| 3/2/2008 7:31:37 AM |
Whacky Weather?How has the winter been where you live? |
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suzydoll
Cheneyville, LA
age: 62
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| 1. Especially cold |
| 2. Especially warm |
| 3. Fairly normal |
| 4. I don't know I was in hibernation |
How has the winter been where you live?
Climate Skeptics Seize on Cold Spell
By ANDREW C. REVKIN,
The New York Times
Posted: 2008-03-02 07:20:34
(March 1) - The world has seen some extraordinary winter conditions in both hemispheres over the past year: snow in Johannesburg last June and in Baghdad in January, Arctic sea ice returning with a vengeance after a record retreat last summer, paralyzing blizzards in China, and a sharp drop in the globe’s average temperature.
People around the world have gotten hit with unusually cold weather. In June, children in Johannesburg, South Africa, woke up to snowfall, a very rare occurrence even in the southern hemisphere's winter season.
It is no wonder that some scientists, opinion writers, political operatives and other people who challenge warnings about dangerous human-caused global warming have jumped on this as a teachable moment.
So what is happening?
Wacky Weather Around the World
According to a host of climate experts, including some who question the extent and risks of global warming, it is mostly good old-fashioned weather, along with a cold kick from the tropical Pacific Ocean, which is in its La Niña phase for a few more months, a year after it was in the opposite warm El Niño pattern.
If anything else is afoot — like some cooling related to sunspot cycles or slow shifts in ocean and atmospheric patterns that can influence temperatures — an array of scientists who have staked out differing positions on the overall threat from global warming agree that there is no way to pinpoint whether such a new force is at work.
Many scientists also say that the cool spell in no way undermines the enormous body of evidence pointing to a warming world with disrupted weather patterns, less ice and rising seas should heat-trapping greenhouse gases from burning fossil fuels and forests continue to accumulate in the air.
“The current downturn is not very unusual,” said Carl Mears, a scientist at Remote Sensing Systems, a private research group in Santa Rosa, Calif., that has been using satellite data to track global temperature and whose findings have been held out as reliable by a variety of climate experts. He pointed to similar drops in 1988, 1991-92, and 1998, but with a long-term warming trend clear nonetheless.
“Temperatures are very likely to recover after the La Niña event is over,” he said.
More clucking about the cold is likely over the next several days. The Heartland Institute, a public policy research group in Chicago opposed to regulatory approaches to environmental problems, is holding a conference in Times Square on Monday and Tuesday aimed at exploring questions about the cause and dangers of climate change.
The event will convene an array of scientists, economists, statisticians and libertarian commentators holding a dizzying range of views on the changing climate — from those who see a human influence but think it is not dangerous, to others who say global warming is a hoax, the sun’s fault or beneficial. Many attendees say it is the dawn of a new paradigm. But many climate scientists and environmental campaigners say it is the skeptics’ last stand.
Michael E. Schlesinger, an atmospheric scientist at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, said that any focus on the last few months or years as evidence undermining the established theory that accumulating greenhouse gases are making the world warmer was, at best, a waste of time and, at worst, a harmful distraction.
The shifts in the extent and thickness of sea ice in the Arctic (where ice has retreated significantly in recent summers) and Antarctic (where the area of floating sea ice has grown lately) are similarly hard to attribute to particular influences.
Interviews and e-mail exchanges with half a dozen polar climate and ice experts last week produced a rough consensus: Even with the extensive refreezing of Arctic waters in the deep chill of the sunless boreal winter, the fresh-formed ice remains far thinner than the yards-thick, years-old ice that dominated the region until the 1990s.
That means the odds of having vast stretches of open water next summer remain high, many Arctic experts said.
“Climate skeptics typically take a few small pieces of the puzzle to debunk global warming, and ignore the whole picture that the larger science community sees by looking at all the pieces,” said Ignatius G. Rigor, a climate scientist at the Polar Science Center of the University of Washington in Seattle.
Gavin A. Schmidt, a climatologist at NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies in Manhattan who has spoken out about the need to reduce greenhouse gases, disagrees with Dr. Michaels on many issues, but concurred on this point.
“When I get called by CNN to comment on a big summer storm or a drought or something, I give the same answer I give a guy who asks about a blizzard,” Dr. Schmidt said. “It’s all in the long-term trends. Weather isn’t going to go away because of climate change. There is this desire to explain everything that we see in terms of something you think you understand, whether that’s the next ice age coming or global warming.”
Copyright © 2008 The New York Times Company
2008-03-01 19:08:08
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| 3/2/2008 7:34:08 AM |
Whacky Weather?How has the winter been where you live? |
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weaimtoplease
Donalsonville, GA
age: 58 online now!
