Prev Next
Featured Quizzes
Politix Daily Headlines
Featured Debates
Issues

See all 19 issues

GLOBAL WARMING

Nemo and Sandy Made Worse by Climate Change, Say Experts

Michael Mann and others agree

Next>

by Mary Noble

Senior Editor t +

Image: NY Daily News

If you've been worrying that recent storms are linked to climate change, you're right on the mark, according to climate experts such as Michael Mann.

Mann explains that we're seeing bigger storms with more snow because of global warming, and compared Nemo and Superstorm Sandy "to a basketball slam-dunk with a lower net." "If you take the basketball court and raise it a foot, you're going to see more slam-dunks," said Mann to HuffPo's Lynne Peeple's.

Michael Oppenheimer, a climate expert at Princeton, agrees. "Storms like this tend to be heavier than they used to be," he told HuffPo. "That's a fact."

In weather terms, that's because warmer temperatures and a moister atmosphere make snowstorms heavier. What we've seen recently is a trend for storms that occur at just-below-freezing temperatures, which means bigger snowfall. "In the past, temperatures at this time of year would have been a lot below freezing," making it too cold for heavy snowfall, said Kevin Trenberth of the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Colorado. "Sea surface temperatures are about two degrees Fahrenheit warmer than they were before 1980, raising the potential for a big snow by about 10 percent," according to HuffPo.

Via the Huffington Post.
Like this article? B Vote Up
?

Did Blizzard Nemo make you feel more concerned about climate change?

View results

89 Comments (view in Forum)

  • Knightkore
    !
    First it's too hot and you have global warming....now it's too cold and it's global warming but that didn't make sense so they've been trying to change the term to climate change....

    The evidence shows something....the earth....does what it does apart from us....it goes through cycles of change....basically climates have changed throughout earth's history apart from humanity....

    In other words....don't believe the political hype and spin....
  • DrFunkenstein
    !
    They are predictable. Point out to them that what they hold dear as proof that Global Warming is a worldwide conspiracy of Climate Scientists to make money is propaganda from Energy Companies who make trillions every year causing Global Warming and they just bury their heads in the sand and call names. The fact that 99% of climate scientists agree that Climate Change is happening and 97% agree that humans are causing this change is a testament to these Scientist's integrity because the energy companies pay big money to any of them that will sell their honor by saying Global Warming is a myth. If these scientists were in it for the money then they would take the big money from the Energy Companies. But we have to look at the typical denier and understand that they have no education and only get their news from the WWE of News stations where the democrats are the evil Captain Insanos and the Republicans are the good Hulk Hogans.
  • drpeeper
    !
    So what Caused the Blizzard of 77 and 78?

    Reactionary nuts will blame everything on global warming. It's the view of the narcissistic simpleton. Note: 4 billion yrs our climate always changes.
  • drpeeper
    !
    @DrFunkenstein And on cue, the man made global warming drones blame every weather event on global warming. Even though it was proven as garbage science 3 years ago.

    Former U.S. Senator Timothy Wirth (D-CO), then representing the Clinton-Gore administration as U.S undersecretary of state for global issues, addressing the same Rio Climate Summit audience, agreed:“We have got to ride the global warming issue. Even if the theory of global warming is wrong, we will be doing the right thing in terms of economic policy and environmental policy.”(Wirth now heads the U.N. Foundation which lobbies for hundreds of billions of U.S. taxpayer dollars to help underdeveloped countries fight climate change.)

    1988, former Canadian Minister of the Environment, told editors and reporters of the Calgary Herald:“No matter if the science of global warming is all phony…climate change [provides] the greatest opportunity to bring about justice and equality in the world.”

    2000 U.N. Conference on Climate Change in the Hague, former President Jacques Chirac of France explained why the IPCC’s climate initiative supported a key Western European Kyoto Protocol objective:“For the first time, humanity is instituting a genuine instrument of global governance, one that should find a place within the World Environmental Organization which France and the European Union would like to see established.”

