Open chat / Eastern US = Screwed / Mileron 19 years ago

Eastern US = Screwed

Well, not entirely, and listen to my reasoning.

In NJ, we have had exactly 4 days of sub-32 degree weather.

Instead, we've had a month and a half of 40+ weather, and forecasts for this week (1/1/07) are looking to put our highs in the low 60s.

So come March, if we don't get at least 3-4 weeks of a good freeze, not only will there be problems with plants blooming (a magnolia bush at my mother's office is budding already) but we're going to be inundated with bugs.

Squirrels still run rampant in my yard. I heard a flock of ducks this morning flying over my house. It rained several inches on New Year's, when meteorologically we should have gotten snow.

I'm as much a fan of the bone-crackling cold as the next Jerseyboy... but I really wish it would -get- cold.

Den 19 years ago

Al Gore must have something then?

Rikr 19 years ago

It's El Nino, which in English means....The Nino.

Edit: I shouldn't have messed with The Nino...my Diet coke fizzed up all over my desk just now. :( The curse of The Nino. :(

Temprah 19 years ago

Call Denver.. the East Coast's load of winter snow got delivered there by mistake I bet. If not... well.. yeah I think Al Gore's on to something.

Sarah 19 years ago

I've done a lot of reading, and the global warming is legit, but it is not the cause of every weather anomaly. What the East Coast is experiencing is a normal cycle of the Earth's weather patterns. Each portion of the earth goes through hot and cold cycles.

The East Coast having a fall/spring-like winter is just like the Mid-West and Upper West Coast having record snow and blizzards, it's just a natural weather pattern. There will be more bugs this year, and there will be disruptions in the migratory patterns of insects and birds, but it happens every so often and is just the way of things.

If I recall correctly it has to do with the tile of the Earth on its axis.

Den 19 years ago

I actually agree with ya Kat. I've read up about the weather in California a bit, and we've had many years where the weather was freakishly warm, going back to the early 1900's -- way before us humans started causing the pollution that is blamed for global warming.

That's not to say I don't think there is a warming trend, but no, I don't blame it for all the weather ills.

Mileron 19 years ago

Shay;71591

and we've had many years where the weather was freakishly warm, going back to the early 1900's -- way before us humans started causing the pollution that is blamed for global warming.

Way before the recorded and measured effects of clouds of smoke and smog, in any case.

I remember reading way back when about how when the area that was to become Los Angeles was discovered that someone made a description of the difficulty they had in seeing the bottom of LA Valley, after cresting the outlying hills, from all the indian settlements extant.

Further, smog (wikipedia) has been mentioned in literature off and on for hundreds of years.

Den 19 years ago

Los Angeles is set in a basin, surrounded by hills, and even without smog, during certain times of the year it still has low visibility...the marine inversion layer is one thing... the cold, damp air off the pacific blows in and settles in the basin...not quite fog like, but making for a very grey day. Smoke from Indian camps would have settled in the basin as well...as does the smog today, again exacerbated by the damp Pacific air.

But the problems they had back pre-1920 were nothing by comparison due to the lower populations.

Sergon 19 years ago

According to Gore hes been on this crusade since the mid 80's =/ K

s

Four Winds 19 years ago

When you have large icebergs floating past the East Coast of the South Island of New Zealand at the start of summer you have to wonder what's going on.

I'm thankful I live inland in the centre of the North Island on the top of a plateau. Oh wait, I forgot the big lake that I live near is actually the crater of a dormant, but not extinct, volcano.

Good god, I'm screwed!

:eh

syyreeidak 19 years ago

I have seen some shows on Discovery saying that global warming is finally showing its affects. The ice caps are melting. Even Polar Bears are endangered now because the ice is melting away.

Sergon 19 years ago

I have seen just as many articles debunking global warming as proving it. The "top" scientists for either side of the political spectrum have differing opinions on the data. The fact is that this planet has gone through trends of cooling and warming since its inception. Thats not going to change.
We are in a warming period that started 18K years ago currently. Before that we had been in a 100k year ice age. The world has always changed we are just foolish enough to believe we have any part in it.

S

ROzbeans 19 years ago

I am a firm believer of the butterfly effect. Say a bear farts in the woods - poof...bad hair day.

Bendir 19 years ago

Mileron;71572

Squirrels still run rampant in my yard. I heard a flock of ducks this morning flying over my house. It rained several inches on New Year's, when meteorologically we should have gotten snow.

Squirrels and ducks run rampant in January? Sounds like you need a gun.

As for the effects of global warming, its not all doom and gloom. A professor at my university recently did a paper saying historical data predicts no negative impact on crop yields from the warmer temps in the next 100 years. And as an economics professor he has about as much bias in climatology as I have in the NHL.

Abstract

This paper measures the economic impact of climate change on US agricultural land by estimating the effect of the presumably random year-to-year variation in temperature and precipitation on agricultural profits. Using long-run climate change predictions from the Hadley 2 Model, the preferred estimates indicate that climate change will lead to a $1.3 billion (2002$) or 4.0% increase in annual profits. The 95% confidence interval ranges from -$0.5 billion to $3.1 billion and the impact is robust to a wide variety of specification checks, so large negative or positive effects are unlikely. There is considerable heterogeneity in the effect across the country with California’s predicted impact equal to -$0.75 billion (or nearly 15% of state agricultural profits). Further, the analysis indicates that the predicted increases in temperature and precipitation will have virtually no effect on yields among the most important crops, which suggest that the small effect on profits are not due to short-run price increases. The paper also implements the hedonic approach that is predominant in the previous literature and finds that it may be unreliable, because it produces estimates of the effect of climate change that are extremely sensitive to seemingly minor decisions about the appropriate control variables, sample and weighting. Overall, the findings contradict the popular view that climate change will have substantial negative welfare consequences for the US agricultural sector.