Over the Hedge Comic Strip, November 26, 2012 on GoComics.com

Sure be nice if it actually warmed up. After 4 years of winter lasting 2 months later than normal, it’s really starting to affect the plantlife in the forests.

thebird55 said, 6 months ago

Many people have the wrong idea about “global warming”. The theory (and I’m neither endorsing or discounting it) is that more heat (energy) in the system makes subsystems more active, causing instability. This chaos can cause extremes of every kind of weather, including colder temperatures, in any given area.

Ottodesu said, 6 months ago

@thebird55

That’s the correct way to interpret the proposed situation. It is the causation of increasingly unstable weather systems by the increase in total heat content of the planet’s atmosphere.
-
Ice does not raise in temperature until it absorbs enough heat to complete the phase change from solid to liquid.
An iced drink stays at 0 C (32 F) on a warm day and then when all liquid suddenly increases in temperature. it can be a long time before the actual global temperature shows a substantial increase.

uncorked said, 6 months ago

Looks like Santa’s section is about to crack ….

masterskrain said, 6 months ago

@thebird55

Think of “Weather” as a heat driven engine. The net result of climate change is that there will be more extreme swings in the weather patterns, resulting in hotter summers, colder winters, and more extreme storms.
“Global Warming” is somewhat of a misnomer, but a lot of the deniers use it as a flimsy excuse to say that it does not exist, since there are still Winters.

Keith Russell said, 6 months ago

That’s the night Santa went crazy, that’s the night St. Nick went insane. Realized he was getting a raw deal…

kea said, 6 months ago

@thebird55

Well put – concise and accurate.

Norbert Ginsel said, 6 months ago

@Ottodesu

Totally incorrect. A chunk of ice can exist at 30dF, or at -30dF. The colder block requires more heat to reach melting point of 32dF than the other one. This is “heat capacity”. Only when ice hits 32dF does the additional energy NOT raise the temperature more, because it’s used in “phase change”, which, when complete, allows for increase in temp again. (but not as “ice”, but as “water”). Ice acts as a temperature buffer, a sort of heat sink in reverse. So, ice (as ice) can exist at any temperature between 32df and absolute zero, depending on ambient. Your first sentence is wrong.

Stephen Gilberg said, 6 months ago

Serves him right for living in one of the least hospitable places on Earth.

Night-Gaunt49 said, 6 months ago

@Nabuquduriuzhur

In 50 years the ice packs of the N. Pole have shrank by 50%. You need to think globally not just your own bailiwick. In Texas the winters are shorter, milder and the hot weather is longer.

Night-Gaunt49 said, 6 months ago

Santa has an alternate site in the N. Pole, even he is smart enough to have his base under the solid land mass of the Antarctic continent.

hippogriff said, 6 months ago

Please observe the distinction between climate and weather. Weather is the temperature, barometric pressure, wind velocity and direction, precipitation, etc. at a given instant. Climate is the long-term condition vis a vis the past. Climate had its ups and downs over eons, but now there is a human input (which includes deforestation, urbanization, and such as well as carbon release into the atmosphere) which is trending in one direction overwhelmingly – upward temperatures. Just as one cannot witness tectonic plate movement until there is an earthquake, so this climate temperature change is too slow to notice in weather, but dendrochronology and ice core records go back millennia.

Black4dder said, 6 months ago

Santa should obviously set up shop at the North Magnetic Pole. That’s on Ellesmere Island in the Canadian North.

bhinkle said, 6 months ago

Actually, Christmas is in danger.
But not from Global Warming.
From the sanctimonious progressives that want to protect all the proper-thinking individuals from the scourges of christianity.
The news stories have already started about the creches and nativity scenes. It’s only a matter of weeks until NAMBLA, LGBT, ACLU et al start chipping away again. Can’t wait for the bigoted billboard to go up in NYC again this year – it is so good when others PROVE the case against them.