Green | January 12, 2012 | 83 comments

2011 unprecedented wet-dry extremes -just what you'd expect from global warming

source: http://thinkprogress.org/romm/2012/01/11/402460/2011-unprecedented-rains-wet-dry-extremes-gl...

Image
JanforGore
Remarkably, more than half of the country (58%) experienced either a top-ten driest or top-ten wettest year, a new record.

Percentage of the contiguous U.S. either in severe or greater drought (top 10% dryness) or extremely wet (top 10% wetness) during 2011, as computed using NOAA’s Climate Extremes Index. Image credit: NOAA/NCDC.

by Jeff Masters, cross-posted from the WunderBlog.

Rains unprecedented in 117 years of record keeping set new yearly precipitation totals in seven states during 2011, NOAA’s National Climatic Data Center revealed in its preliminary year-end report for 2011.

Precipitation rankings for U.S. states in 2011. Seven states had their wettest year on record, and an additional ten states had a top-ten wettest year. Texas had its driest year on record, and four other states had a top-ten driest year. Image credit: NOAA’s National Climatic Data Center.

An extraordinary twenty major U.S. cities had their wettest year on record during 2011. This smashes the previous record of ten cities with a wettest year, set in 1996, according to a comprehensive data base of 303 U.S. cities that have 90% of the U.S. population, maintained by Wunderground’s weather historian Christopher C. Burt. Despite the remarkable number of new wettest year records set, precipitation averaged across the contiguous U.S. during 2011 was near-average, ranking as the 45th driest year in the 117-year record. This occurred because of unprecedented dry conditions across much of the South, where Texas had its driest year on record.

Wettest, driest, and warmest year records set during 2011 for major U.S. cities. No major cities had their coldest year on record during 2011.

2011 sets a new U.S. record for combined wet and dry extremes [see top graph]
If you weren’t washing away in a flood during 2011, you were probably baking in a drought. The fraction of the contiguous U.S. covered by extremely wet conditions (top 10% historically) was 33% during 2011, ranking as the 2nd highest such coverage in the past 100 years. At the same time, extremely dry conditions (top 10% historically) covered 25% of the nation, ranking 6th highest in the past 100 years. The combined fraction of the country experiencing either severe drought or extremely wet conditions was 58%–the highest in a century of record keeping. Climate change science predicts that if the Earth continues to warm as expected, wet areas will tend to get wetter, and dry areas will tend to get drier–so 2011′s side-by-side extremes of very wet and very dry conditions should grow increasingly common in the coming decades.

23rd warmest year on record, and 2nd hottest summer for the U.S.
The year 2011 ranked as the 23rd warmest in U.S. history, with sixteen states recording a top-ten warmest year on record. Delaware had its warmest year on record, and Texas its second warmest. However, these statistics don’t convey the extremity of the summer of 2011–the hottest U.S. summer in 75 years. The only hotter summer–and by only 0.1°–was the Dust Bowl summer of 1936, when poor farming practices had turned much of the Midwest into a parking lot for generating extreme heat. The June – August 2011 average temperatures in Texas and Oklahoma were a remarkable 1.6°F and 1.3°F warmer than the previous hottest summer for a U.S. state–the summer of 1934 in Oklahoma. The U.S. Climate Extremes Index (CEI), which is sensitive to climate extremes in temperature, rainfall, dry streaks, and drought, indicated that an area nearly four times the average value was affected by extreme climate conditions during summer 2011. This is the third largest summer value of record, and came on the heels a spring season that was the most extreme on record. When averaged over the entire year, 2011 ranked as the 8th most extreme in U.S. history, since the fall weather was near-average for extremes. The CEI goes back to 1910.

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83 comments // 2011 unprecedented wet-dry extremes -just what you'd expect from global warming

  • Gravity_Man
    • 0
      Gravity_Man  

    • Utopia Coming? Truism => darkest before the dawn. Utopia Soon!

      Watch the bees. If the bees and bats come back we will know, by the signs. The animals will tell us Utopia is starting.

    • 4 months ago
  • tommic
    • +1
      tommic  

    • The equatorial bulge of warmer air continues to expand further towards the tropic of cancer and capricorn thus forcing air masses into patterns that are not of the normal for the last thousands of years. This will continue creating changing jet streams, which in turn change oceans and their currents and patterns that effect everyone on the planet. To deny what is happening or to call it all natural is delusional at best and ignorant at worst. The climate change is upon us, methane releases will only expand the problem. And we're not talking cattle & hogs expelling methane, we'retalking about melting permafrost releasing methane which is not refreezing anytime soon. Once under way, it becomes self perpetuating. We are in for major changes, historical geological records dictate this can happen in years not centuries, if we are lucky we will have a few decades, but that even is highly unlikely. Ho hum nothing to be done as the naysayers say!!

    • 4 months ago
  • JanforGore
    • +2
      JanforGore  

    • Amazing to me how one distraction goes and one comes in right away to take their place. Not hard to figure out that this site is being "visited" by political/ideological operatives, especially regarding climate change. Sooner or later, you eventually see the MO.

    • 4 months ago
  • rerushg
  • Gravity_Man
    • 0
      Gravity_Man  
    • JanforGore:

      58 degrees next Friday-Saturday forecast for Roanoke Virginia (sshhh HEATWAVE CONTINUES meaning someone else is freezing their buns off News at 11).

