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originally posted by: 1947boomer
originally posted by: IAMALLYETALLIAM
So which one is it? Is the world getting blisteringly hot or cooler than previous summers with drought breaking rain?
Admittedly, I only have a highschool education and am certainly no Scientist™ so am a little baffled by all of the failed predictions (is New York City under water yet?) and attributing both hot and cold weather to klimate change.
Anyone have an idea?
The La Niña pattern is not attributed to climate change. It was there before and will be there after the rise in average temperature due to build up of CO2. It is a cycle driven mainly by sea surface temperatures in the South Pacific.
The La Niña/El Nino cycle oscillates between higher than average rainfall and lower than average rainfall in those areas of the planet that are affected by it. That pattern is superimposed on a background of steadily increasing average temperatures. In any given year, the amount of cooling due to La Niña can be 5 degrees C or more and that can offset the amount of warming due to CO2. The total amount of average warming due to CO2 buildup right now is only about 1 degree C, so the La Niña cooling can easily overcome that.
Here in Northern California we are experiencing the same pattern as in Australia. We’ve just had the hottest summer on record with the worst wildfires but now we are in a La Niña cycle and the winter will probably be wetter and cooler than usual.
The climate models are getting more accurate all the time because computer power continues to increase and we have more and better measurements of the environment. No model predicted that New York would be under water by now.
Another thing to keep in mind is that just because the climate models predict that the average temperature of the planet will rise that doesn’t mean that every place on the planet will rise by the same amount everywhere and all the time. Some places will warm faster than others. Right now, the Arctic and Antarctic are warming faster than lower latitudes. One consequence of that is that the polar vortex winds cause colder than average temperatures to migrate farther from the poles down to lower latitudes in the winter. Both the US and Europe have experienced that several times in the last decade or so.
The one general rule of global warming is that in the future, almost no place on the planet will continue to have the same climate it has now.
originally posted by: crayzeed
a reply to: IAMALLYETALLIAM
You must understand that when you had the hot summers the nut jobs, oopps sorry the climate scientist, were calling it "Global Warming" as the scary words. But the found out that sometimes rain falls so they changed their tag line to "Climate Change" because it gave them a wider choice of scenarios to frighten people with.
I know this because I'm a scientist because I've got a white coat. I see you haven't purchased a white coat yet so you can't give scientific answers. Get a white coat immediately.
originally posted by: crayzeed
a reply to: IAMALLYETALLIAM
You must understand that when you had the hot summers the nut jobs, oopps sorry the climate scientist, were calling it "Global Warming" as the scary words. But the found out that sometimes rain falls so they changed their tag line to "Climate Change" because it gave them a wider choice of scenarios to frighten people with.
I know this because I'm a scientist because I've got a white coat. I see you haven't purchased a white coat yet so you can't give scientific answers. Get a white coat immediately.