    Want to get to the bottom of it? Give the scientists 1 year to prove it- and cut all research funding on it. They will admit it was nothing in a heartbeat. Follow the $

  • Load more replies >

  • Emerald1
    !
    I agree that the climate is changing and always has and always will. The question is whether man is responsible or not for an extreme escalation. I don't think anybody really knows. But the current regulations go way overboard and cost billions of dollars, strangles businesses and costs jobs. I do not believe we should do away with all regulations...but we could be a little more reasonable about them.
  • JimCO55
    !
    @Emerald1: Yet, what is reasonable, in the 60's the US began to finally notice that industrialization also brings pollution so the clean air and water acts were passed. Big business then took their companies overseas to places that had none of these job killing restrictions like China. Now Peking is beginning to understand the reasons we put in these regulations as their air has become so foul that they were forced to curtail the fireworks from their New Years celebration this year. Climate change could be like a dam ready to burst, do you want to do something before that happens ... or wait to see how bad the aftermath really is?
  • CaryNickel
    !
    When I voted, I saw that 60 percent of the voters don't believe the climate hype. So are you saying that the dwindling number of people who believe man made climate change is an issue is due to natural selection?(grin)
  • harold_lloyd
    !
    @CaryNickel

    In a way, yes.

    In a time of relatively slow change, the sort of people I kid for being climate deniers are the same ones who bring stability to a society. But in times of rapid change, another type becomes ascendant, the type who accepts change, even welcomes it.

    Right now, we're seeing a lot of changes in things that were taken for granted to be fairly stable. What's new is that there are so many changes in so many facets of our lives that the ones who thrive on stability are being stressed beyond their ability to cope.

    The result is a group that simply refuses to believe that change is happening. A cohort that very much wants to return to the past of their memory.

    And the pace of change is accelerating. More people are experiencing chronic stress. It's not an ideal situation, people under stress tend to make bad decisions.
  • CaryNickel
    !
    @harold_lloyd People under stress, and making bad decisions, does explain how Barack Obama got elected twice. Folks who simply refuse to acknowledge the hype our nation is being bombarded with on a daily basis live happier, fuller lives.

    As it has been said: "Most conservatives I know have a life. Most liberals I know have a cause."

    As for climate change, do I believe? Yes, But only that climate changes occur naturally based upon documented natural cycles and in some cases, extreme events like volcanic eruptions. For that matter, the climate changes on earth four times a year: They are known as "seasons".

    Do I believe that mankind contributes to global climate change? No. Not to any important degree. Nature has been handling all the natural "pollutants" discharged from the earth for far longer than mankind has been here. Every "environmental disaster" trumpeted by the alarmists (often for profit, or to push for an agenda of increased government control), turns out to have less an impact than originally thought. I've lived, in my short life, through the coming ice age of the 1970's, through the "fact" that we were all going to burn up in "global warming" through the 1980's and 90's, to what now has evolved into the more ethereal "global climate change"..which accounts for everything...warming, cooling, rain, drought, tornadoes, hurricanes, snowfall, plagues of locusts, swarms of bees, etc. etc. The fact is, just using the term "global climate change" after periods of supposedly "documented" cooling and warming, appears to indicate the admission that folks simply don't know what, or if, anything is happening at all that mankind can control.