      PROJECTED FOR FEBRUARY 2012 => DINOSAUR THAW BEGINS.

      ELITE OBSERVED RUNNING TO HIDDEN SPACESHIPS.

    • 4 months ago
  • Gravity_Man
    • 0
      Gravity_Man  
    • JanforGore:

      DRINKING WATER is becoming less & less (more droughts too) partly because OIL DRILLING is pumping mega amounts of water down into the underground caverns to float the oil up (force it up too).

      That's probably where they got the idea for fracking in the 1st place. Strange how we're having so many floods with reductions in water but perhaps it's not a large percentage of loss. These people who read books ~and don't turn their brain ON~ are capable of ending all life on Earth.

      Needless to tell YOU oil drilling really does need to go the way of the dinosaurs.

      I guess they look over the side of their oil rigs & see all that water...

    • 4 months ago
  • JanforGore
    • +2
      JanforGore  

    • http://www.ucsusa.org/news/press_release/2011-extreme-weather-climate-0571.html
      Climate Change Slated to Make Some Kinds of Extreme Weather Worse in the Future

      2011 has been an incredible year of climate extremes for the United States.

      On Monday, the Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) hosted a telephone press conference to discuss links between climate change and extreme weather and consequences for businesses and local communities. Meanwhile, on Friday, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is expected to release a report on climate change and weather extremes and ways that countries can build resilience.

      So far, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) National Climatic Data Center (NCDC), the nation’s extreme weather score-keeper, has recorded 10 disasters between January and August that each inflicted more than $1 billion in damage. Recent events could drive the 2011 total to a record-breaking 14 weather disasters, adding up to an estimated $53 billion in costs, according to a preliminary analysis by Jeff Masters, chief meteorologist at Weather Underground.

      “Mother Nature has made it abundantly clear this year the gloves are off,” he said. “And, with climate change likely to boost the destructive power of storms, heat waves and droughts, we can expect an increasing number of these bare-knuckle years in the decades to come.”

      Insurers often are the ones who cover the costs of weather disasters and they’re becoming increasingly interested in how risk from climate change alter the insurance landscape, according to Rowan Douglas, Chairman of Willis Research Network and CEO of Willis Analytics, both part of Willis Group Holdings, a U.K.-based global insurance brokerage.

      “There is an emerging and very important link developing between climate science and finance and relevant areas of financial regulation,” he said. “And it’s being driven increasingly by the frequency and intensity of extreme weather events.”

      Douglas said many insurance companies are required to withstand losses from events that might occur every 100 to 200 years. As climate change shifts the frequency and intensity of weather extremes, the amount of money insurance companies will need to have on hand is likely to shift, he said.

      Local governments, meanwhile, bear the brunt of extreme weather events. Brian Holland, Climate Program Director for ICLEI -- Local Governments for Sustainability shared the results of a recent survey his organization conducted in conjunction with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology among ICELI’s 298 members. The survey found that 59 percent said they are engaged in some form of climate preparedness work and that reducing impacts from hazardous weather was among their top reasons for doing so.

      “Cities and counties are increasingly engaged in preparing for climate change,” he said. “Many are approaching it from the angle of responding to extreme weather. Despite some real challenges in identifying resources to do climate adaptation, we expect to see continued growth in the number of communities attempting to build resilience to climate change and extreme weather.”

      Holland noted several preparedness measures underway: in Lewes, Delaware, the city council unanimously adopted a hazard plan for dealing with coastal storms that take climate change into account; several states and cities have joined a Western Adaptation Alliance, which will grapple with climate change and water availability; and ICLEI is working with San Diego officials to respond to sea level rise.

      Brenda Ekwurzel, a UCS climate scientist, emphasized the varying levels of scientific certainty when it comes to links between extreme weather and climate change.

      “In some cases, the links between extreme weather and climate change are crystal clear,” she said. “In other cases, the picture is murkier.” Ekwurzel said scientist see the strongest links to extreme heat and shifts in precipitation away from lighter and toward heavier events, meaning longer periods of drought punctuated by heavy flooding.

      Ekwurzel noted that the United States is slated to release its next National Climate Assessment in 2013. The assessment is designed to give policymakers the information they need to successfully prepare for a changing climate. At the same time, NOAA wants to create a National Climate Service -- modeled on its successful National Weather Service -- to provide critical climate information to decision makers. The NOAA proposal was partially endorsed this year by the Senate, which approved about half the funding the White House requested for a National Climate Service. But the House voted not to fund the service. [Update: On Tuesday, a conference committee decided not to provide funding for the National Climate Service in 2011.]"
      _______________

    • 4 months ago
  • JanforGore
    • +2
      JanforGore  

    • http://www.climatesciencewatch.org/2011/09/10/costs-of-extreme-weather-rise-amer...

      "Climate change denial and ideological opposition to measures that would slow climate change and prepare for its impacts have left the U.S. with no coherent climate change policies. We face the growing threat of climate disruption unprepared and facing ever escalating impacts and costs, raising concerns about the implications for local, state and Federal government budgets, and costs to the private sector. In contrast, in countries where the denialists have not been as influential, coordinated national initiatives to curb emissions and to prepare for climate change have been underway for years.

