And I moved back from Maui for this? Phooey!
"Global warming" is a bad misnomer. But believe it or not, it's causing this. Heat pumped into the air causes it to expand and move...it moved north to the pole, it is melting.
People are running around in T-shorts at the Olympics...the cold air has to move when it's displaced by warm air...guess where it went?
"climate change" is a way better term. What is happening is the world's weather patterns are being disturbed. Not to mention it's inhabitants.
Your neighbors called. They like your music.
And I moved back from Maui for this? Phooey!
Man - I miss the snow! I grew up in Minnesota, and used to "winter" in Montana before moving to Seattle and now in Auckland. Nothing like a -44 cold snap to wake you up!
Down here it has been a long, hot and very dry summer. We have had a couple years of very dry almost drought conditions which has led to serious feed shortages - bad for a country that depends on dairy and lamb as key exports. Hay has gone from $2-3/bale a few years ago to averaging about $6-10/bale now. At one point last year, I saw it for sale at $20/bale!
Almost all of the population outside of the core urban areas depend on roof collected rainwater for their household water. Since the island is volcanic, and there are not that many folks (10x more sheep than people!) wells are expensive and hard to dig. We have two 5000 gallon tanks that collect from our roof and garage roof, and another 500 gallon tank on the shed to collect for the four horses. Right now in the dog days of summer, we probably have about three or four days water left in the big tanks and the small one is empty - siphoning off the big ones.
We need a good thunderstorm to dump for a few hours - or overnight. Or else we will have to get a tanker out to drop us their 14,000L. But, not having worked since August - I would rather eat that money than pour it down the drain.
El Climate-chango.
I'm really surprised how many here actually like the cold and snow.I grew up on a farm, and there was nothing, and I do mean nothing good about it. Things haven't changed since for me, and everytime I hear some cutesy news anchor comment they sure would like to see some white stuff, I think, "yeah, you never had to lay under your truck and change a transmission* in that crap didja!".
*Or feed the cattle twice a day
or chop the ice on the pond so they could drink,
or walk to town for essentials 'cause you couldn't drive there,
or...
OK, so I moved a few hundred miles south, no longer farm, and seldom have the problems of the old days... I still say... Bah Humbug!
"[I]We're going all the way, till the wheels fall off and burn[/I]!"
Bob Dylan, from [I]Brownsville Girl[/I]
[I]"Time wounds all heels"[/I]
John Lennon, referring to the Nixon/Hoover deportation fiasco.
All the proof is there about climate change and these guys are never wrong:Originally Posted by Old Guy
The continued rapid cooling of the earth since WWII is in accord with the increase in global air pollution associated with industrialization, mechanization, urbanization and exploding population. -- Reid Bryson, "Global Ecology; Readings towards a rational strategy for Man", (1971)
The battle to feed humanity is over. In the 1970s, the world will undergo famines. Hundreds of millions of people are going to starve to death in spite of any crash programs embarked upon now. Population control is the only answer -- Paul Ehrlich - The Population Bomb (1968)
I would take even money that England will not exist in the year 2000 -- Paul Ehrlich in (1969)
In ten years all important animal life in the sea will be extinct. Large areas of coastline will have to be evacuated because of the stench of dead fish. -- Paul Ehrlich, Earth Day (1970)
Before 1985, mankind will enter a genuine age of scarcity . . . in which the accessible supplies of many key minerals will be facing depletion -- Paul Ehrlich in (1976)
This [cooling] trend will reduce agricultural productivity for the rest of the century -- Peter Gwynne, Newsweek 1976
There are ominous signs that the earth's weather patterns have begun to change dramatically and that these changes may portend a drastic decline in food production - with serious political implications for just about every nation on earth. The drop in food production could begin quite soon... The evidence in support of these predictions has now begun to accumulate so massively that meteorologist are hard-pressed to keep up with it. -- Newsweek, April 28, (1975)
This cooling has already killed hundreds of thousands of people. If it continues and no strong action is taken, it will cause world famine, world chaos and world war, and this could all come about before the year 2000. -- Lowell Ponte "The Cooling", 1976
If present trends continue, the world will be about four degrees colder for the global mean temperature in 1990, but eleven degrees colder by the year 2000...This is about twice what it would take to put us in an ice age. -- Kenneth E.F. Watt on air pollution and global cooling, Earth Day (1970)
Let's not devolve to a political debate on global warming please. It'll just end up bad, and eventually locked.
I know my own dislike of winter has childhood roots, so here's a story to elaborate;
I was about 10, and our Missouri farm had just experienced an ice storm. Come morning, Dad and I went to chore the cattle. First, the tractor wouldn't start until we'd removed the air cleaner and dosed the carb with ether. The trip to the silo was nasty, almost putting us in the fence a couple times. We finally got the cows fed and headed back to the house. I opened the gates for Dad to pass, by then he was plenty pi**ed. He had on those thin rubber slip-on boots, and was having to use the tractor brakes to steer. At the last gate, he got his foot caught between the left and right brake, putting the tractor in a tight spin with the right brake locked. What did Dad do in his pain and anger? He pulled the throttle down wide open... It would have been funny, but I could feel his frozen foot with an 1/8" of rubber caught in the brake.
The next winter, we had the worst snow I've experienced. 3 feet before the drifts. It caught Mom by surprise at work, and at noon she called, saying she was headed home. After an hour late, Dad and I took off on two tractors to try to find her. We got only a mile or so before the blizzard blinded us, and I follwed Dad right into the ditch. We had to follow the fence hand over hand to get back home, and I was sure Dad was gonna die before we got there. We made it OK, and later learned that Mom had hit the ditch also, but had found shelter with a neighbor. 3 days before the plows came through, and 5 before Mom could get home.
Yeah, I made snowmen and tunnels as a kid, but the hardship and pain are memories far more vivid.
"[I]We're going all the way, till the wheels fall off and burn[/I]!"
Bob Dylan, from [I]Brownsville Girl[/I]
[I]"Time wounds all heels"[/I]
John Lennon, referring to the Nixon/Hoover deportation fiasco.
We used to go out to Bozeman for Christmas. One year when I was about 17, it was damned cold all week. Colder than I remember it usually being.
We had taken two cars out for all of us and my dad and step mom had left in the morning with my youngest brother. My little brother, my friend and I stayed out to go skiing that day, and were going to leave about midnight after a nap so we could drive most of the time in daylight. We had started up the car earlier in the day, and everything seemed to check out ok. About an hour and a half into the trip - in the middle of nowhere and at 1:30 AM, the car died. No electrical. Turns out that the battery had frozen solid except for two cells.
We tried and tried to flag someone down, but no one would stop until it was almost light and we got them to get us a tow into town. Luckily, we had our parkas, ski gear and down sleeping bags in the car so we were OK warm. It was about 10 below, and the wind was howling, so who knows how cold it really was.
Bfish,
A lighter side:
P.S.
We only have to suffer Heatwaves, here. At least we can feel our toeses and noses.
Um, why not fix the furnace?
Mine is oil....died every year when it got cold. I learned how to fix/tweak it myself, and the last 2 years has run like a top. Installed in 1948.
NW (Oregon) has been warm and dry this winter, for the most part. We had one cold snap.....for a week, lows in the teens, single digits depending on the locale. One small snow.
I prefer cold over hot. Cold you can get warm. Hot, unless you have AC, is miserable. Hot days drag racing are unbearable....and hot days like that are probably what causes all the melted dribbling surrounds on our fav woofers!
Ron
Posting Permissions
Bookmarks