    Thus, there is, in reality, nothing much to worry about..because what happens will happen, and we will cope with it, just as we've always done. Thus, no stress at all.
  • AceLuby
    !
    I really wish people would stop talking about the weather and climate like they are one in the same. Could climate change have caused the storms we've seen? Sure, but it just as easily could not have as well. This is what confuses people and brings on the denialists, the link between climate change and weather patterns is fairly weak. Climate is long term and global, weather is short term and local. The question that people should ask themselves is what are the consequences if one group is wrong and the other isn't? If the GW people are wrong we are preserving clean air and water for our children and grandchildren, if the GW denialists are wrong it could have a significant impact on human existence.
  • MongoAPillager
    !
    bunch of half wits,nemo was just a big snow storm,with even bigger (chicken little)hype,me and my children had a blast out playing in it,we have had at a couple 20+ inch storms almost every year,except for the cleanup,(developing global snow removal fatigue)its been the same for the last 40 years
  • Buzzfriendly
    !
    Sure its climate change but when has our climate not changed? I believe in science so I believe climate change is real. I really just don't care and until some genius figures out how to stop the earth from changing then I am really interested in hearing about it.
  • WMCOL
    !
    What's really of concern is the unequivocal fact that humans are helpless to effect any significant change to climate. Nature has a head of its own and we can't change one hair on it. Nature will not be deterred by humans. It is up to humans to learn to live with natures changes.
  • kathyparsell
    !
    I remember winters as a child were filled with snow storms from late December thru early March. By the time I was in college winters were essentially nonexistent. I do absolutely think that we are experiencing a warming trend but how much we can alter that is negligible. I would love to see the world become cleaner and less dependent on fossil fuels but history repeats itself with the weather too. When people like Al Gore figure out ways to make themselves even richer on global warming it makes me even more doubtful.
  • Realthinker
    !
    So long as there is grant money available to study "climate change", the HuffPo will never lack for "experts" to comment on storms. I've been around a good number of years and the climate is no different now than it was.
  • AceLuby
    !
    "I've been around a good number of years and the climate is no different now than it was."

    You can't possibly make that determination because climate is weather patterns over hundreds, thousands, and millions of years. What I think what you meant is that 'weather' is no different now than it was, which could be true, but doesn't mean the climate isn't also changing.
  • Realthinker
    !
    @AceLuby Ace, it's all about grant money and scaring people enough to hit the poor with massive tax increases. (I've been watching Democrats for year too.) It remains a fact that during those times when the climate did change significantly it was NOT caused by anything man did. Raising gasoline and energy taxes will not affect the climate in any way.
  • AceLuby
    !
    @Realthinker Doesn't mean you didn't use the wrong word. You've seen WEATHER stay the same, not climate. It's one of the big reasons why I hate alarmists when a severe storm hits, it only fortifies the denialists by linking local weather patterns to long term global changes. They are two different things and muddying the waters doesn't help.
  • Realthinker
    !
    @AceLuby Logically Ace, if the climate is changing the weather HAS to follow, which is my point. It isn't; not in more than 60 years.
  • DerivePI
    !
    Oppenheimer states "Storms like this tend to be heavier than they used to be" - OK, lets get rid of the wiggle room and restate - "Storms are heavier than they used to be" (Scientific hypothesis)- Now for the evidence:

    First we're talking about weather and not necessarily how that weather relates to damage. As population increases, it should be expected that damage increases, but this has nothing to do with weather.

    The Great Snow of 1717 - 5 feet of snow on New York and adjacent colonies

    Great Blizzard of 1888 - "Beginning just after midnight on March 12, 1888, and lasting for 36 hours, the blizzard dropped 50 inches (!) of snow across Massachusetts and Connecticut, with New York and New Jersey taking on 40 inches."

    Knickerbocker storm 1922 - 28 inches of snow in DC.

    The Blizzard of 1947 - 2 feet of snow in Manhatten.

    Northeastern Blizzard 1978 - 27 inches in Boston

    Storm of the Century - 1993 - 2 inches in Florida

    Nemo Blizzard 2013 - 24.9 inches in Boston - 5th biggest snowstorm in Boston

    Conclusively, storms are not bigger than they used to be. Oppenheimer should get a room with Dan Rather.

