Extreme Weather

Discussion in 'General Survival and Preparedness' started by Alpha Dog, Nov 18, 2011.


  1. Alpha Dog

    Alpha Dog survival of the breed

    I seen this and thought I would pass it along

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    Science panel: Get ready for extreme weather



    • 655d5152eb97d419fe0e6a706700016c. FILE - Maarten van Aalst, leading climate specialist for the Red Cross and Red Crescent, …

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    d iWASHINGTON (AP) — Think of the Texas drought, floods in Thailand and Russia's devastating heat waves as coming attractions in a warming world. That is the warning from top international climate scientists and disaster experts after meeting in Africa.
    The panel said the world needs to get ready for more dangerous and "unprecedented extreme weather" caused by global warming. These experts fear that without preparedness, crazy weather extremes may overwhelm some locations, making some places unlivable.
    The Nobel Prize-winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change issued a special report on global warming and extreme weather Friday after meeting in Kampala, Uganda. This is the first time the group of scientists has focused on the dangers of extreme weather events such as heat waves, floods, droughts and storms. Those are more dangerous than gradual increases in the world's average temperature.
    For example, the report predicts that heat waves that are now once-in-a-generation events will become hotter and happen once every five years by mid-century and every other year by the end of the century. And in some places, such as most of Latin America, Africa and a good chunk of Asia, they will likely become yearly bakings.
    And the very heavy rainstorms that usually happen once every 20 years will happen far more frequently, the report said. In most areas of the U.S. and Canada, they are likely to occur three times as often by the turn of the century, if fossil fuel use continues at current levels. In Southeast Asia, where flooding has been dramatic, it is likely to happen about four times as often as now, the report predicts.
    One scientist points to this year's drought and string of 100 degree days (38 Celsius) in Texas and Oklahoma, which set an all-time record for hottest month for any U.S. state this summer.
    "I think of it as a wake-up call," said one of the study's authors, David Easterling, head of global climate applications for the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. "The likelihood of that occurring in the future is going to be much greater."
    The report said world leaders have to prepare better for weather extremes.
    "We need to be worried," said one of the study's lead authors, Maarten van Aalst, director of the International Red Cross/Red Crescent Climate Centre in the Netherlands. "And our response needs to anticipate disasters and reduce risk before they happen rather than wait until after they happen and clean up afterward. ... Risk has already increased dramatically."
    Another study lead writer, Chris Field of Stanford University, said scientists aren't quite sure which weather disaster will be the biggest threat because wild weather interacts with economics and where people live. Society's vulnerability to natural disasters, aside from climate, has also increased, he said.
    Field told The Associated Press in an interview that "it's clear that losses from disasters are increasing. And in terms of deaths, "more than 95 percent of fatalities from the 1970s to the present have been in developing countries," he said.
    Losses are already high, running at as much as $200 billion a year, said Michael Oppenheimer of Princeton University, a study author.
    Science has progressed so much in the last several years that scientists can now attribute the increase in many of these types of extreme weather events to global warming with increased confidence, said study author Thomas Stocker at the University of Bern.
    Scientists were able to weigh their confidence of predictions of future climate disasters and heat waves were the most obvious. The report said it is "virtually certain" that heat waves are getting worse, longer and hotter, while cold spells are easing.
    The report said there is at least a 2-in-3 chance that heavy downpours will increase, both in the tropics and northern regions, and from tropical cyclones.
    The 29-page summary of the full report — which will be completed in the coming months — says that extremes could get so bad at some point that some regions may need to be abandoned.
    Such locations are likely to be in poorer countries, van Aalst said in a telephone interview, but the middle class may be affected in those regions, which aren't specifically identified in the report. And even in some developed northern regions of the world, such as Canada, Russia and Greenland, cities might need to move because of weather extremes and sea level rise from man-made warming, he said.
    In places like van Aalst's native Netherlands, citizens will have to learn how to handle new weather problems, in this case heat waves.
    And it's not just the headline grabbing disasters like a Hurricane Katrina or the massive 2010 Russian heat wave that studies show were unlikely to happen without global warming. At the Red Cross/Red Crescent they are seeing "a particular pattern of rising risks" from smaller events, van Aalst said.
    Of all the weather extremes that kill and cause massive damage, he said, the worst is flooding.
    There's an ongoing debate in the climate science community about whether it is possible and fair to attribute individual climate disasters to manmade global warming. Usually meteorologists say it's impossible to link climate change to a specific storm or drought, but that such extremes are more likely in a future dominated by global warming.
    Jerry North, a scientist at Texas A&M University who wasn't part of the study, said he thought the panel was being properly cautious in its projections and findings, especially since by definition climate extremes are uncommon events. MIT professor Kerry Emanuel thought the panel was being too conservative when it comes to tropical cyclones.
    The panel was formed by the United Nations and World Meteorological Organization. In the past, it has discussed extreme events in snippets in its report. But this time, the scientists are putting them together.
    The next major IPCC report isn't expected until the group meets in Stockholm in 2013.
    ___
    Online:
    Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change: IPCC - Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
    NOAA on weather extremes: NCDC: Billion Dollar U.S. Weather/Climate Disasters
     