      The demand for Federal disaster assistance driven in part by a rise in climate extremes is complicating efforts to contain the Federal deficit, and increasing pressure to offset disaster relief with cuts elsewhere in the budget. The Senate Appropriations Committee on 7 September approved a Fiscal Year 2012 budget for Homeland Security that included $6 billion for FEMA’s Disaster Relief Fund, $3.35 billion above FY2011. “We recognize that additional funds may be required to cover damages which have not yet been estimated based on recent flooding in the Midwest, the Northeast, and the South,” said the committee chairman, Senator Daniel K. Inouye (Democrat, Hawaii), in a prepared statement on 7 September. “Accordingly, the amounts could be adjusted as the affected bills continue to move through the legislative process if and when additional cost estimates are confirmed.”

      On 28 July, the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Financial Services and General Government, held a hearing on Federal Disaster Assistance Budgeting: "Are We Weather Ready?" [webcast], chaired by Senator Dick Durbin (Democrat, Illinois). According to a press release issued by Senator Durbin’s office:

      “…Durbin argued that the federal government should follow the lead of the private sector and begin to focus strategically on the long-term budgetary impacts of increasingly severe weather events. “We are not prepared. Our weather events are getting worse, catastrophic in fact,” said Durbin. “The private sector is prepared, but the federal government is ignoring the obvious. We need to do more to protect federal assets and respond to growing demands for disaster assistance on an increasing frequency.”

      Five years earlier, Eugene Linden said in the preface of his book, The Winds of Change: Climate, Weather, and the Destruction of Civilizations (2006): “If there is a message to take away from a look back at past predictions of potential calamity, it is that the risks of erring on the side of caution tend to be fewer than the costs of dismissing predicted threats out of hand.” In his excellent op-ed piece, Betting the Farm Against Climate Change, in The Miami Herald on 28 August – the day of Hurricane Irene’s landfall in New Jersey, he again warned of the costs of denial:

      “Leon Trotsky is reputed to have quipped, `You may not be interested in war, but war is interested in you.' Substitute the words `climate change' for `war' and the quote is perfectly suited for the governors of Texas, Oklahoma and New Mexico, all of whom have ridiculed or dismissed the threat of climate change even as their states suffer record-breaking heat and drought.”

      He says that while they “dismiss climate change, a changing climate imposes costs on their states and the rest of us as well.” Linden warns that there are “real economic costs of mispricing this risk” and that influential deniers -- including those governors -- are “betting the farm” that global warming is a myth. “In the states governed by climate-change deniers — and in the nation as a whole, where we are doing too little to address the threat of a warming globe — nature seems to be calling that bet,” Linden concludes."
      _____________

      Occam's Razor.

    • 4 months ago
  • JanforGore
  • JanforGore
  • IceKat
    • -1
      IceKat  
    • JanforGore:

      Agreed. This chart should be covered in white like it has been for all the other years since ____(fill in the gap). Notice how man's use of fossil fuels targeted Texas last year. Next year it could be you. You never know when the dangerous trace gas will strike next. Hold onto your hats, folks... "it's worse than we thought".

    • 4 months ago
  • IceKat
    • 0
      IceKat  
    • Image
    • JanforGore:

      Just 4.53ppm of CO2 turned this chart showing a nicely balanced year (2009) into the chart Jan presents above (2011).
      Notice also how this nice year happened during a year when CO2 was dangerously(!) above the "safe" 350ppm line.
      Notice also how Texas is turned from a pleasant state with normal precipitation into a virtual desert, and all because you added more CO2 to the air.
      Think of the Polar bears... God save the Maldives!!!

    • 4 months ago
  • ThatCrazyLibertarian
  • MSII
    • +1
      MSII  
    • ThatCrazyLibertarian:

      Same as here in PA. neighbour, absolutely crazy extremes, hell we even had a earthquake (yes not "weather" exactly, but you know)! Which is just -not- the kind of thing associated with PA.! likewise, bizarrely warm (for the most part) winter so far.

    • 5 months ago
  • Mishima
    • -5
      Mishima  

    • Rabid Anti-Capitalists see America as the main threat to the world’s environment. Many of these miscreants and dissemblers emphasize environmental issues because this touches on everything from what we wear, how we travel, and even what we eat; it also serves the additional function of being anti-capitalist because “profits” can be linked to harming the environment.

    • 5 months ago
  • JanforGore
    • +5
      JanforGore  
    • Mishima:

      Wrong. Any system that destroys the life systems we need to survive is detrimental. SUSTAINABLE capitalism is actually where many companies are heading and it is the way capitalism should be. A system that places emphasis on morality, longterm sustainability and not making profit at the expense of the Earth's systems which then effects the health and future of its citizens. Your broad stroke here is way amiss. More like RW "watermelon" propaganda actually.

    • 5 months ago
  • noxidereus
    • +5
      noxidereus  
    • Mishima:

      It couldn't be that people actually care about the environment, right? It's just that people who have rabies generally enjoy being anti-capitalist for its own sake and environment issues are a tool to that end. That makes perfect sense to me. Perfectly nonsensical.

    • 5 months ago
  • joeredford
  • tverdell
  • MSII
    • +2
      MSII  
    • noxidereus:

      The laissez-faire fanatical (un)holy believers crowd can't be reasoned with, I give you and Jan major points for the strength to try! It's all religion to them, their mad "beliefs" (probably tied in with the desperate desire for jezuz to come and destroy the world, so go ahead and use it up now for precious holy-profit according to "prosperity gospel").

