Tom Toles for January 06, 2010

OH NO!

Climate!

Not “climate change”, I note. Just climate. Perhaps Toles has a deep-seated fear of meteorology.

King Cong!!! Aaahhhhhh.

Has anyone noticed the weather? I would appreciate some global warming right now. Polar bears can evolve and grow some gills.

Autralia’s a good move. How are their skin cancer rates these days?

Were going to get some global warming around march, when spring and summer come.

^What if we don’t? We finally got cold whether here and we are freezing our @$$es off. We’re in the upper thirties down here.

“Awwww poor babies. We got 16 inches of snow here.”

NOT NORMAL I DON’T CARE WHERE YOU LIVE. We normally get to the fifties but this is ridiculous. I might have to install a radiator in my place.

Breaking news: Weather is not the same as climate.

Any particular weather pattern today is not indicative of the climate change going on due to global warming.

In California, we are losing our Joshua Trees to the climate change. Over centuries, these beautiful Yucca variety moves south when the climate cools and north, when the climate warms. But the increased temperature is depriving them of water. Combined with the increasing number of wild fires, the extinction of the indigenous animals which aided in seed migration means that there might be no new generation.

This i one prime example of the problem of global warming [climate change] of which today’s weather is only part of the global changes we are experiencing.

Australia, much as I love it, is not great for skin cancer – though they have some of the most advanced medical techniques, I understand, and for good reason. Their proximity to the hole in the ozone layer means they get a LOT more dangerous UV. Plus, it’s getting drier and hotter. I spent two weeks in Adelaide, Melbourne, and Sydney on business a couple of years ago during a heat wave, and it was something like 105-110 degrees F (40+C). That’s just ridiculously hot, and that’s in the inhabited areas…

The 30 year avg. temp. for today, where I live, is 45 degrees. Today’s high is 29, with snow expected tonight. Yesterday’s high was 23. I’m thinking of moving Dixie to Ecuador. :)

Thank you DrC – I often use that phrase and then I have to explain what I mean. People look at me as if I’m crazy. So now I can prove I’m not the only one who says this.

@Shady So us breaking record highs in December is not an indicator of climate change? Last I checked climate change involves the whether.

harley - citation, please. From what I’ve seen we are completely out of sync with the sun cycle, given that we are warming despite solar dimming.

Bob Hasty Maybe the real reason the Joshua Tree is being deprived of water is the same reason farmers in the San Joaquin Valley are going broke-the federal government, to protect an “endangered species”, a small bait fish called the delta smelt, have shut off water to the valley, to divert it elsewhere for the poor suffering delta smelt. Global warming is a hoax to scare Americans into giving up our freedom to the federal (progressive) administration. Don’t buy into it.

Motivemagus,

I do have to smile a bit when you mention the over-100 degree heat you encountered on your trip to Australia. My wife and I live in California’s Coachella Valley (desert) and during the summer are grateful when the temperature is “only” 105. We regularly have about four months with temps over 100, and a number of those days are 110 or better. Our local paper has a place on its weather page that shows how many days over 100 we have in a year. For 2009 we had 123 days over 100 and in 2008 it was 115. It’s no fun, that’s for sure, especially on those days when it’s 118-120. Without good air conditioning you don’t survive summers in the desert. I guess we’d have no problem adjusting if we visited Australia and encountered the temperatures you did. We may have a dry heat, but it’s still, as the Aussies and English would say, “bloody hot.”

Up here, It’s january and we can still see the lawns. I’ve never seen a winter like this up here.

Kris, delta smelt has nothing to do with Joshua tree loss, at all. However, taking water from aquifers to feed Vegas and other areas IS having real problems across the desert, from Utah to L.A. Moving all those people to the desert is causing LOTS of problems.

Hang in their Rupp, at the rate we’re ignoring facts, green will soon be in: Soylent Green.

Weather is not the climate. Sure…but at some point, aren’t you a little leary of record lows being set during the climax of the Industrial Revolution Greenhouse Effect?

Where are the phrases “Greenhouse Effect”, “Greenhouse Gasses”, and “Global WARMING” these days? Please, as much as some of you hate on narrow-minded conservatives, USE YER HEAD!

rekam - fair point. But note I was in the city, not in the Outback, which gets a lot warmer still. Yow.

Interesting article, Radish, but boy, it sure seems like he wants to say that greenhouse gases don’t matter so much. It reads a lot like wishful thinking (rather than active denial). All we really know is that the sun is cooling, but last I looked, the consensus is not that the Earth is actually cooling off, it might be leveling off (not clear yet) but is definitely still staying warm. Given that the last time the sun was this cool we were in the Little Ice Age, that actually seems to suggest that global warming is quite real, and, as you say, that we could be in even bigger trouble than we thought when the cycle changes.

Dear Radish,

Thanks for an interesting link. I don’t post on climate change, because I don’t feel that I know the science well enough. Two points: First, I wonder how they know the sunspot activity for periods long in the past? I don’t say they can’t, I just wonder what the technique would be. Second, I agree with Motive’s comment that when the sunspots return we could be in real trouble. The article is properly inconclusive, but this seems to be something to keep an eye on.