  2. tacmotusn

    tacmotusn RIP 1/13/21

    Look at them ears. It's Obummer's half brother. Somebody photo shop in Obummer's picture. I swear, it's salt and pepper twins
     
    dragonfly likes this.
  3. Alpha Dog

    Alpha Dog survival of the breed

    True I must be getting slow I didn't even see it, don't know how I missed the ears. I must be blind :cool:
     
  4. Falcon15

    Falcon15 Falco Peregrinus

    Global warming is [BSf]not 30 years ago these same idiots were warning us of an impending ice age. Truth is, they are guessing AT BEST and the IPCC has been busted (search Climate-gate) tweaking reports, burying essential data that did not jibe with their "theory", and outright ostracizing award winning climatologists for not agreeing and going along. It has been a money making scheme, in the form of literally billions in grants etc. The esteemed gasbag Al Gore - is invested heavily in green technologies that depend upon things like the carbon tax and legislation that does stuff like force coal fired plant to close...

    I call[BSf]. Sorry, not buying it.
     
  5. Mechwolf

    Mechwolf Monkey+

    I'm with you Falcon15. Global warming has been debunked over and over again. It was just another way for Al Gore and others to fleece the sheeple.....pun intended. :)
     
    dragonfly and Falcon15 like this.
  6. beast

    beast backwoodsman

    that doesnt mean we dont need to take better care of our home, the earth
    there may be no global warming but storms ARE getting worse and more frequent
    same for quakes and erupting volcanoes
     
    Alpha Dog likes this.
  7. Seawolf1090

    Seawolf1090 Retired Curmudgeonly IT Monkey Founding Member

    Oh,"Global Warming" is happening, and has been for millenia, as is "Global Cooling". It is all a matter of Earth's ongoing climate change, and it's natural cycles - NOT Man's influence. I have seen hotter summers than the last few, and colder winters than the last few - really nothing new.
    The APPARENT increase in storms and natural disasters is more a matter of much better reporting, and the fact we are far better 'connected' now. When a hundred thousand people died in a massive earthquake in central China at the turn of the 19th/20th century, we wouldn't learn of it for years. Now, we watch it HAPPEN on Farcebook, Tweeter and Youtube.
    The 2004 tsunami that inundated the Indonesian and Sumatran islands - decades ago we'd not have known of it for a long while. Heck, we had a 'play by play'.......
    So,it makes a huge difference in perceptions.
    The sad thing is, all these arsehats making big money by making We The People fearful of shadows.......
     
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  8. STANGF150

    STANGF150 Knowledge Seeker

    B-b-but they got a Nobel Peace Prize!!! They Can't Be Wrong!!! After all, Lord & Master Obama got one too!!!
     
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  9. Alpha Dog

    Alpha Dog survival of the breed

    I don't know what is causing it but I do know In my area the storms are getting worse and coming out of no where. Winters colder and summers hotter. I can't think of another time I have seen so much loss of property and life from storms as I have in the past three years.
     
