Storm Warnings: Extreme Weather Is a Product of Climate Change

[SkyDaddy7]

Source: Scientific American

"...Yet the disaster unfolding in North Dakota might be bringing even bigger headlines if such extreme events hadn't suddenly seemed more common. In this year alone massive blizzards have struck the U.S. Northeast, tornadoes have ripped through the nation, mighty rivers like the Mississippi and Missouri have flowed over their banks, and floodwaters have covered huge swaths of Australia as well as displaced more than five million people in China and devastated Colombia. And this year's natural disasters follow on the heels of a staggering litany of extreme weather in 2010, from record floods in Nashville, Tenn., and Pakistan, to Russia's crippling heat wave.



These patterns have caught the attention of scientists at the National Climatic Data Center in Asheville, N.C., part of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). They've been following the recent deluges' stunning radar pictures and growing rainfall totals with concern and intense interest. Normally, floods of the magnitude now being seen in North Dakota and elsewhere around the world are expected to happen only once in 100 years. But one of the predictions of climate change models is that extreme weather—floods, heat waves, droughts, even blizzards—will become far more common. "Big rain events and higher overnight lows are two things we would expect with warming world," says Deke Arndt, chief of the center's Climate Monitoring Branch. Arndt's group had already documented a stunning rise in overnight low temperatures across the U.S. So are the floods and spate of other recent extreme events also examples of predictions turned into cold, hard reality?"


Read more: http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=extreme-weather-caused-by-cliimate-change

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...Yet here in America the folks who think anthropomorphic climate change is simply a "Liberal Lie" to kill business are the same people who think the Earth is 6000yrs old...And these people are funded by people who know we are killing the planet but see profit as more important. The whole thing disgust me!

[SpiralHawk]

1. RepubliBaggers will have a fit of 'splodin heads today

as more and more and more FACTS prove that the RepubliBaggers are totally full of shit.

Not that this will wake them up, as RepubliBaggers continue to support policies that bring grave harm to themselves and their families, and everyone else...

[wtmusic]

3. I wish it were only Republicans.

Stop by Environment/Energy, we still have a number of holdouts.

[SpiralHawk]

4. Paid SuckerPuppets (R)?

They are everywhere, and infest DU as well...one must have one's BS detector activated at all times...

[defendandprotect]

8. Exactly ... "You can't wake up a man pretending to be asleep" --

:)

[karynnj]

15. Not all of them

In the Senate, I followed which Senators were willing to sign on to the climate change bill. There were many, strong Democrat, populists, as well, that believed in the science, but also KNEW that their coal fueled states would pay an economic cost. Senators Kerry, Boxer, Lieberman etc in their bills tried to build in compensation to the states that would bear the greatest burdens. These were Senators such as Feingold and Franken.

The argument of people like Kerry was that ONLY through legislation would they be able to build a package that cut carbon, but through those ways of compensating people hurt the most by making the right choices. Instead of fighting it, they should have been breaking down the doors to get this passed. Every year we procrastinate the change needed is more severe - and many feel that we are already beyond a tipping point. The carbon there now will take years to break down - and we will pass numbers scientists warned us not to.

[Odin2005]

10. Those posters are paid sockpuppets.

[SpiralHawk]

16. Ptooey on occultist RepubliCon Black Ops

So anti-American...Ptoooey.

[Botany]

2. The warmer it is the more water the air can hold and ...

.... the more dynamic weather systems will be.


Over 200 years ago it was proven that the more CO2 in a body of gas the more heat it will hold ....
the science of climate change is solid but the trillions of dollars the energy industries are making
buys a lot of air time and politicians to push lies.

[Bragi]

5. "Scientific American" indeed

Really, I don't see why anyone would pay any attention to a publication with a stupid name like "Scientific American".

They need a more credible name for their publication, maybe something like "Today in Creationism", or maybe something with a fact-y lilt to it, like "American Science Debunker."

[SkyDaddy7]

13. The utter ignorance in this country is SCARY!

Many Americans think scientist just guess at things & claim they are smarter than everyone else just because they have alphabet soup after their name! After all stuff like evolution is "Just a Theory"!

I can understand being skeptical after all I am very skeptical but these people are flat out science deniers! They hate science because it (by default without purpose) brings into question their Bronze Age Mythology!

[Frisbee]

6. Make no mistake about it...

society as we know it is doomed. Whether it will be 10 years or 50 remains to be seen, though I expect it to be somewhere within that time frame, and given the recent pace of events, lean toward the low end of that guesstimate. Famine, disease and a lack of drinking water are probably not too far off, which will probably be followed by much war as nations try to grab resources. Things are bad, getting worse, and no one seems to have to will power to do anything about it.

[Bragi]

12. Quite so

I believe that nothing will be done to avoid the worst possible climate change case scenario. The barriers to any serious action to control climate change posed by our corrupted political and economic systems guarantee that outcome.

The only upside for me is that I'm 61, and won't likely have to face the worst of it.

To those of you young enough to have to face the worst of it, gee, I'm sure you'll feel better to know that, on behalf of my generation, I do apologize for what's coming down.

Sorry about all the famines and mass migrations and wars and everything.

Have a terrific day!

[defendandprotect]

7. Keep on tellin' it -- !! As Al Gore noted, the info has to be passed person to person ....

When Americans begin to gather info on what has happened to our people's government --

the selling of our govenrment to corporations and the corruption of it -- and to talk

to one another about it, it's more likely that the public will understand.


Al Gore's recent article in Rolling Stone goes a long way to explain the complications

of corporate control of our government and Congress --

and on Page 2, he explains the "climate crisis."


Public also needs to know that there was a 50 year delay in our feeling the effects of

Global Warming -- though the Glaciers were melting -- which gave ExxonMobil and the oil

industry time to confuse the public with lies abcout Global Warming.


HEATING the atmosphere brings chaotic weather -- this will include earthquakes because

of the melting glaciers which shift weight off the tectonic plates they've rested on

and as the water moves onto other tectonic plates, creates new pressures.


Highly recommend "The Heat is on!" -- at most libraries -- written by Ross Gelbspan


Also google 1992 World Scientists Warning to Humanity -- which was met by complete silence

from our coporate - press.


Capitalism is a ridiculous "King-of-the-Hill" system intended to move a nation's wealth

and natural resources from the many to the few --

Capitalism is suicidal in its exploitation of nature, natural resources, animal life --

and HUMANS!




:)

[Odin2005]

9. Dr. Jeff Master's blog got spammed by Denialist shills when he posted the same thing on Monday.

The forces of evil never sleep, it seems.

[Uncle Joe]

11. Kicked and recommended.

Thanks for the thread, SkyDaddy.

[Lone_Star_Dem]

14. John Nielsen-Gammon, Texas State Climatologist, has said as much

As has the US Forest Service Chief Tom Tidwell. Yet still it appears it's still too much a political hot button topic to address seriously.

There are times I believe we, humans as a whole, deserve what is happening to us. It's just a shame we're taking so many species out with us.

[Duppers]

17. K & R

VERY important issue.