Are we seeing a climate change?

[Reddwarf]

With the extreme cold winter in USA and heavy rain in western Europe, temperatures 25 C above normal here, I wonder, are we seeing a climate change?

[martint123]

With the extreme cold winter in USA and heavy rain in western Europe, temperatures 25 C above normal here, I wonder, are we seeing a climate change?

My neighbour just returned from Norway and he said it was -25 there. I hope that isn't 25 above normal!

I'm certainly waiting for the warming we were promised (or warned about). Just wet and windy here at present.

[Reddwarf]

It is cold in some inner parts of Norway in the north, but here in mid-south we should have -25C -30C, instead we have +3 +6 and the lawn is green. It should have been cowered in 60 cm of snow, and it is raining almost every day.

[JEF]

"It should have been cowered in 60 cm of snow"

Here in UK we come to a standstill if we have 6 cm of snow

[ga_mueller]

Here in California, 70F today, sunny for months, just had the driest year on record, EVER...

[Reddwarf]

That's probably what we can expect more of, some areas get dryer and warmer while others get wetter, others again gets more of both extremes.
But, is it manmade or not?

[Jaggy]

But, is it manmade or not?

More importantly can we (man) make a difference to hoiw fast or much it changes??

[stustunz]

well they said it was global warming
then they changed their minds and call it climate change
Right now some clowns(scientists) are stuck in ice where they said it shouldnt be frozen any more trying to prove their theory.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnew...c-Ice.html

The answer is we will never know

[JonnyCam]

That's probably what we can expect more of, some areas get dryer and warmer while others get wetter, others again gets more of both extremes.
But, is it manmade or not?

I think it's a little of both.
Sure, the amount of record weather events have sharply increased.
But this has to be tempered with the fact the record books are only very recent in the span of the earth, with cooling & warming periods being cyclic
Historic increases in CO2 have been shown to be 'lead' by temperature rises way before humans started widespread release of carbon into the atmosphere. - based on ice cores from 800,000 years ago in Antarctica. (temp rises attributed to changes in the earths solar orbit every 41,000 years (which, for some reason, used to be 100,000 years)

Humans have more than likely accelerated this change, but I believe the cycle was going to happen anyway.

It does mean the high wind events seems to be increasing in Wellington (few storms in the last 3 months with wind gusts >100km/h - not that unusual for Windy Wellington, but some of the winds were pretty ferocious)

I'm, not losing any sleep over it, but plenty of people think they can change the planet.

note: not a scientist, and not a climate change denier.

[Reddwarf]

Good points. I remember from I was much younger some scientists feared that we were approching a new iceage, some years later I read that the general opinion was that earth would never again see an iceage because of the growing population and CO2 emissions. There is more CO2 in our atmosphere now than 20 years ago, but a very small percentage, and as JonnyCam pointed out it has been much more CO2 before mankind started burning oil and coal.

But, can we go on and burn fossile fuel for ever with no consequence? I know that USA, China and India releases HUGE amounts of CO2 from burning coal in their powerplants. Will this eventually have an impact on the global climate?