    What Oppenheimer and Mann are trying to say is that as the surface temperature of the Atlantic Ocean goes up, we should expect more hurricanes and storms to be generated. This would be a defensible position for a real scientist to take.
  • rkinsawjoe
    !
    That's right! We're all being sent to hell because we've stood idly by while boys kissed boys,sometimes not on the lips either, without stoning or burning any of them and this hath pissed the Lord off greatly.Wait, tell me again what this has to do with our having destroyed the planet? Ain't it funny how God could care less that we've turned the Earth into a cesspool and maybe ruined it for future humans but he still blows a gasket over the "unnatural" queer thing that's been going on since he created the queers in the first place? Ain't that funny to you? Cause it's funny to me.
  • Kellso
    !
    There are millions of people that would simply ignore if the sun exploded in frontof them. THE CLIMATE CHANGES ARE UPON US BECAUSE OF GLOBAL WARMING!!!!! No tonly the monster storms but just watch for the loss of the water table in the west and the horifying heat waves and NO FOOD because of it!!!
  • Yank
    !
    We are losing the water table in the west because we are over using it to grow crops in areas they should not be growing in.
  • Kellso
    !
    @Yank I dont see any food laying around not being eaten so it should be grown. You have confirmed my point. When the everlasting dust bowl hits, there will be millions starving. I wish somebody would start to work on slowing down the demise of mankind.
  • Yank
    !
    Every time I see one of these stories I have to again bring up that when I was a kid I was convinced that we were heading towards a new, man made, ice ago. Because of the amount of SO2 we were releasing into the atmosphere we were reflecting too much solar radiation back into space and were cooling the planet. What ever happened to that?
  • Yank
    !
    "In the past, temperatures at this time of year would have been a lot below freezing," making it too cold for heavy snowfall, said Kevin Trenberth of the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Colorado"

    A quick google search shows that the average 38 year temputure in NYC on February 9th is 33 degrees. The 38 year February 9th daily high average is 38 degrees and daily low is 25 degrees.

    http://weatherspark.com/averages/31081/2/New-...
  • BelinKS
    !
    The Earth has gone through climate change many, many times in it's history that had nothing to do with man. We may just be hitting another time in history of climate change. Sure I think we should try to reduce polluting our atmosphere, but I don't think man is causing this because of Earth's history. We just have to learn to adapt during this time.
  • Zazziness
    !
    Why do folks with no expertise in this matter feel free to just make up theories of their own? Yes, scientists know the climate has changed before. With full knowledge of that, they are telling us it is changing this time because of pollutants we are adding to the atmosphere by millions of cubic tons. Unless you understand chemistry and climate science better than the experts, don't you think it would be wise to give their thoughts on the matter more weight than your own?
  • Russell797
    !
    @Zazziness What, submit to authority and admit that maybe "thinking for yourself" will not lead in the correct direction all of the time? FREEDOM
  • BelinKS
    !
    @Zazziness
    I am not a climate expert. I am a radiation phycisist. So I do have some knowledge on the topic. I am well educated. There is documented proof that the Earth has gone through climate change many times. This is a discussion board. Putting your opinion is the purpose of it's existence. You can disagree with me. That's fine, but attacking me is not! I do listen to the experts and do not listen to Al Gore.
    Did I tell you to take my opinion above the experts? No.
    I said we "MAY BE JUST HITTING ANOTHER TIME IN HISTORY OF CLIMATE CHANGE" . I did not say that it was a fact. The word "may" expressly puts that statement as a hypothesis. I did not way we "are". I said "I think" about the pollutants, but there I was agreeing with the experts. I said "I don't think" about mans contribution. What I think is an opinion. The only thing I stated as fact was Earth's history of climate change. Ice Age anyone? And while this climate change is occurring man made or not, we do have to adapt for our own survival.
  • Russell797
    !
    @BelinKS I think it is interesting that you have expertise in radiative physics, yet you seem to be saying you doubt that increasing atmospheric CO2 will add to Earth's radiative imbalance. You see, I am very well versed in radiative physics also, and in particular understand that adding greenhouse gases to the atmosphere slows the loss to space of infrared wavelengths originating at the surface. Line by line radiation codes found at the HITRAN database of infrared propagation through the atmosphere inform us that for a doubling of CO2, 3.7W/m2 of radiative forcing ensues as a constant enhancement to the greenhouse effect. Plugging this forcing into Planck equations produces nearly a warming of 1.2K at Earths surface. This is rock solid physics, although with a little wiggle room allowing for uncertainty.

  • Load more replies >

  • R Load more comments...