    • 5 months ago
  • MSII
    • 0
      MSII  
    • tverdell:

      Laissez-faire-style-american-capitalism is the absolute enemy. Sane countries have the sense to control rampant, cancerous capitalism, to use it, control it's strongly destructive tendencies. typical of "the right" (who aren't right about anything), anything american is always absolute and perfect, the very gleam in their gods eye. So of course only american-style-capitalism is actual capitalism, the idea of it being practiced in any other way is nothing short of heresy.

    • 5 months ago
  • Mishima
    • -1
      Mishima  
    • JanforGore:

      Capitalism preserves the environment better than any other system. Look at what happened to fisheries when they were privatized, along with tree farming. The free market is the best way to help preserve the environment, of course.

    • 4 months ago
  • Mishima
  • Gravity_Man
    • -1
      Gravity_Man  
    • Mishima:

      President Hussein Obama is a reflection of the United Nations not Thomas Jefferson, so sure he has A WHITE HOUSE STUFFED WITH [U.N.-approved] CZARS.

      DUH. Obama is returning to the solid values. Bully for him, bully I say.

    • 4 months ago
  • Mishima
    • -1
      Mishima  
    • Gravity_Man:

      Exactly. President B. Hussein Obama would glady defer to the United Nations in his desire to "Europeanize" the greatest nation in the world - the world's EXCEPTIONAL nation!

    • 4 months ago
  • Gravity_Man
    • 0
      Gravity_Man  
    • Mishima:

      Hmm. That makes Obama an agent working for the United Nations Member nations eh? HAHAHA The President is double dipping (drawing two paychecks).

      Barack Hussein Obama is a Black 007 (plus active assassin of the United States Constitution). However, that being said, undoubtedly it is the new U.S. direction so we must listen to him and give the President our full support!

      We "out here" cannot possibly know what all the Variables are that lead Brother Obama to do these things. We have to trust our Commander-in-Chief!

    • 4 months ago
  • Mishima
    • -1
      Mishima  
    • Gravity_Man:

      Why not read the posts before giving a knee-JERK reaction?

      I will explain this one, but if you persist in writing fatuous dribble, deliberately distorting what I wrote, I won't explain again, of course.

      I wrote "would glady defer."

      If you still cannot comprehend, please ask someone upstairs from your basement.

    • 4 months ago
  • Gravity_Man
    • 0
      Gravity_Man  
    • Mishima:

      You're white trash calling me those names. You boy, had best consult others better than yourself before taking me on. I'll chew you up and spit you in the ditch for laying such trash talk on me.

    • 4 months ago
  • Mishima
  • JanforGore
  • JanforGore
  • JanforGore
  • JanforGore
  • Mishima
  • Mishima
  • tommic
    • 0
      tommic  
    • Mishima:

      Fisherman have created their own crisis overfishing , raping the ocans of adult of spawning fish. No government regulation is the problem, the only thing halting the decimation of species

    • 4 months ago
  • Mishima
    • -1
      Mishima  
    • tommic:

      Are you aware of the lobstermen in Maine and the gorillas in Africa?

      Saved by free market capitalism.

      The gorilla story is the more interesting. Seems that the GOVERNMENT outlawed it, set up preserves and even had it policed and guarded.

      The gorillas were still being decimated. No change.

      Another area was turned over to the private sector: They set it up for tourism - stores, restaurants, guides, and their own police. Well, the authorities found poachers - MURDERED. The livelihood of the locals was at stake: If the gorillas disappeared, so did the tourists - from Japan, Europe, North America - who were bringing in loads of cash.

      Again, CAPITALISM BRINGING NOT ONLY PROSPERITY BUT PRESERVING THE ENVIRONMENT!

    • 4 months ago
  • noxidereus
    • +1
      noxidereus  
    • Mishima:

      Differing points of view are to be expected since we are all individuals. However, when you resort to propaganda instead of truth you reveal yourself to be either an unknowing victim of propaganda or a purposeful spreader of propaganda. Either of those possibilities would mean that your contribution to this conversation is not useful.

      Also, in determining the validity of global warming, one should look to the scientists, not politicians. Trying to determine truth in the words of politicians or the media, both of which are in the pockets of the elite, isn't going to be very fruitful at all, unless one wishes to be misled... and there are definitely some people who wish to be misled... because the truth is inconvenient. Inconvenient as it may be, man-made global warming is the truth. We can only solve such problems if we keep our conversations solidly in the realm of reality, which you have failed to do.

      Some of us will look for solutions. Others will look to misinform the public for the sake of profits and call us rabid anti-capitalists and the like because that's all they've got. Reality is wholly on our side. It is inevitable that the public will eventually catch on to this. It is only a matter of time.

    • 4 months ago
  • tommic
    • +1
      tommic  
    • Mishima:

      Your lack of knowledge is dumbfounding. Who polluted our great lakes, rivers, Aquifiers, love canal in Erie Pa thirty years ago? The private sector capitalists!! The lobstermen you speak of policed their own, the government had very little to do with it. The lobstermen recognized the continued depletion of spawning age females was going to destroy their own livlyhood. Trying to draw a parallel between Mountain Gorillas and the killing of them for trophies is nothing but corruption in Africa which is the norm not the exception. capitalism has run itself into the ground. The best example is the mortgage meltdown where unsavory mortgage brokers commited fraud in applications for potential homeowners inflating their incomes, selling them on adjustable rate mortgages, then when the shit hit the fan bundling those bad mortgages, w/standard & poor issuing AAA rating for the purchase and backed by credit default swaps which were not backed by any funds at all. I spare you the insults because thats why I left this format @ current for so long. because of rhetorical bullshit put forth by those who not know but think they do. Unfortunately for many I have had inside information on gov't as a very close relation of family is on constant retainer by the IRS to interpert new laws, and to advise Presidents fom R. Reagan to Obama and everyone in between. So I'll take what I know over what you say any day.

