Deep South Deep Freeze (1 Viewer)

I've always enjoyed New Orleans winters. No doubts about it. They are mild to cool. Except this year, we've had snow twice in the same winter season. Right now the city is almost shut down because nobody has running water. We have yet to come above freezing this morning. I'm seeing news reports of various places around us where the weather is extremely cold even for a New Orleans winter. The "global warming" crowd had to change to "global climate change" because they saw temperatures falling all over the place.

There is a headline in Yahoo News regarding the Yakutia region (east of Moscow) where the temperatures hit -67 C (-88.6 F). When the Saints were in Minneapolis, the temperatures there were in the 13 F range by day and they were headed to 1 degree F for the night. A bit cold for my blood. We are a pretty easy area to live in most of the time, but when the major high-rise overpasses ice over, this city shuts down.

For those of you who were considering a visit to New Orleans for Mardi Gras, this year it is early and everyone will have to bundle up in warm costumes. Since Mardi Gras is based on Easter and Easter is a lunar holiday, the date varies. We have a month to warm up some, but I'm not betting on it being a really good warm-up. Probably won't see a LOT of skin-exposing costumes this year, though there will always be die-hards. But the human form of anti-freeze will be used to fullest effect, I'm sure.

The celebration this year will be extra special because it is the 300th anniversary of the founding of our fair city, a tricentennial year. We will have lots of parties - which we would have had anyway - but the promoters are looking for special talent lineups.

I hope that our southern hemisphere contingents from Australia and New Zealand are enjoying a warm spell. Plus of course our India and any South Africa members! I don't recall that we have seen too many from South America. Have I just missed recognizing them?

That earlier talk of anti-freeze gives me an idea. Perhaps I'll shut down this little chat in favor of taking precautions to keep my blood flowing without too many ice crystals. Cheers!

Global Warming is a misnomer and has been such for years. Climate scientists specifically changed to using 'Climate Change' because people who refuse to accept actual proven evidence continue to conflate 'weather' with 'climate', when they have entirely two different meanings.

Saying that 'Global Warming' is obviously fake because it's cold is effectively the same thing as saying that world hunger has been eradicated because you had breakfast this morning, that disease no longer exists because you're healthy, or that poverty has been eradicated because you have money in your savings account. It can be cold locally, and yet the overall temperature of the planet continues to climb year after year after year.

Reality works in strange ways sometimes; as one example, the very idea that time slows down as you accelerate really makes no logical sense (until you get math involved, anyway), yet it was both predicted and successfully measured. (Yes, that's an extreme simplification, but this isn't the place to discuss diverging frames of reference and the Twin Paradox.) Similarly, the increased energy generated by ongoing climate change has intensified weather patterns around the world, including the Jet Stream. One effect of this change is that the Jet Stream is actually PUSHING arctic air off of the North Pole and down over the Eastern US, resulting in frigid winters here in the States and ESPECIALLY along the Eastern Seaboard.

If you want, another unexpected result would be what would happen if the Greenland glaciers finish melting: the cold water dumped into the Atlantic would push a MAJOR warm current much farther south. This warm current is actually a primary moderating influence on Europe's weather, so its absence would drive Western Europe into an ice age even as Greenland bakes...at least until continually rising CO2 and methane levels warm the Earth even more and even Europe starts getting baked dry.

You're supposed to be an educated man. Please at least TRY to use that brain to understand something more than 'it's cold outside my house, so it's cold everywhere!'. There's more to how the world works than what Fox tells you.

Doc, I don’t much about meteorology. I took a 200 level course at ERAU which turned out to be MUCH harder than I had anticipated which gave me a better appreciation for their work.

That being said, the missus and I spent Christmas and New Years in the Arctic Circle, a thriving little town called Rovaniemi. Had one hell of a time mushing huskies, riding snowmobiles and observing the Auroa Borialis (looked a lot like MarkK’s avatar- but what I found really interesting is that the temperature there hovered at 0 to -3 C (about 32 to 27 F) while Virginia suffered much lower temps.

Had someone told me that was possible, I would have lost a LOT of money betting against it.

Doc how dare you! You know good and well its micro climate. Its off to the reeducation camps for you.

Here Here AccessBlaster!!!!

Everyone KNOWS that the climate never varied prior to mankind's interference! And it wasn't until our Saint, Al Gore, started spreading the word that we could really appreciate how horribly humans have affected this world! Let us not forget that 2013 was the last year we had ice in the Arctic.

NG must of course be talking about a time prior to this...

I detect sarcasm...

Actually, I was just commenting on crazy weather. New Orleans doesn't GET this cold.

Guys, I know for a fact that the weather is running in extremes world-wide. I am not a denier of the existence of weather disruption.