    CANDY fISHER likes this.
  10. GrandpaDave

    GrandpaDave Monkey++

    Here in Southeast Kansas we had a killer drought... even some of the momma deer were abandoning their fawns due to lack of fodder... the dry farmers just gave up... odd yes.. global warming... ???

    someone a lot smarter than I am would have to answer that...
    oh and BTW right now it's 62 we're going to 70... wind gusts are like 60 mph... not a nice day out
     
  11. fedorthedog

    fedorthedog Monkey+++

    A short 40 years ago when I was in grammar school they told me we were coming out of an ice age and the world was getting warmer. So global warming is occurring and that leads to an ice age.
     
  12. Tikka

    Tikka Monkey+++

    I'm in agreement with Seawolf. Solar activity is on the increase which always seemed to affect the weather.

    When global warming first popped up on the radar at some global weather summit; 15 climatologists supported the global warming theory and 385 did not. The majority of the 385 support the it is a natural cycle.
     
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  13. Wolfgang2000

    Wolfgang2000 Monkey++

    Weather goes in cycles. I've seen the same weather pattern in the 60's. Record breaking storms like Betsy and Camille. In the early 70's while in the army, I saw record heat on the east coast, then in Alaska that same year, record snow falls and cold.

    Then everything mellowed out for 15 to 20 years. Now it's back again.

    The Global warming and a lot else is driven by greed, institutional and governmental.
     
    STANGF150 likes this.
  14. larryinalabama

    larryinalabama Monkey++

    All climate change is.....a political movement by the Left to raise taxes and insure high energy taxes. Never ever feel guilty about the amount of power you use or the kind of vehicle you drive this is AMERICA, be proud.
     
    STANGF150 and dragonfly like this.
  15. Tikka

    Tikka Monkey+++

    Al Gore turned climate change into mega-bucks.
     
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  16. dragonfly

    dragonfly Monkey+++

    Now I have noticed it sure seems a LOT hotter here in Arizona than I can remember.....But then it was always cooler and not too hot to go to the lakes and run around when I was 17!
    Now At 60, it sure seems a lot hotter!
    I blame the polar bears! ( and AL!)
     
  17. Seawolf1090

    Seawolf1090 Retired Curmudgeonly IT Monkey Founding Member

    Fifteen years back, I was living in a rented Singlewide with NO AC! Those summers were HOT - I kept my freezer making ice cubes and I sat in my undies under a big bx fan, drinking icewater by the gallon!
    Seemed a lot hotter then.........
    Now I sit in my undies in a much better-insulated owned Doublewide, with AC used on the hottest days.

    It's all about perception - the official temps back then were the same.

    Lowest temp in recent years I have seen (last year) was 14 degrees here locally, and dipped in the twenties for only a week.
    Back in highschool in the early 70's, I rode my MC to school one fine morning - TEN degrees! It took all first period to thaw my fingers.
     
    Falcon15 likes this.
  18. tulianr

    tulianr Don Quixote de la Monkey

    I agree. We obviously need to take better care of our environment, but it is hubris to believe that we can seriously alter the weather cycles of the planet. We're not much more than a mild case of fleas to the earth. We might be annoying, but she'll still be here when we've passed away.

    Compared to the amount of greenhouse gases emitted just by volcanoes, what we put out is miniscule. We're a danger to ourselves, and not much more.

    The 1883 eruption of Krakatoa resulted in an explosion four times as powerful as the largest nuclear weapon ever detonated, and 15,000 times as powerful as the bomb that devastated Hiroshima. It also released more greenhouse gases into the atmosphere than mankind has created in the history of our species. The eruption of Krakatoa lowered worldwide temperatures by 1.2 degrees C.

    Admittedly, Krakatoa was a big one, but that was just one of many such volcano eruptions.

    We like to think of ourselves in important terms, and to imagine ourselves able to affect the weather; but compared to the forces of nature, our impact is laughable. We can no more cause storms and earthquakes than we can control them. We're just along for the ride.
     
  19. Falcon15

    Falcon15 Falco Peregrinus

    tulianr likes this.
  20. Space Ghost

    Space Ghost Monkey+

    Great clip. God controls the weather, we can't even control ourselves...

    Carlin 2012
     
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