Readers: Global Warming Is Affecting The Weather In The United States
Most readers agreed that global warming is affecting the weather in the United States.The examples are numerous, too many to be a coincidence.
Take March:
Record and near-record breaking temperatures dominated the eastern two-thirds of the nation and contributed to the warmest March for the contiguous United States since records began in 1895. More than 15,000 warm temperature records were broken during the month. The average temperature of 51.1°F was 8.6 degrees above the 20th century average. In the past 117 years, only one month (January 2006) has ever been so much warmer than its average temperature. (It’s official: March 2012 warmth topped the charts)
Last month it got ugly:
The storm center determined that 75 tornadoes touched down in Kansas, Oklahoma, Iowa and Nebraska during a 24-hour period beginning at 6 a.m. Saturday. Six people died as a result of an overnight tornado that hit Woodward, Okla., about 140 miles northwest of Oklahoma City. No other deaths were reported. (Huffington Post)
Then in the news on April 23:
BUFFALO, N.Y. — A nor’easter packing soaking rain and springtime snow churned up the Northeast on Monday, unleashing a burst of winter, closing some schools and triggering power outages in communities that were basking in record warmth a month ago. (Washington Post)
And Saturday:
One person is dead, five others critically injured after powerful winds upended a huge tent outside a downtown St. Louis bar, sending tent poles flying through the crowd. (KMOV)
The above was the first of two storm systems in the St. Louis area, just hours apart.
In the poll there were some votes from likely Climate Change Deniers but most agree man has managed to alter weather patterns.
The poll results are below, the question came from page 16 of this report from Yale. National averages are the second percentages shown below:
How strongly do you agree or disagree with the following statement? Global warming is affecting the weather in the United States.
- Strongly agree 76 [61.29% / 26%]
- Somewhat agree 27 [21.77% / 43%]
- Somewhat disagree 11 [8.87% / 19%]
- Strongly disagree 10 [8.06% / 11%]
The original post introducing the poll is here.
– Steve Patterson
Regardless about your point of view as to what may or may not be casing global warming there can be no arguing that it is happening. Thusly I’m rather bewildered by the “disagree” crowd. Something tells me this group of people are the same ones who dismiss things like Darwin and cling to abstract definitions of the American Constitution. IMO.
Ryley….I agree with you. The disagree crowd has been either led astray with 15 second sound bites or by those with more money than any of us and would rather destroy the world than give up a few dollars.
Fact: the normal line of tornadoes is slowly moving north…and now includes St. Louis almost every year.
And to the disagree crowd: So what if you are right? Would leaving the air, land, and water cleaner than we found it be that bad? Would developing alternate energy sources be that bad when sooner or later we will run out of oil, nuclear, and other traditionals? Will we want our children to grow up in Chesapeak Bay of the 1970’s? Or China and India currently (where one can’t walk anywhere without piles of trash, no clean drinking water, and gray skies from pollution)?
No, but please continue to by your ipods and other stuff from China where they don’t pay fair wages nor have environmental protection laws.
“Would it be that bad?”
Yes, if it costs trillions of dollars and condemns millions of people in the third world to disease and starvation.
“The examples are numerous, too many to be a coincidence.”
That’s a common mistake. The “examples” are weather, not climate. Weather is anecdotes, climate is data. For every example you give of warming, someone could find an example of cooling. The real way we know that *climate* is changing is by long term statistical analysis. The large majority of experts who have looked at the analysis agree that it shows that the climate is warming.
The question of what to do, given that the climate is warming, is more complicated because it involves more factors (mostly economic).
More sweeping generalizations by Steve. Dangerous storms in St. Louis in April and May? Who knew?
Dollars over lives?????
millions of people in the third world???? how about the BILLIONS in China and India, then you can add in Africa, South America, Russian provinces, etc. The American lifestyle is already causing billions to live with our waste.
You might be interested to hear that people in China/India/Africa *want* our waste. They tear it apart and sell the metal to keep from starving, even though the chemicals give them cancer in the long term. That’s how poor they are.
http://www.voanews.com/english/news/africa/UN-Concerned-About-West-Africas-E-Waste-Problem-139281333.html
The basic issue is that extremely poor people have different problems than we do. They need manufacturing and a modern economy even though it pollutes. Once they get richer, they can deal with the pollution. That’s the same order we did it in, after all.
The appalling proliferation of our species is the fundamental problem. Barring some catastrophic global pandemic, homo sap will continue to breed explosively and ultimately reduce this planet to a depleted husk. One day, the very richest people may have access to other planets and space stations. As billions and billions more pursue increased status consumption and unsustainable economic “growth”, the ensuing misery and wars over dwindling resources (like potable water) will make living conditions associated with the Middle Ages look like Disneyland. In planetary terms, we are the ultimate parasites.
People do not like to reckon with this. It’s depressing and overwhelming and makes them feel helpless. It’s less depressing to think, “Someone will do something!” or “Science will figure it out!” In my view, there is not much to figure out, at least to know what the problem is; there are too many people consuming too much and the more people there are, the greater the rate of reproduction and consumption. A compounding crime is that of vested interests who assuage popular anxieties by putting down some bullshit about how “the scientific community is divided on global warming”, or, cornered by a few too many facts, conceding that, well, okay, global warming is real, but damn it, it’s not OUR fault! Those damn polar bears had it coming! This is just, er, nature! Don’t buy into that liberal scam called “science”! Cha-ching!!
Tobacco companies could probably still rustle up a few doctors to make smokers feel better by claiming that the link between smoking and lung cancer has not been definitively proven. In the movie “Jaws”, the town’s power brokers ridiculed the idea that a man-eating shark was preying on their beaches because they had a vested interest in keeping the beaches open, even as grisly evidence became overwhelming. If preserving the local economy meant risking everyone’s life, so be it. Anything to keep the beaches open and the tills ringing.
In a real plutocracy, he with the gold makes the rules…makes UP the rules if he needs to or feels like it. If those rules make you suffer, you’re at fault for not being rich yourself. And if you’re not rich, you’re probably lazy or stupid. So shut the fuck up. This precise mentality is widely afoot in our country now, perhaps more than it ever has been before. Other nations clearly yearn to follow us, buying into the fraudulent notion that the mere presence of historically unprecedented wealth in the hands of a few will elevate their entire society.
Christian…you hit the nail right on the head! People, and more importantly, Americans and our wasteful, disposable, instant-gratification, and over packaged life style have caused and will bring down the rest of the world. Yes, we all have iPhones and Hummers…..but at what costs to us and to those that built them?
The world tends toward chaos. Entropy. Why wouldn’t anyone support new tech and the sciences that get us there, even if there are failures along the way, costly failures?
I feel really sorry for my kids. America can’t make up its mind. Sad. And that fact alone, indecision, is affecting job growth. We had a shift toward green, now it’s in limbo. Look at Peabody’s efforts & big oil’s efforts to sugar-coat what they do for us. There are ads circulating everywhere to protect their technologies. Let’s see, let’s stand next to a coal stack or tail pipe…or sit next to a turbine. In which scenario do you need a gas mask?
Whatever. I guess we’ll continue the argument. PS, I was raised red-blooded-Republican. But I studied Bio-Chem. I read multiple sources and make my own judgments. F fear-tactics by any media outlet. Too bad good reporting is over run by bad reporting. Get away from your tv and talk to your neighbors please.