    • 4 months ago
  • Mishima
    • -2
      Mishima  
    • noxidereus:

      Show me specifically where I denied that there is any global warming, or please apologize.

      The mindset of the people who scream "crisis" and what they propose is the issue I brought up. Their goal is obvious, and unless you are part of it their agenda, you have been succumed to the indoctrination.

    • 4 months ago
  • Mishima
    • -1
      Mishima  
    • tommic:

      You leave out something very fundamental and essential: We need to stress and enforce liability laws, and let the free market release its bounty and accompanying liberties.

      Look at the BP oil spill compared to the one in the Gulf from the Mexican nationally-owned oil company. Guess which one cleaned it up and which one did not? Therein lies what your socialism produces, of course.

      Tree farms: Wherever people OWN the farms, they replant and take only those down which will be replaced: It takes, say, 10 years for a tree to reach Christmas tree height? Well, each year only 10% (or less) are cut down and that many replanted. When people got leases to government land, they cut down as many as they could, cutting down more than allowed if they could get away with it. We see the same with public housing and housing ownership.

      It is clear and obvious. The free market is best for the resources and the environment. Of course, one can dreg up examples of illegal activity or abuse, and the people involved should be punished severely. But overall, free market capitalism leads to preserving the environment. Ask farmers or lobster fishermen. See what happened with salmon. Virtually anything. Once the GOVERNMENT owns and distributes it, it is only a matter of time before it is abused and destroyed.

      Sorry.

    • 4 months ago
  • Mishima
    • -1
      Mishima  
    • tommic:

      You have taken too many steps. Any person who signed a mortgage did so voluntarily. I have never heard of a situation in which a person was FORCED into signing a mortgage loan. If you know of such a situation, please let me know.

      What companies did with the mortgages is an entirely different story, of course. The real issue is that people were irresponsible if they took out loans that they probably could not pay.

      The anti-capitalists claim that the realtors or banks "lied" to these poor, innocent VICTIMS. That is an absurd distortion and fabrication. First, a person APPLIES for a loan. Next, the person VOLUNTARILY requests a certain amount. Next, the person KNOWS that he has to pay and VOLUNTARILY signs a promise to do so.

      If someone lied to him or forged documents, he has legal recourse. That is what the free market is all about, and laws are necessary for it to function properly; that goes without saying.

      But if a person simply "took the word" of a salesman (the bank and realtor are selling something), and it is not in writing, then that person GETS WHAT HE DESERVES. Anytime you approach a salesman for a computer, a television, a car, or clothes, you will get a "sales pitch," of course. That is their job. If a person gives in to flattery when the salesman tells him or her how impressive he or she looks in that $1,000 jacket, well.... My friend had to get rid of all of the family's credit cards because his wife had such a problem, and he almost had to declare bankruptcy.

      Someone like you would place the blame on the salesman or the credit card company, of course......

    • 4 months ago
  • tommic
    • 0
      tommic  
    • Mishima:

      I have been reading your comments directed at everyone, you are an arrogant, know it all who thinks they are never wrong. I'm willing to bet all of your information comes from the internet and your real life experienced pales in comparison to mine. I will not argue with you on any given subject as you know all and everyone else is wrong, misdirected or buys into the lies. But you& I are done kaput. BYe Bye. I will never acknowledge you again. Not because you're right. your right wing alright but your not correct in your asessments of much.

    • 4 months ago
  • Gravity_Man
  • Mishima
    • 0
      Mishima  
    • tommic:

      No, I suspect that YOUR real life experiences pale in comparison to mine. In fact, if it were possible to place a bet, I would put one down right now.

      You are disgruntled, so you lash out. You claim I am arrogant and my information comes from the internet. Why not either limit your responses to the content, or ask from where I get my information, or about life experiences, if you think those are germaine.

      I am correct in my assessments, of course. You contend that I am not, then bow out and claim victory. Some victory. Kind of pathetic.

    • 4 months ago
  • Mishima
    • -5
      Mishima  

    • Anti-capitalists give what sound like “apocalyptic” warning that we have to solve one immanent crisis or another. This is very noticeable in the environmental movements. Richard Ellis, in "The Dark Side of the Left," explains the method:

      "If people can become persuaded that nature is fragile and that the slightest misstep may result in cataclysmic consequences for the human species, then it becomes difficult to resist arguments and policies that would rein in the acquisitive entrepreneur in the name of the collectivity."

      In other words, it provides an excuse to attack capitalists.

    • 5 months ago
  • noxidereus
    • +4
      noxidereus  
    • Mishima:

      Those damn scientists! What are they thinking? Using science to understand what is going on is anti-capitalist! Their facts are cutting into profits! Facts are anti-capitalist too! And rabid. And miscreant.

