Thread: Global Warming
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Old 01-27-13, 02:49 PM   #7
stevehull
Steve Hull
 
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Default one man's observations on climate

Here is just one person's personal observations on rapid climate change - all of it in the last 60 years.

As a kid, I grew up (50's 60's) in Westborough MA, just SW of Woburn (home of xringer). We did not know about wind chill, but I do know that there were many weeks when it did not go above freezing. It was not unusual to go a week (or more) without it going above zero. I knew this as we kept livestock and we had to hand carry water buckets morning/night to water them when the pipe to the barn froze (buried 6 feet down). Cows drink a lot of damn water . . .

The frost line in central Massachusetts back then went down 6-7 feet - now frost rarely goes down 1/2 of that (or less).

When was the last time it was below zero for a week in Boston/Worcester? It is now a big deal if it stays below freezing for a week!

There were no Cardinals nor Robins throughout the winter despite my mother putting out lots of bird seed (Chicakadees, lots of 'em back then). Now both the former are year round residents of New England.

We regularly went skating on the town ponds at about Thanksgiving and we played hockey on same until mid March. I know that as we would have a Thanksgiving bonfire on the lake, would roast chickens and eat fire baked potatos.

Ice fishing was a chore as you had to chop through 12-18 inches of ice. Now you don't dare venture on lakes in central Massachusetts until January - and then at your risk of falling through.

My wife's family was in Island Pond VT (Northeast Kingdom area) for generations where ice in and ice out dates of major lakes have been kept for 200+ years.

They used the lakes for ice cutting (for icehouse and for homes in the cities before mechanical refridgeration). Up to the early 70's ice in on the lakes was late October +/- one week. Ice out was in mid April +/- 1 week. Many people literally banked on those dates as many were employed by ice houses. Now all that has changed by a month at each end. I have seen the posted dates of ice in and out in the family records going back for literally generations. You too can look those dates up in town records.

I used to go to school the first week (just after Labor Day) and we would collect pretty leaves and do the waxed paper thing that first week. Now the leaves change in mid October in Westborough.

All the above simply says there has been climate change - and yes, this has happened hundreds (thousands?) of times in geological history. But it does NOT happen in one human generation.

Situations similar to the recent change normally take many hundreds to thousands of years with the exceptions of large volcanic issues (eg year without a summer, 1830's)

Yet in Europe, right now they are freezing. It takes only a subtle shift of the Gulf Stream to move quadrillions of BTUs to the south - and this is what is being observed. And the summers have been incredibly hot and dry there as well.

The "infamous" Northwest Passge, searched for since Henry Hudson's time, is now open in the Arctic with the lowest thickness of sea ice ever see. How do we know? The first nuclear submarine, the Nautilus, made a trip under the north pole in 1959 and accurately measured sea ice thickness. My uncle was on that historic sub trip and there were times when the ice was so thick that they almost didn't make it between ice bottom and ocean bottom. They measured this to hide from Soviet subs that were non-nuclear. The US Navy has a LOT of data on ice thickness (now ice thinness or open water).

Now, on that same exact route, 80% of the 1959 sub trip is open water . . .

I can literally go on and on with more data personally seen in my lifetime, but you get the message.

And . . . . at the same time as this, there has been a huge increase in man made gasses well known and clearly documented to cause changes in atmospheric heat retention.

No I have not personally measured that change, but I have taught courses where I have had to literally change lectures due to the almost 50% increase in atmospheric CO2 (in my teaching "lifetime").

I know well that association is not causation, but as a scientist with a doctorate and then post doctorate fellowships, I have spent a lot of time studying this. I call what we are seeing is the following:

rapid, human induced, global climate change

You may disagree and have opinions, but opinions are not facts. I too don't appreciate lazy thinking just as I hate seeing a poorly done brazing job done by a person who thinks (tells all) that he/she is good at it . . .


Respectfully,

Steve
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