The big news is the tornado tearing apart Joplin, MO about 65 miles from here. But, several others took place in northeast Oklahoma and along the Missouri/Arkansas line last evening. Meanwhile baseball sized hail hit my rod man's farm last evening. Flooding is rampant from about his farm to the south. To top it off, a Union Pacific train derailed this morning about 10 miles straight north of here. They evacuated residents in a three-mile radius and have the highway closed. I can see the black plume of smoke drifting eastward as much now as three hours ago. Those taking the official highway detour discovered their path blocked by an auto accident. This caused the mail delivery to our little post office to be an hour and twenty minutes late. That same railroad track passes one-quarter mile east of my house. I guess I should be thrilled the derailment happened where it did.
We live on a cursed planet
> The big news is the tornado tearing apart Joplin, MO about 65 miles from here. But, several others took place in northeast Oklahoma and along the Missouri/Arkansas line last evening. Meanwhile baseball sized hail hit my rod man's farm last evening. Flooding is rampant from about his farm to the south. To top it off, a Union Pacific train derailed this morning about 10 miles straight north of here. They evacuated residents in a three-mile radius and have the highway closed. I can see the black plume of smoke drifting eastward as much now as three hours ago. Those taking the official highway detour discovered their path blocked by an auto accident. This caused the mail delivery to our little post office to be an hour and twenty minutes late. That same railroad track passes one-quarter mile east of my house. I guess I should be thrilled the derailment happened where it did.
Global warming. As Al Gore said, "an inconvenient truth", but politically unpopular.
What the Heck is Going On Out There?This is a disaster and v
This is a disaster and very hurtful to many, their welfare and recovery is what we need to address so don't start this money making scheme of gore's again. Climate change has been happening forever and the planet has been warming up since before the last ice age was finished, if it hadn't, we would be dressed like winter Eskimos. Those who want to ruin the rest of our economy by blaming the natural cycle and warming on man don't have much respect for the strength of mother earth and place man higher than they are worthy of, poor thinking. Want to do something, that might really help curb some pollution, then go to the places where we have driven our jobs to, they are pollinating big time. Could also quit buying their products and only buy American, where they would be manufactured in a place where we have reduced pollution big time and have some control over methods of production.
jud
Maybe he forgot to carry the 1 when he was calculating up the rapture date. =)
There's a difference between the kind of natural climate change that takes place normally, over the course of hundreds and thousands of years, versus climate change that takes place over decades, impacting us within our own lifetimes.
And, it's not just about "warming" or "cooling" - any time there is an increasing differential in temperature happening on the planet, that is manifest in weather fronts and pressure differentials, which causes wind shear, storms, tornadoes, hurricanes.
Our impact on our atmosphere and on climate is very real and very tangible. Just a few decades ago we had huge issues with acid rain, holes in the ozone, cities choked by smog and so on - we were able to start to turn those things around by changing how we do business. We didn't get out of the stone age because we ran out of stones, we got out of the stone age because we figured out better ways to do things.
worst heat wave in eastern Europe in 500 years
The intense heat wave that centered on western Russia last summer was truly a record breaker. It surpassed even 2003's scorcher in western and central Europe — which has been blamed for 70,000 deaths. And together, both of these mega heat waves have secured a place in the 500-year weather history of Europe, according to a new analysis.
What the Heck is Going On Out There?> Nobody ever said that
the End of the World (or Rapture if you prefer) was going to be a sudden event. Shoot, it could take millions of years!!
The train is still burning
It's been around 8 hours so far. The wind has shifted, so different people are being evacuated now. One report is that the primary ingredient in the fire is alcohol of some sort. Sure makes a black smoke, however. It's supposed to be very close to where we performed a survey a few years ago.
I can't believe that seemingly rationale people can't see the damage we do to our environment.
I guess I was lucky to grow up where I did. I've seen first hand the destruction that we can do and yet at the same time the "powers that be" were telling us "everything's fine", "no harm done."
All for the mighty dollar.
I bet that's why they call it "filthy rich".
Well, there's a little bit of good news in the forecast, at least as far as the tornadoes. Over the short term, increases in temperature can be expected to cause more severe weather events like this, so we might see a lot of major tornadoes over the next decade or two. But as temperatures warm and humidity increases, that is expected to weaken the jet stream, which will reduce the number and intensity of tornadoes. So, over the long term, tornadoes are likely to become less of a problem as global warming progresses.
However, those same trends will also lead toward areas that start getting either much less or much more rainfall than they have historically. Some areas can expect a much drier climate, potentially killing much of the agriculture in those areas. Meanwhile, other areas (especially Texas and nearby areas in the Mississippi river basin) are expected to see much more rainfall, and a much higher incidence of flooding.
Thousands and thousands of scientists have been working constantly on climate issues. We've been discovering and learning much more every year, and these new discoveries and observations have been worked into the models, making them better and better. And while we occasionally discover something that makes trends look better, and not as bad as predicted, we more-often discover things that make trends look worse. Overall, the model predictions have been getting worse and worse every year since Gore's Inconvenient Truth. So while we still think many of the details in that movie will not play out as-described in the movie, our current predictions are overall worse than they were then.
Deniers of global warming are looking more and more ridiculous every year. You basically have to hide your head in the sand and ignore all science for the last 30 years to continue denying it.
There is no question in my mind that we are changing the climate by burning fossil fuels.
The best carbon sequestration is to leave it in the ground to begin with.
The fossil fuels we have are the result of a super greenhouse event about 150million years ago. All the dead microorganisms sank to the bottom of the ocean and were covered by sediment. Now we are madly pumping up that carbon as fast as we can and are putting it back in the atmosphere, largely insisting on driving places by ourselves in 8,000 lb vehicles. Hybrid owners think they are green but that isn't the case. It takes energy from somewhere to move all that steel; the energy mostly comes from fossil fuels. Maybe we expend more mining zinc for car batteries and less once the hybrid car is driving but the sum of carbon into the atmosphere is about the same. Then we have all the batteries to get rid of when the hybrid car has to be junked in about half the time as normal.
There just is no good answer other than use a lot less than we are now but that doesn't seem to be happening.