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To bad I couldn't vote for two because it's been especially cold - which my electric bill attests to - but I just go into the bedroom with my laptop and hibernate.
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| 3/2/2008 7:38:03 AM |
Whacky Weather?How has the winter been where you live? |
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huronearth
Mount Pleasant, MI
age: 55 online now!
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It's been a pain in the butt. Mainly just the "relentlessness" of it - nothing too terrible or severe - just a constant nuisance. Temperature warms up one day... it rains... then, the temperature drops 30 degrees in 10 hours... it's frigid... everything freezes... then, it snows a couple of inches a night for three nights in a row... and, over and over and on and on...
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| 3/2/2008 7:42:13 AM |
Whacky Weather?How has the winter been where you live? |
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suzydoll
Cheneyville, LA
age: 62
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Here in Louisiana 
my grandson has grown weary of taking out and putting back in my window unit throughout the winter for me. 
We will have a long spell of very cold weather then all of a sudden the weather shifts and we have a long spell of very warm days. 
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| 3/2/2008 7:47:21 AM |
Whacky Weather?How has the winter been where you live? |
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lotus3
Venice, FL
age: 55 online now!
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Good Morning Suzy...it has been the same here in Florida..a few days of nice weather, and bingo..just like that it gets cold. I can't wait to put all my cool day clothes away..and I am really starting to miss swimming in the Gulf. Today is going to be an absolutely perfect day...sunny and warm..but the gulf temp still needs to get higher before I will go in it.
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| 3/2/2008 7:47:22 AM |
Whacky Weather?How has the winter been where you live? |
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sunnyx56
Rochester, NH
age: 56
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With to much snow, we are close to setting a record for this area. Over 10 feet this year and it makes driving dangerious because you can't see on coming cars because the snow banks are so high. But that's the price you pay to live in New Hampshire, just plan indoor stuff when you can't get out.
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| 3/2/2008 7:52:29 AM |
Whacky Weather?How has the winter been where you live? |
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kaintucky
Paducah, KY
age: 54
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The weather here in kentucky has been mixed bag this winter.
 But I just went outside and saw 3 Bluebirds buzzin' around........ GREAT Weather is just around the corner!!
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| 3/2/2008 7:54:48 AM |
Whacky Weather?How has the winter been where you live? |
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hma2
Chico, CA
age: 68
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Our weather is fairly normal for this time of year. We could use some more rain and snow pack but thats life. The rest of the country gets all the snow and we have a water problem several years in a row
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| 3/2/2008 7:55:31 AM |
Whacky Weather?How has the winter been where you live? |
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deedeekine1
Irwin, PA
age: 56
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I hear on the local new (in Pittsburgh) this morning that out of 29 days in February....we had snow on 21 of them. Not saying alot of snow but till it snowed. It's to warm up for a day or two and then another front in coming through.
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| 3/2/2008 7:56:20 AM |
Whacky Weather?How has the winter been where you live? |
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red9mom
Wildomar, CA
age: 55
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wet and warm
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| 3/2/2008 7:57:24 AM |
Whacky Weather?How has the winter been where you live? |
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settee
Denton, TX
age: 54
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It has been a fairly calm winter for us here in North Central Texas...Haven't had any snow or ice, but snow is predicted here tomorrow night....the shorts go back in the drawer for next week. Last year it snowed here at Easter...not lol.
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| 3/2/2008 7:58:30 AM |
Whacky Weather?How has the winter been where you live? |
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chooseyme
Mohawk, NY
age: 64
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plain rotten......hate it totally
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| 3/2/2008 8:01:36 AM |
Whacky Weather?How has the winter been where you live? |
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lasttime4me
Townsend, MT
age: 63
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I don't know or even care, I have been in sunny Florida most of the winter. But I mis Montana.
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| 3/2/2008 8:10:24 AM |
Whacky Weather?How has the winter been where you live? |
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trisha1
Erie, PA
age: 58 online now!
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I have been on vacation in Port Charlotte,Fl for the last 5 weeks,so of course the weather has been beautiful compared to my home of Erie,Pa where it has snowed,rained,got icey and very very cold.Leaving Fl. Wed. morning to go back to that.Trisha
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| 3/2/2008 8:22:57 AM |
Whacky Weather?How has the winter been where you live? |
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glad2cu
Weirton, WV
age: 53
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Trisha, I'm in Wv...same weather as in pa. Good news, tomorrow supposed to be 65. Bad news, by the end of the week cold and snow again. Wear your coat home!!! Seems like this winter has been especially icy here. I will really be glad to see spring get here so I can get outside and do something besides shiver!! SPRING, PLEASE HURRY!!!
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