On the other hand, you guys aren't doing due diligence on the research. The consensus that the weather effects are of man-made origin is just not there. Yes I said it and yes I meant it. I have found articles by Nobel Prize winning physicists who dispute in detail the cause-and-effect papers that claim the weather effects are caused by greenhouse gases. Many reputable scientists suggest two things.

1. Natural long-term Earth cycles are the cause of this wild weather cycle.

2. Very liberal Liberal grant money is the cause of the excess numbers of papers on the idea of man-made causes for the effects in question. (Carefully note that one of those "liberals" was capitalized - it was not an accidental doubling of the word.)

My position regarding the polluting gases is not irrational - but it might differ from the position that some of you hold. I am absolutely certain that a large number of those climate-change-as-man's-evil papers are nothing but pursuit of government grants and liberal think-tank grants. (Which makes me sometimes wonder if "liberal think-tank" is an oxymoron.) The science in the papers is just NOT THAT STRONG. A lot of the papers deal in correlations, not cause-and-effect. They do not do studies that would eliminate chance correlations, parallel hidden correlations, and (worst of all) correlations caused by such high noise level that the statistical validity of the correlation is somewhat akin to deriving a straight-line correlation by firing a shotgun at distant graph paper.

However, the "smoking gun" mechanistic papers exist and number in the tens of thousands (over the past couple of decades.) it is absolutely certain without doubt and without question that pollution causes respiratory diseases that will harm children, stunt their growth, interfere with other aspects of their development, and in general do no good for us. For THAT reason, I would like to see more done to control emissions.

If it HAPPENS that fixing the pollution to curb the disease-inducing effects ALSO helps with the environmental disruption, it wouldn't break my heart. All I ask of you is to understand that men of good will can disagree without intent of malice. I hold no malice to the believers in "greenhouse gas causes global weather disruption." Please note that we have the same goal of reducing pollution but come there from different directions. And try to hold no malice to me for thinking differently than you do.

The VAST majority of expert opinion is that the evidence for climate change is extremely strong.

The impact is not consistent from place to place or year to year but globally the trend is not only clear but ongoing and probably accelerating.

There are many reasons for this - not least because melting of polar ice reduces the reflectivity of the earth leading to greater heat absorption

It may be that a feedback loop will at some point start to cancel the effects but there is no sign of this as yet.

It is always possible to find 'experts' in any field who hold a contrary view to the consensus.
However that doesn't mean that those holding the opposite opinion are correct.

There are still scientists who maintain that smoking isn't harmful - many of course paid by the tobacco industry.
Some creationists still believe every word & date in the bible should be taken as fact.
Flat earthers still exist.
It seems there are millions in America who believe Donald Trump is sane, stable and not a racist.
Millions of British citizens still believe Brexit is a good idea

That doesn't mean that any of those are correct.....

Ridders, there's no point.

He has shown repeatedly that he is uninterested in any facts or evidence that don't match his preconceived opinions.

Frothingslosh said:

Similarly, the increased energy generated by ongoing climate change has intensified weather patterns around the world, including the Jet Stream. One effect of this change is that the Jet Stream is actually PUSHING arctic air off of the North Pole and down over the Eastern US, resulting in frigid winters here in the States and ESPECIALLY along the Eastern Seaboard.

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Not quite.

The effect on the Jet Stream is to slow it, because the differential temperature between the Arctic and Tropics that drives it has reduced due to much greater warming in the Arctic than the rest of the planet. Arctic temperatures have risen by around five degrees Celsius (nine degrees F).

The slower Jet Stream makes much greater meanders. The weather patterns either side of it bring cold weather further south and warm weather further north. Moreover these patterns tend to stall in the same place much longer.

While temperatures have changed in the past we are now experiencing record temperatures year after year rather than the odd warm year among the variability.

Moreover there can be no doubt that the total heat on the planet is greater than it has been in a very long time. So yes it is both Global Warming and Climate Change.

Some say it is natural cycles but none can point to what would be behind the putative cycles. Meanwhile extensive and ever more detailed climate modelling indicates that the changes we see are consistent with the rise in greenhouse gasses.

Nobel prizes mean nothing if they are not in the areas of science dealing with the Climate Change issue. Moreover, drilling down into the background of any of the scientists claiming that Climate Change is a hoax reveals they have pecuniary interests or chronic deniers going way back.

The_Doc_Man said:

On the other hand, you guys aren't doing due diligence on the research. The consensus that the weather effects are of man-made origin is just not there.

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So you consider a consensus to mean 100 percent? That won't happen but we are not very far short of it. According to the prevailing scientific opinion, the levels of certainty have reached "beyond reasonable doubt", despite your assertions.

