                  Someone told me that Columbus is currently experiencing the coldest July on record.
                                  Well, shoot me down in flames (but ones that aren't too hot - you know) but this "on record" business. What are we talking? 150 years maybe, or less?

                                  What (using computer simulations and all) was the weather like before the records? Were there no peaks and troughs? And if there were, were they caused by Medieval man chucking his slops into a ditch?

                                  [ducks behind wall to avoid slops]

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                                    #18
                                    Global warming

                                    Columbus, Ohio, yes (though hopefully only for another year or so).

                                    erwin, no idea. Ohio became a state in 1803 (although this was only retroactively made the official date in 1953, when they discovered the tiny oversight that Congress had never actually passed a formal resolution back in the day).

                                    The area has been inhabited since ~13000 BC, Wiki tells me, and only gives this on climate records:

                                    The highest recorded temperature was 113 °F (45 °C), near Gallipolis on July 21, 1934. The lowest recorded temperature was -39 °F (-39 °C), at Milligan on February 10, 1899.
                                    and I don't know how to research anything important other than looking it up in Wikipedia, so I'm out of luck.

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                                      #19
                                      Global warming

                                      erwin wrote:
                                      What (using computer simulations and all) was the weather like before the records? Were there no peaks and troughs? And if there were, were they caused by Medieval man chucking his slops into a ditch?
                                      How far back do you want to go?

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                                        #20
                                        Global warming

                                        There probably were peaks and troughs, but that doesn't matter now, and it doesn't matter whose fault is was, nothing in history is going to cause so much devastation to human and animal life on the planet as climate change in the next 30 years or so - don't worry about the planet, it will be fine, but people will die of starvation as crops fail, and there will be pressure on water supplies, great displacements of communities, greatly increased conflict due to pressure on landspace and resources, and, and, and ... It will affect the developing/poorest nations first, especially those communities living closest to the sea, but the repercussions will affect us all.

                                        So it's not a case of same old, same old.

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                                          #21
                                          Global warming

                                          I wasn't trying to apportion blame. I was trying to think that this has all happened before, without the contribution of man, and his attempts to stall it might just be a fart in the wind.

                                          Perhaps our time and efforts might be better employed by pre-empting all of those devastating effects you mention - not by trying to control climates that will happen anyway but by implementing social and logistical action on the ground to prevent or ease those effects.

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                                            #22
                                            Global warming

                                            I was trying to think that this has all happened before, without the contribution of man, and his attempts to stall it might just be a fart in the wind.
                                            Yes, the climate has changed before, but the things that caused the climate to change then aren't happening now. There's a whole field of science called Palaeoclimatology that deals with this. What is happening now really is human induced.

                                            Human civilisation has blossomed in the last few thousand years, a period known as the Holocene, which has been a very comfortable climate with relatively stable temperatures. The Pleistocene, which went before it, was a period of cold and unstable/shifting climate where humans lived in caves and threw spears about. Only when this period ended and the Holocene started, with its stable and comfortable climate, did civilisation as we know it start to evolve. Babylonians, Egyptians, that kind of thing. None of these civilisations would ever have come along if the climate was unstable.

                                            If we don't fuck about with the Holocene climate, it could last for another 50,000 years before the way the Earth wobbles in its orbit around the sun causes it to end naturally. This stable climate period has basically created civilisation, so it would be silly to take it for granted.

                                            Perhaps our time and efforts might be better employed by pre-empting all of those devastating effects you mention - not by trying to control climates that will happen anyway but by implementing social and logistical action on the ground to prevent or ease those effects.
                                            It's not a case of trying to control the climate but rather a case of just leaving it alone.

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                                              #23
                                              Global warming

                                              Bruno wrote:

                                              The area has been inhabited since ~13000 BC, Wiki tells me, and only gives this on climate records:

                                              The highest recorded temperature was 113 °F (45 °C), near Gallipolis on July 21, 1934. The lowest recorded temperature was -39 °F (-39 °C), at Milligan on February 10, 1899.
                                              Of course if all those 'nasty invaders', over the last 200 years, hadn't killed off all the native population, then we might have a better idea....

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                                                #24
                                                Global warming

                                                That's interssting Bahiryan. Thanks

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                                                  #25
                                                  Global warming

                                                  erwin wrote:
                                                  Perhaps our time and efforts might be better employed by pre-empting all of those devastating effects you mention - not by trying to control climates that will happen anyway but by implementing social and logistical action on the ground to prevent or ease those effects.
                                                  Indeed ... Oxfam is directing resources to tackling the worst effects of climate change, the organisation I work with is amonst those looking at the causes, and sees tackling population increase* as the most effective strategy, acting in two ways: slowing down climate change by lowering missions/deforestation etc. and also by easing pressure on the most vulnerable societies, as many countries in the developing world have the highest growth rates.

                                                  That's in full recognition of the fact that the developed nations have caused and continue to cause the most damage ... China is developing and its emissions increasing rapidly, but we are effectively exporting our emissions to them by using them as our main manufacturer.

                                                  * through education and access to family planning, not coercion. The studies show that there is a huge, unmet need for contraception in the developing world.

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