    • 5 months ago
  • rerushg
    • +4
      rerushg  
    • noxidereus:

      I admire your ability and determination, nox, but you may have better things to do. These two are paid disruptors with scripts. Note the trending topic in MSM right now, "anti-capitalism". So Mishima's handlers give it to him as his buzz-phrase for the day.
      They have no interest in contributing to the dialog, just disrupting it. If you make the salient point (as you did in the Ron Paul discussion), it's twisted and discarded as irrelevant in the face of vastly superior knowledge. If you press them for justification you are overburdening them. Finally, as IceKat says here, if you persist you are persecuting them.

    • 5 months ago
  • noxidereus
  • IceKat
    • -3
      IceKat  
    • rerushg:

      "Finally, as IceKat says here, if you persist you are persecuting them."

      Show me where I wrote that? You just like to make things up, and as for "paid disruptors with scripts", prove it or tell us who is paying you.

    • 5 months ago
  • MSII
  • rerushg
    • +2
      rerushg  
    • IceKat:

      You're kidding, right?
      In your reply to Mishima 3 hours ago (as of 1:00PM EST)

      "Absolutely. Just because I don't believe man is the cause of today's weather, I am villified and insulted here. I must hate people. I must have no feeling. I must be a virtual anti-Christ"

    • 5 months ago
  • IceKat
    • -2
      IceKat  
    • rerushg:

      Very nice twist. Sorry, I didn't realize I was dealing with yet another zealot.

      And about this "paid disruptors with scripts", any chance of some proof there?
      I tell you something, if you want to see accusations of harassment and persecution look no further than your alarmist in chief's meltdown earlier this week. Now that was something to see.

    • 5 months ago
  • IceKat
    • -5
      IceKat  

    • So almost half of the United States had a 'normal' amount of wet/dry. Of course there is a correct amount of wet/dry, isn't there? And all this happening during the 23rd warmest year! Oh yes, surely some correlation there, then!
      As we all know, 1998 was the warmest year of the last three decades, yet a look at the chart doesn't show excessive wet/dry during that time. Spot the correlation to "Global Warming".
      Maybe this is all down to something other than man's CO2 emissions? No... couldn't possibly be...

    • 5 months ago
  • Mishima
    • -5
      Mishima  
    • IceKat:

      These anti-capitalists use special terms and categories. The tacit implication is that if you are not in agreement with them, you possess the negative qualities of the terms. For instance, if one criticizes the peace or environmental movement for the extremism of either, then one is, by implication, against peace or protecting the environment; or, conversely, one supports war or is complicit in raping and destroying the environment.

      Thomas Sowell, referring these types as the “Anointed,” points to three additional reasons for these buzzwords:

      (1) Preempt issues rather than debate them.
      (2) Set the anointed and the benighted on different moral and intellectual planes.
      (3) Evade the issue of personal responsibility.

    • 5 months ago
  • IceKat
    • -3
      IceKat  
    • Mishima:

      Absolutely. Just because I don't believe man is the cause of today's weather, I am vilified and insulted here. I must hate people. I must have no feeling. I must be a virtual anti-Christ.
      Sometimes it's fascinating to watch how these people think and operate, and it is often quite amusing to see how they take themselves so seriously at times. What strange egos these people must have that they see themselves as self-appointed guardians of the future.

    • 5 months ago
  • Gravity_Man
  • Mishima
    • 0
      Mishima  
    • IceKat:

      Liberals excel at demonizing people who object to their agenda, and there are countless sobriquets from which to choose in their “dictionary.” For example, if you invoke love of country or declarations of patriotism, you are likely to be branded as benighted, a jingoist, a war-monger or as simply unenlightened.

      F.Scott Fitzgerald’s comment about the Old Left whom he encountered is quite apropos:

      "[W]hatever you say, they have ways of twisting it into shapes which put you into some lower category of mankind,…and disparage you both intellectually and personally in the process."

    • 4 months ago
  • Mishima
  • Gravity_Man
    • 0
      Gravity_Man  
    • Mishima:

      Capitalism in collusion with Money is deleterious to mankind also. The whole garbage pail needs to be dumped IT'S STINKING UP THE PLANET. On the surface "free market" sounds very paradisaic of you but the reality always shakes down to DOG EAT DOG (CANNIBALISM = ECONOMIC CANNIBAL SYSTEM).

    • 4 months ago
  • Mishima
    • 0
      Mishima  
    • Gravity_Man:

      The free market has taken man out of the sewer and given us liberty.

      What do you mean by "Capitalism in collusion with Money?"

      Capitalism in collusion with GOVERNMENT is the problem. The anti-capitalists want the GOVERNMENT to manage the economy, and that is the problem. The government interventions in the 1930s, for example, prolonged the Great Depression by about SEVEN (7) years according to researchers at UCLA.

    • 4 months ago
  • Gravity_Man
    • 0
      Gravity_Man  
    • Mishima:

      So long as we CHILDREN have to use money we may as well be strapped on a barerel going over Niagara Falls every day.

      We don't use money we serve it. Money has become humanity's Taskmaster, like sweating through every day under a grueling Egyptian sun.

      What we need is Energy from Gravity/Solar/Wind only then can we be enjoying the Freedom we claim we have but do not.

      We live in servitude to the "Almighty Dollar". We may as well be Victor Mature playing Samson pushing the grain grinding stone in a damn circle every day. Well, I dislike shoving heavy stones in a circle and the rest of you are Major Fools for accepting such an ignominious fate.

    • 4 months ago
  • Gravity_Man
    • 0
      Gravity_Man  
    • Mishima:

      Money has become an Entity in itself. As an ENTITY it has become equal to a human being. It pulls a seat up to the card table as an equal PERSON.

