Green | July 14, 2009 | 27 comments

Hooray! El Nino is back!

source: http://www.scholarsandrogues.com/2009/07/13/hooray-el-nino-is-back/

Image
angliss
El Nino causes droughts in Asia and stronger Pacific hurricanes that can destroy lives. Even so, I'm still selfishly happy el Nino has returned to the Pacific. An el Nino means that 2009 will be a hot year, and that means the climate disruption deniers will have a harder time trumpeting that "the Earth is on a cooling trend" this year.

And any denier who tries to claim "this year's el Nino is just a short term change - weather, not climate" will immediately reveal him or herself to be a liar and a hypocrite.

After all, one of the favorite denier memes is that we've been cooling since 1998, even though a) 10 years isn't enough to deduce any sort of statistically meaningful trend from data that's as noisy as global temperature, and b) 1998 to 2008 conveniently starts on an el Nino and ends on a la Nina, creating a bogus "cooling trend" from cherry-picked endpoints.

Of course, any climate scientist who touts 1999 (a la Nina year) to 2009 (an el Nino year) as a warming trend is similarly revealed as a liar and a hypocrite for the same reasons.
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27 comments // Hooray! El Nino is back!

  • Netcentric
  • theultimateend
    • 0
      theultimateend  

    • While humans only account for 3% of the greenhouse gas output the planet deals with I still feel that there is no reason to battle against renewable energy.

      However the biggest problem with dealing with safe and efficient energy systems is that folks like green peace (believe it or not, feel free to google about it) are making it nearly impossible to do anything.

      It's a shame how most large environmental groups have just become anti capitalism and anti corporation (which by and large aren't bad things).

    • 2 years ago
  • Gravity_Man
  • bailey78
  • ras_menelik
  • Ish05
  • kskrunner
  • leahl
  • aniehues
    • 0
      aniehues  

    • California has always been a state of disasters. El Nino or not something is always going to happen over there. Quake/Fire/financial/etc... :) I think the earth is on its own cycle.

    • 2 years ago
  • Nephwrack
    • 0
      Nephwrack  

    • meanwhile, here in southern california el nino is extremely destructive and costs people their lives and homes. i'm glad you ppl are happy that el nino is happening, but here in southern cali it's dangerous. i was in oceanside for the last one, and it was anything but fun. come down here and experience it for yourselves, maybe then you'll have a different opinion of it.

    • 2 years ago
  • SupaDawg
    • 0
      SupaDawg  

    • Certainly obvious here in western Canada.

      Calgary usually has a very dry summer, yet this year it has rained and rained, with it being rather humid when not raining.

      On top of that, there have been evenings where a jacked has been required.... not normal for July.

    • 2 years ago
  • el_chivo
    • 0
      el_chivo  

    • El Niño is back? Damn, since 98 the weather in this area is everything but normal. I live in Colombia, and I remember that before that (even if we are in the middle of the tropic) we had some short of seasons. Rainy months and hot months. But since El Niño, the weather is now unpredictable. Two weeks ago was cold, last week was hot, yesterday I saw the clearest sky of my life, today I was freezing in the streets.

      By the way, I give you to you the letter “ñ”.

    • 2 years ago
  • Gravity_Man
    • 0
      Gravity_Man  

    • It's been my opinion for over 4 years now that the increasing population of Earth is taking too much solid stuff out of the ground and putting it above ground in a rather fluid movement. It's just an opinion. I didn't sleep at Holiday Inn last night, or 4 years ago.

    • 2 years ago
  • kennymotown
    • 0
      kennymotown  

    • Gravity Man, I only heard that the acidic ocean is making the storms form further out to sea, I don't know how it helps in this earlier developing aspect but thats what I heard. Sounds interesting though and I'm sure the real nobel prize winner could tell me how that is.

    • 2 years ago
  • Gravity_Man
    • 0
      Gravity_Man  
    • kennymotown:

      In the human body, being acidic = less oxygen = more cancers... so to hear even from you that acidic oceans is a problem probably is a valid statement. Plus killing the shellfish ties right in, a tight noose. I imagine it also has much to do with the increasing "red tides" that recently knocked out Maine's shellfish industry whatever.

      Wow. The noose appears to be tightening, or the planet is getting larger from pollution.

    • 2 years ago
  • Gravity_Man
  • kennymotown
    • 0
      kennymotown  

    • Gravity Man you know it's the title it just got me excited, for the revolution. I'm telling ya that acidic oceans thing is not only killing the shell fish and coral but it's changing the way storms get intense.

    • 2 years ago
  • Gravity_Man
  • Gravity_Man
  • kennymotown
  • Gravity_Man
    • 0
      Gravity_Man  
    • kennymotown:

      Come on Kenny, you have more to give than that! Well, my comment is based on the last 57 years I've been on EARTH and the el Ninos of 1957 and 1966 were balanced out by 3-5 foot deep SNOWDRIFTS IN VIRGINIA. We haven't had a decent snow drift here in 20 years, or longer.

      This past winter and before barely one white coating on the car. Also don't forget the borer bugs destroying the pine trees because it's been too warm in the winters to keep their numbers down.

      Climate change brings many types of increased destruction, plus Kenny's comments.

    • 2 years ago
  • Nephwrack
    • 0
      Nephwrack  

    • oh yes, that's just effing wonderful. i personally dont give a flying plastic water bottle what non believers of climate change think, they wont change their tiny little minds in time to do any good. i'm just going to keep doing what I can to help where i live.

    • 2 years ago
  • MissAmanda
  • leahl
  • Macol
    • 0
      Macol  

    • Wow....

      That sounds even worse then what I thought it was... Yikes!

      I was talking to a friend about the future of our climate, and he said that it's more likely we would get extreme hot then extreme cold. Not necessarily a consistent increase in temperature.

      Seems that if this type of chaotic weather becomes the norm, then it's likely he's right. But then eventually there has to be a breaking point. Like a see saw used to many times. It bends or cracks from the pressure.

      It'll be an interesting 10-20 years...

      Thanks for the info!

    • 2 years ago
  • angliss
    • 0
      angliss  

    • Macol - the 1998 el Nino was a very strong el Nino, one of the strongest (if not the strongest) recorded since the El Nino Southern Oscillaion (ENSO) was discovered.

      El Nino is a chaotic phenomena, so it doesn't happen regularly, but it does seem to happen every few years and lasts months to a year or two each time. La Nina is the opposite (cooling instead of heating) but has the same basic timeline. The following NOAA link has a massive amount of information on ENSO, although the index is only one of several ways to measure ENSO: http://www.cdc.noaa.gov/enso/enso.mei_index.html

      Technically an el NIno is declared when the index shown rises over 1 standard departure from the norm for three months in a row. The image at the top of the linked page shows that El Ninos happened in roughly 1957, 1966, 1972, 1983, 1988, 1992, 1993, 1995, 1998, 2003, and 2007, or 11 times, with varying lengths and strengths. La Ninas happened 10 times since 1949.

    • 2 years ago
  • Macol
    • 0
      Macol  

    • Back in 98 I thought that "el Nino" was suppose to be a fluke, or a rarity. It was suppose to only happen every 80 years, or something like that...

      Am I wrong?

      If I am, then is it a given name for certain weather patterns? Seems to me to be an excuse for global warming. Something to point at and say, "it's all natures wonderful mystery!"

      Not the devastating impact we've made on a defenseless blue globe.

      But I could be wrong...

    • 2 years ago
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