Yes, it does appear that our Prophet Shiek Al- Borenidinejad might have to bide his time a bit longer until the second coming of the Twelfth Hurricane that brings our destruction and reconfiguation, with him as the Supreme Intelligence, and Jimmy Carter as the Supreme One World Peacemaker.

According to the weather feed from Lindbergh Field, San Diego it's about 37° now. Folks around here finally have a reason to complain about the cold. :)

Any weather extremes are due to anthropogenic causes. We're screwed no matter what we do. Except, of course, going back to living in teepees and netting salmon as in days of yore.
When Queen Christine leads, I will follow.

Ah yes, our fearless leader, the barely elected Governor Gregoire. Typical of the minions with which she surrounds herself is one not-to-be-named, who told me straight up that the record cold weather is due to global warming. I asked this irrational liberalosis sufferer if the extremes of global warming might bring on a new ice age. "Why yes, that's possible."

I scanned the face for a minute, hoping that reason might show itself. Nah. Pushing, I mentioned that perhaps we should allow global warming to continue, then, until the record cold pushed us back to whatever averages and trends would please the environmentalists.

The true believer concluded that I was irredeemably stupid. Their smug and righteous look said it all. Mean-spirited Republican, too profit driven to understand that colder equals warmer. My attempt to discuss climate change in real, that is geological, time frames was harrumphed away. "There's no way to know what damage the emerging technologies of early man did to the climate."

The voters in this state are probably going to "re-elect" Gregoire in 2008. God help us here in the Emerald City.

This morning when I set up my GPS base it was a bracing -18 degrees farenheit. When we left at four the thermometer said +4... but it had been in the sun for a few minutes.

Trivia: if you ever need to know the temp without instruments, just inhale deeply through your nose. At anything under +5F the sensation is exactly like having an icepick shoved through your sinuses. And if you leave your ungloved fingerprints on the door handle, it's -20F.

askmom:

Orwell missed one:

War is Peace
Freedom is Slavery
Ignorance is Strength
Colder is Warmer

There. Fixed that for him.

Actually, quite a few commentators have opined that generalised global warming will lead to more unstable and more violent weather; also to some localised cooling, such as the effects of the much-discussed Gulf Stream shutdown on northwestern Europe.

In the case of the latter, Great Britain would have roughly the same climate as Labrador, and Scandinavia would be just about uninhabitable.

But never mind; turning England into a frozen hellhole is a small price for running your aircon at max and driving 2-ton cars to the supermarket, right?

Exactly so. A small price indeed. But worth every penny.

I know I'm to blame for Global Warming®.

Just the mere thought of ever driving a car with more than 7 horsepower has metastasized into a time-traveling evil spirit filled with bad mojo. This malignant spectre is what killed the dinosaurs, caused tectonic shifts and melted continent sized glaciers.

Or it could just be business as usual for the planet and surrounding universe.

But what do I know? I haven't seen Al Gore's movie.

Gerard, I wish that I thought you were kidding.

Of course, England would have it easy, compared to Tuvalu (maximum above sea level about 3 metres) and the Netherlands. And Bangladesh. Not to mention large swathes of the US itself, including most of the Gulf coast and a large percentage of Florida.

Never mind; when the category 6 hurricanes start scouring thousands of square miles down to bedrock, you can comfort yourself with the thought that your SUV is still in the drive. As long as you've chained it down, of course.

Yes, I know there is no such thing as a category 6. Yet.

It seems to me that the main characteristic of American culture is gross and obscene waste. Maybe that's the real reason for your enormous military; to make sure nobody else can effectively object.

But what do you do when your creditors start calling the debts due?

"But what do you do when your creditors start calling the debts due?"

There being no one who is legitimately owed anything, I plan to ignore their plaintive wails.

Fletcher: Actually, there have been category 6 storms and worse in the history of earth's climate. Of course, they were before man lived here. But if you believe in the "global warming" theory as opposed to the historically provable "long term climate changes" theory, you can always surmise that dinosaur technology was responsible.

Also overlooked by "global warming" hysterics is the fact that most of the world's Co2 comes from TREES. Instead of picking at the SUV owners of the world, how about we start chopping down those evil forests. THAT could make a real difference, but somehow I doubt Al Gore wants to make movies glorifying the destruction of the rainforests.