      Therefore, everything we produce gets sliced into half. One half goes to us and one half goes to all the Entity's little chillun.

      Unless of course you achieve Wealth. In a regular person's case when you go to the supermarket and buy a slab of $6.00 Mozzarella that $6.00 represents an hour's take-home wage. Whereas a Rich Person that $6.00 slab of cheese or meat whatever only takes them half a minute out of their take-home pay.

      Now sir, if you wish to talk FAIR then what we need to do is move everything away from Set Pricings over to Relative Pricing, so in that case the Rich Person in the supermarket line who has an annual salary of $10,000,000.00 would have to pay the Check-Out person $20,000.00 for the slab of cheese or meat whatever that you and I pay $6.00 to walk out the door with.

      Then we'd be talking 100% Fair. And as everyone already knows my good fellow => Fair is Fair. There is however an up side to all this fairness because if the Rich Person was paying $500,000. 00 for a new car while we pay $20,000.00 for the same car then you will quickly deduce the cost of new automobiles will PLUMMET FOR THE AVERAGE JOE AND JANE CONSUMERS.

      At which point JOE AND JANE CONSUMER would be able to walk into any car dealership in America and plunk down $1,500.00 for a BRAND NEW RANGE ROVER OR SUV. When that happens the United States entire economy would be doing better than the miners in 1849 Gold Rush California USA.

    • 4 months ago
  • Mishima
    • -2
      Mishima  
    • Gravity_Man:

      I do not live in servitude to the "dollar." It is unfortunate that you do and see yourself as a slave.

      I can suggest ways to emancipate yourself, and I am sure many other of the posters here can, too. I am sorry to know you view yourself like that.

    • 4 months ago
  • Mishima
  • Gravity_Man
    • 0
      Gravity_Man  
    • Gravity_Man:

      Such a "Relative Pricing" applied ACROSS-THE-BOARD for every Purchased Item would bring this US Economy back online FAST. The cheese would no longer cost "The Poor" that $6.00 => it would now cost $0.75 cents. And if "The Poor" were only plunking down $1,500.00 per new vehicle & 75 cents for a slab of meat or cheese then "The Poor" would NO LONGER EXIST IN AMERICA.

      Which good people would totally erase the "need" for Social programs such as Medicare and Social Security. We would all be on a Cash-Pay System.

    • 4 months ago
  • Gravity_Man
    • 0
      Gravity_Man  
    • Gravity_Man:

      And the Biggie => Home Purchases! The no longer Poor strata infesting the US Economy would now be able to pay off their Home Mortgages the way they used to pay off their cars => IN SEVEN YEARS.

      You Mr. Mishima are the Doom Pusher now. My answers rock.

    • 4 months ago
  • coolplanet
    • +5
      coolplanet  

    • I learned about this in college science class 30 years ago before it was called global warming. Back then they called it the Greenhouse Effect.
      I have never liked the vague term Climate Change. The deniers have a point when they say there has always been climate change.
      What this really is is a Climate Meltdown.

    • 5 months ago
  • Gravity_Man
    • 0
      Gravity_Man  
    • coolplanet:

      That's true, Greenhouse Effect, I remember. But what everybody missed INCLUDING ICEKAT is that the majority of it was being caused OVER AMERICAN SOIL. That's probably why we WERE able to affect the planet's weather => it was a matter of terrifically unequal concentration.

      We should be sued by every Nation on Earth, except we could plead insanity and win on the preponderance of Energy ignorance.

    • 5 months ago
  • EmperorThan
    • +2
      EmperorThan  

    • It's unfortunate that we only have the one planet to test anything on to fix the problem. I have a feeling that all weather in the future will have to be human created and maintained weather. We made the mistake of thinking the planet was too big to be affected by the decisions of one single small species, us.

      Every human alive today on Earth could fit shoulder to shoulder within Los Angeles city limits according to National Geographic as part of their 7 billion people stuff this last year.

    • 5 months ago
  • coolplanet
  • IceKat
  • Gravity_Man
    • 0
      Gravity_Man  
    • coolplanet:

      And yet we are still dinosaur! We run like that herd in Jurassic Park from one thread to the next searching for new grass to graze.

      Waiting for the BIG ASTEROID THAT IS US, THE BOOMERANG FROM HELL => OURSELVES AND OUR ~HAHAHA~ "TECHNOLOGY".

    • 5 months ago
  • Anonmaly
    • 0
      Anonmaly  

    • People don't care.... It's all about making money, socialising, consuming...

      Rampant deforestation, strip mining for coal all those other fossil fuels once we consume them, industrial farming, just about all industry for that matter, etc, etc....... All feeding climate change...

      Still convinced greedy psychopathic pigs will kill us all...

    • 5 months ago
  • coolplanet
  • Vierotchka
    • +7
      Vierotchka  
    • Image

    • Meanwhile...

      http://news.sciencemag.org/sciencenow/2012/01/global-warming-may-trigger-winte.h...

      Global Warming May Trigger Winter Cooling

      It seems counterintuitive, even ironic, that global warming could cause some regions to experience colder conditions. But a new study explains the Rube Goldberg-machine of climatic processes that can link warmer-than-average summers to harsh winter weather in some parts of the Northern Hemisphere.

      In general, global average temperatures have been rising since the late 1800s, but the most rapid warming has occurred in the past 40 years. And average temperatures in the Arctic have been rising at nearly twice the global rate, says Judah Cohen, a climate modeler at the consulting firm Atmospheric and Environmental Research in Lexington, Massachusetts. Despite that trend, winters in the Northern Hemisphere have grown colder and more extreme in southern Canada, the eastern United States, and much of northern Eurasia, with England's record-setting cold spell in December 2010 as a case in point.

      A close look at climate data from 1988 through 2010, including the extent of land and sea respectively covered by snow and ice, helps explain how global warming drives regional cooling, Cohen and his colleagues report online today in Environmental Research Letters. In their study, the researchers combined climate and weather data from a variety of sources to estimate Eurasian snow cover, and then they speculated about how that factor might have influenced winter weather elsewhere in the Northern Hemisphere.

      First, the strong warming in the Arctic in recent decades, among other factors, has triggered widespread melting of sea ice. More open water in the Arctic Ocean has led to more evaporation, which moisturizes the overlying atmosphere, the researchers say. Previous studies have linked warmer-than-average summer months to increased cloudiness over the ocean during the following autumn. That, in turn, triggers increased snow coverage in Siberia as winter approaches. As it turns out, the researchers found, snow cover in October has the largest effect on climate in subsequent months.

      That's because widespread autumn snow cover in Siberia strengthens a semipermanent high-pressure system called, appropriately enough, the Siberian high, which reinforces a climate phenomenon called the Arctic Oscillation and steers frigid air southward to midlatitude regions throughout the winter.

      (more at link)

    • 5 months ago
  • JanforGore
    • +4
      JanforGore  
    • Vierotchka:

      High pressure systems in the Arctic can redirect northern cold jetstreams further south than normal, producing more severe winter weather. The excess high pressure systems may be the result of melting Arctic ice, which research is pointing to.

    • 5 months ago
  • IceKat
    • -4
      IceKat  
    • Image
    • JanforGore:

      I bet you couldn't explain to anyone how CO2 causes a high pressure system to form, and how, if CO2 concentrations were 50ppm lower, that same high pressure system either would not form, or would be of a lower pressure.
      Then try explaining how, at barely 3% of the CO2 concentration being due to anthropogenic emissions, man could be responsible for a high pressure system.
      Then maybe you can explain what you mean by excess high pressure systems? And what is wrong with the system that drives these high pressure areas.
      Then how about explaining why the long-term temperature anomaly stands at barely +0.1degree Celsius, down from a peak of +0.8 degrees Celsius last century, refusing to be driven by CO2.

      Also, if Hansen is such an important figure in the world of climate science, why are temperatures still below his scenario-C prediction of 1988?

      “Scenario A assumes continued exponential trace gas growth, scenario B assumes a reduced linear linear growth of trace gases, and scenario C assumes a rapid curtailment of trace gas emissions such that the net climate forcing ceases to increase after the year 2000.”

      Global temperatures remain lower than they should be according to Hansen. As emissions have continued to rise, temperatures should be at least as high as Hansen's scenario-A, i.e. the anomaly should be around +1.2 degrees Celsius, yet they remain hovering around +0.1 degrees Celsius. Why?

      In most branches of science when the results fall way short of what was predicted it's time to have a serious re-think. Not in the crazy world of the extremists, though, all they have to say is "it's worse than we thought"!!!

      You always accuse those nasty "deniers" of having nothing of substance, so there you go, some pertinent questions that really need to be answered.

    • 5 months ago
  • JanforGore
    • +3
      JanforGore  
    • IceKat:

      I unlike you do not assume that everyone else here is ignorant. You think you know it all by throwing some made up numbers around. Warmer air expands and that does have an effect on air pressure and the jet stream. I'm not going to sit here constantly going one on one with you in some ridiculous ego contest you have going here to assuage your own grudges. And you are not "villified" here because you don't "believe" humans are causing it. Funny you didn't say "know." Your "I LOVE CO2" mantra gives away why you are here and many have enough sense to see that and your arrogant demeanor towards everyone on this site. So cry me a river.

    • 5 months ago
  • IceKat
    • -2
      IceKat  
    • JanforGore:

      Can't answer simple questions Jan?
      Once again you show your lack of knowledge and credibility.

      My "arrogant demeanor" isn't directed at everyone on this site, only to those who deserve it.

      Of course I love CO2, try living without it!!!

    • 5 months ago
  • rerushg
  • JanforGore
  • JanforGore
    • +5
      JanforGore  

    • http://current.com/technology/93602907_climate-extremes-2011-part-2-the-u-s-gets...

      Recap of U.S. 2011 from Climate Extremes Group

      Disclaimer: The events depicted in this video and the remaining two parts are of global /U.S. climate extremes for 2011 that were "unusual or extreme" in scope and/or fit the trend that suggests the strongest link between anthropogenic global warming and weather events through extreme precipitation events, floods and droughts. Nothing was inferred by this video and any such inferment placed on this by the viewer is based on their own preconceptions and biases. All photos depict the events and all information was gleaned from public sources for educational purposes as noted at the conclusion of the video.

      About the Climate Extremes Group:
      This group is for documentation of the extreme climate/weather events that have taken place around the globe and continue to affect our water, agriculture, ecosystems, economy and way of life. Connecting the dots on this is essential to preparation, adaptation and survival.

    • 5 months ago
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