Would you deny that it has at least reached "on the balance of probability"?

Given the dire affects projected from "business as usual" and the enormous cost of mitigation, don't you think it makes sense to act on the balance of probability alone?

Deniers have been on a slippery slope for years. You are behind the times still being on the "natural cycles" phase.

They started by denying that there was any change.
When observations made that position became untenable they went to "natural cycles".
Then when the evidence for human influence became too strong they went to "hotter will be better".
Then when the terrible effects began to show they went to "we can't do anything about it".
Now, as solar and wind energy and storage systems costs continue to plummet to below the cost of coal and oil they are really beginning to look ridiculous.
It is becoming undeniable that too many governments are at the behest of big fossil fuel interests and pandering to those interests is costing us big time.

Just to add fuel to the fire,

Historically we've seen massive differences in the climate in different parts of the world. At one time the Sahara was a savanna, what is now the Southern United States had two growing seasons (about the same time Erik the Red started getting people to immigrate to "Greenland") and prior to the arrival of humanity, the Mediterranean sea was empty.

Admitted the last was about 5 million years ago...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Messinian_salinity_crisis

Truth be told, the climate changes on this planet and we can't stop it from doing so. Only a very self important narcissist would make claim such as this. We can identify factors that contribute to warming or cooling. We can't stop this behavior though, at least until someone can arrange for solar weather to be controlled.

I will side with Doc on good reasons to control that which we put into the atmosphere. I am a tad skeptical of those who trade on fear though, so if you make your money by selling "Carbon Credits" after prostlytizing about an ice-less Arctic, I see you as having just as vested an interest in selling "Climate change" as oil companies have in denying it. Likewise I'm as skeptical of "Science" paid for by a given industry, even if said industry is "Green".

Do you guys know the largest source of the most commonly accused greenhouse gas in Earth's atmosphere?

Methane comes from bovine exhalation associated with rumination (in this case, the literal biological meaning of that word) and termite farts from fallen, wet trees being broken down in rain forests. More methane is emitted from those two sources than from all transportation-related (man-made) sources combined in the whole world. The ocean also emits methane as it bubbles up from deep sources. Our Earth is a giant methane maker. It puts us to shame in terms of how much it creates.

Frothingslosh said:

He has shown repeatedly that he is uninterested in any facts or evidence that don't match his preconceived opinions.

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No. I have repeatedly stated - with I hope some consistency - that if it is bad science, then it is worthy of skepticism. The evidence is clear that we are undergoing climate changes. We've done that before in a big way, most recently in a mini-ice-age in the late 1800s. There was another such ice age in the early Renaissance. You know what comes between ice ages? THAWING ages where things get warmer. And those prior situations occurred world wide and without Man's industrial-economic manufacturing emissions to drive it.

Go on, hate me if you like. I'm a skeptic. It takes a lot to convince me. The mechanistic papers about disease vectors based in pollution DID convince me. SO I guess there ARE things in this world that can sway me. Forgive me if I'm a tough sell.

Galaxiom said:

Would you deny that it has at least reached "on the balance of probability"?

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Juries don't convict on "balance of probability." They convict on certainty.

The articles about pollution causing disease aren't probably right. They are CERTAINLY right because the low-level molecular pathways have been traced step by step.

On balance of probability based on polls, Hillary was going to beat Donald.

On balance of probability, the philosophical theory of matter divisibility was not accepted until it was actually demonstrated by experiment.

On balance of probability, chemical explosions were the most powerful destructive forces available - until Project Trinity at Alamagordo.

Probability is what you use when you don't have a strong answer. Yes, I play the odds when I don't have all the answers. But I am aware that I don't NEED the odds here. I already have a solid reason to clean up pollution that happens to NOT need the climate-change-as-man's-evil papers. I guess I read the respiratory-disease-as-man's-evil papers first.

Do you think I DON'T understand the solution associated with what you suggest? I'll tell you how much I've thought about it.

The REAL solution to this problem is one the Liberals don't want you to understand. Because IF the problem of global climate change really IS due to Man's increased manufacturing by-products, then the solution is depopulation. Not "cutting back on cars" or "cutting back on pollution from factories" or stuff like that. Doing it that way, you are attacking the problem in the middle, when you need to attack it at its source.

The reason those pollution sources are growing with increased intensity is because the world's population is growing. They are DEMANDING more products and energy. If you really want to reduce pollution, you have to reduce the makers of pollution - which you can only do if you reduce the demand that leads to the pollution.

So... which nations are we going to penalize by saying "You can't have any more" or "you can't make any more" or "you can't consume any more" ???