It would be easier to participate in some of these liberal causes if they made even a particle of sense.

Thanks for the Orwell update. The self-appointed improvers of society have sunk to depths that would not surprise our Mr. Blair.

CGHill don't trees produce O2 and take in Co2? and animals and humans give off O2?

It's well-known that
1. it's called global climate _change_;
2. global climate change can include local areas or periods in which temperatures go down;
3. 'One swallow doesn't make a spring.'

I await a demonstration that the normal condition of the climate is static.

Trees PRODUCE CO2???

Are you folks willfully ignorant, or is it just natural?

You might want to check out this little tidbit:

http://www.noaanews.noaa.gov/stories2007/images/2006-jan-dec-temps.jpg

I see it's escaped your notice that here in what I used to refer to as "Siberia of the West" we are experiencing yet another record breaking warm winter (and by "warm" I mean it only got down to -30C once in the last two years...)

How much of this and the unusual weather across the southern half of the continent is due to El Nino is debatable, but it's all likely a consequence of global warming, not evidence against it. As the Arctic ice melts and flows south it cools the ocean currents, disrupting weather patterns in all kinds of unpredictable ways.

You need to look past your own narrow little view of the world and see the whole picture.

The operative word here, obviously, is "unpredictable."

Trees produce CO2? Huhmmm...gosh, and here I was reading those science books that said they TOOK IN CO2 and used it as a fuel for the photosynthesis (sp?) process.

Concerning the "static" weather issue:

What really gets me about these arguments ("well, you can't PROVE that we are DEFINITELY responsible in any way possible all the time perfectly and without margin of error.....") is how they are actually very bad business decisions. It seems that a rational person would asume the precautionary principle here. It is not like we do not have the creativity and resourcefulness to change the way we operate energy and production systems and still maintain our markets and quality of living. The refrain is always that by reducing and reversing our climate emission practices we will need to revert to some neo-lithic pre-industrial state. How silly. Come on people, give the all-powerful market that you slavenly worship some credit.
Don't be so afraid of climate warming- playing softball with your paranoid fantasies and anti-scientific paradigm I'll say this: regardless of how it is caused, there is no reason for us to continue adding to it. Let's help the market see the benefits and profit to be made by investing in non-poluting technologies for an alternative energy future that is coming regardless of which side of the debate we sit.

Of course, I guess I cannot prove that oil will run out, since I don't have perfect future goggles. All one can do is make some solid guesses based on observed phenomenon about how when you burn stuff up, it is gone for good.

: regardless of how it is caused, there is no reason for us to continue adding to it.

I can think of a few reasons for us to continue.
Extended summer for one. Longer growing seasons for our third world and subsistent farming neighbors. Lush green forest lands teeming with fruit and nuts for the critters to eat. More fresh water from the heated oceans to make current desert areas habitable.
Every living thing has oil of one form or another coursing thru it's body. The earth converts it to a usable form by compression n heat over long periods of time. We being intelligent critters can replicate this natural process in a shorter period using the great heaps of garbage that we currently stuff into landfills.
There is on reason why Oil isn't listed as a renewable resource. It is completely renewable. To think it otherwise is to believe oil was placed on Earth by a devine source.
The only negative that I can think of is rising ocean levels. But when you think about it aren't the people who live on the coast the most able to relocate?

Plants do produce CO2 at night.

You guys are funny.

Basically, what you're telling me is, no matter WHAT the weather does, should it go UP or go DOWN or go SIDEWAYS, it's all because of GLOBAL WARMING.

Yah, we break some records now and then. In my day, we knew the weather was unpredictable, and if you wanted to know if it was raining, you poked your head out the window. Nowadays, people run their computer models that, after a certain amount of tweaking, can accurately predict what the weather will be a week ago last Tuesday.

Global Warming is man's ultimate conceit, that he has the wisdom and the intelligence to understand, even predict, something as vast and complex as global weather. No, strike that, not his ultimate conceit -- his ultimate conceit is that this gives him the right to have coercive control over the production and livelihood of others.

That's what this is about. The environmentalists want to have control over what the rest of us are allowed to do.

But, at the end, we will survive? or is the heart's revange? Your blog is very nice and i'll be back soon. Sorry for my english. bye pierluigi