Does anyone remember how wars get started? WW II started when Germany had to conquer and pillage nations in Europe because their economy was collapsing and they needed more than they had. Japan was doing similar things to Nanking and other parts of China, again because of limits placed on them at the time. Didn't work so well, did it?

Pick a few more wars. Some were political, some were religious - but some were internal revolutions. A populace tries to overthrow their government when not enough resources reach them, so in dissatisfaction, they revolt. Starving Bolsheviks started a revolution in Russia? Economically oppressed and over-taxed American farmers started a revolution in the Colonies? I'm sure you can name others.

So... what if Man really IS the cause? The solution is to have fewer people because if you don't kill off the demand, one way or another the supply WILL be maintained. Through peace or through war. Man is an altruistic animal only when NOT in times of need. Sorry to appear so cynical - but then again, I have always defined that word as "realistic."

To say the climate change does not exist is ludicrous. To assume it is influenced my man is egotistical and just as ludicrous.

Almost as insane as when Hank Johnson proposed Guam would tip over if we stationed too many Marines over there. Holy shit Batman, where do folks come up with this stuff??

As has been mentioned by others in this post, informed, intelligent opposing points can be made on either side of this. We just choose to pick which one makes the most sense to us which just so happens to be the one we choose most to beleive.

Fact is we just don’t really know. One thing I DO know is it is COLD outside and my coffee has never tasted better and that’s is good enough to get me through the damn day.

Thank you for understanding, Gent.

To those of you who were in some way upset, I wasn't actually heading this way. I really WAS just standing at the WaterCooler and commenting/complaining about unusually bad weather that has hit my area. It would appear that it quickly escalated. But then, this IS the WaterCooler, after all.

I'll go do some tech support for a while or watch YouTube videos of a capella artists like Pentatonix or someone like that.

The_Doc_Man said:

... or watch YouTube videos of a capella artists like Pentatonix or someone like that.

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A favorite of mine from a The Sing Off. Pity that show never really took off. There was this other group on the last season that I really wanted to see more of, but they didn’t last long. If you run out of Pentatonix material, take a look at Street Corner Renaissance. Their rendition of Sam Cook’s Saturday Night is fantastic.

I would recommend the same to Frothingslosh as well. Dude, you just too high strung!

NauticalGent said:

To say the climate change does not exist is ludicrous. To assume it is influenced my man is egotistical and just as ludicrous.

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It isn't assumed to be influenced by man. It has been confirmed by a massive body of observation, research, theoretical analysis and modelling.

What is ludicrous is the assumption that releasing into the atmosphere, the products of burning a few cubic kilometres of coal and a vast lake of oil each year, year after year won't ever affect the planet.

Profoundly egotistical are those who actually know very little but assume they know better than many thousands of scientists who have devoted their lives to understanding the atmosphere and how it affects climate.

Just to be clear on this and where I stand, the "egotistical" and "ludicrous" assertions were not my own but simply the other side's argument/point of view.

I simply do not know; I am no expert.

When I start to read both sides which are represented by equally qualified "experts", my eyes start to cross and my head begins to spin.

That is when I begin to wonder if the beer in the fridge is cold yet or if the coffee is still warm (depending on time of day)

It's not egotistical and ludicrous when the facts back it up.

There has been a direct correlation between the rise of industrialization and the overall warming of the planet. It's less than the amount of change so far than it is the RATE of change: climate fluctuations that typically take tens of thousands of years are now happening in decades. The world is warming thousands of times faster than it EVER has before, and it started doing so as we started emitting heat-trapping gasses from our factories and vehicles.

The 90+% (typically found to be 97%) consensus is based on empirical fact and extensive observations, not gut feeling. Denying it because it seems silly to is no different than, say, refusing to see the doctor about constant chest pain because 'it hasn't killed me yet'. And refusing to accept that it's happening because SOME of the scientists involved (a tiny minority at that) may have an agenda is downright idiotic - it's merely evidence that one will grasp at ANYTHING to avoid an unpleasant truth. The evidence is there: the massive, ridiculous change in the rate of warming to a speed never before seen on this planet has been PROVEN to correspond to the rise of industrialization, and the rate of change has INCREASED as industrialization has become more widespread. At this point, climate change deniers are, more and more, the person standing in the burning house claiming that nothing is wrong.

Ignorance and unwillingness to accept facts that don't match one's pre-existing worldview do not make those facts any less true. It will be interesting to see how long people keep denying the truth while sea levels rise, weather patterns grow more and more intense (how many 500 year storms last year again?), and rapidly decreasing polar ice coverage decreases the planetary albedo, causing even MORE heating.

These discussions invariably remind me of this comic: