National Overview:
Temperature Highlights - October, 2009
• The average October temperature of 50.8°F was 4.0°F below the 20th Century average and ranked as the 3rd coolest based on preliminary data.
• For the nation as a whole, it was the third coolest October on record. The month was marked by an active weather pattern that reinforced unseasonably cold air behind a series of cold fronts. Temperatures were below normal in eight of the nation's nine climate regions, and of the nine, five were much below normal. Only the Southeast climate region had near normal temperatures for October.
• Statewide temperatures coincided with the regional values as all but six states had below normal temperatures. Oklahoma had its coolest October on record and ten other states had their top five coolest such months.
• Florida was the only state to have an above normal temperature average in October. It was the sixth consecutive month that the Florida's temperature was above normal, resulting in the third warmest such period (May-October).
• The three-month period (August-October) was the coolest on record for three states: Nebraska, Kansas, and Oklahoma. Five other states had top five cool periods: Missouri (2nd), Iowa (3rd) , Arkansas (5th) , Illinois (5th) and South Dakota (5th) . Every climate division in Kansas (nine) and Nebraska (eight) recorded a record cool such period.
• For the year-to-date (January - October) period, the contiguous U.S. temperature ranked 43rd warmest. No state had a top or bottom ten temperature value for this period.
Pretty funny. My watchucllay proffessor at UNLV said in 1998, that the global warming study was a 40 year study and could not be proven one way or another until the 40th year. Then the decision would be made. The study began about 1995 or so, maybe 1990.
Oh, there you go again Tracker, trying to stop the hysteria with facts and common sense! Â Absurd...gotta go look for my jacket, its a little nippy this morning. Â ;o)
Several classmates have mentioned global warming, being involved in helping to prevent it. Â To me, this opens a door for an opposing opinion (nobody reads the Message Board anymore anyway, so what the hey). Â Isn't this what we did in the late 60's, voice our opposing opinions and applaude each other for doing so? Â Today, it seems like opinions that challenge popular beliefs are met with just as much opposition, only the sides have switched. Â That said, here's a really interesting link with an equally interesting video in it. Â I agree with the guy -- let's hear the science.
As an engineer, facts sway me, so here's another: Â http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/11/25/climategate-hide-the-decline-codified/ Â
Speaking of facts: Â Here's another one: Â http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/comments/climategate_gore_falsifies_the_record Â
What I see happening is, like the scientist in the video says, the global warming argument (some say there's nothing to argue; it's fact) has left the tracks of sound science, and has become, instead, a political, emotional thing. Â If someone has what they think might be cancer, and a doctor tells them, yes, they have cancer, they'd want to see the facts. Â And often, they'd want a second opinion. Â But with global warming, it's almost as if people WANT to believe the worst, and exclude all the second opinions. Â If it really is that big a deal -- and clamping down on CO2 emissions will be a very big deal -- it seems like people would want to hear all the opinions. Â But that's not happening.
I remember back in the 60's hearing in school all about the evils of the state-run paper in Moscow, Pravda, how it suppressed any opposing opinions. Â This is happening now in America, with the major news channels being complicite in pretty much withholding opposing opinions. Â It's rare to hear any of them questioning the global warming advocates, asking for facts.
My two, okay, three cents. Â I'll probably be banned from the 50th. We'll probably all be burned to a crisp by then, anyway.
I read the message boards, but I agree with you, Larry. After the reunion, were people 're-unioned out' and stopped reading or posting? I thought the fun had just begun.
Anyway, re global warming, whether it's political, emotional or scientific, it will catch us someday if we're not prepared.
I doubt you'd be banned from the 50th reunion. You're too sweet!
Phyllis, you're sweet, too! Â Thanks again for the 'tattoo you'.
The point of the links I attached is that, contrary to what we've been hearing for years, there may be no disaster waiting to catch up with us. Beginning at the turn of the last century, there was a marked rise in CO2 in the atmosphere -- due to the industrial revolution, and it's been increasing ever since. Â Yet, there was no corresponding rise in global temperatures. Â Twenty-five or thirty years later there was a cycle of increasing temps, but then it dropped again until sometime in the 70's. Â Then, beginning in 1998, the temps have dropped again. Â One would think that if global warming were directly tied to CO2 levels, you'd see steadily increasing global temperatures.
But instead, there seem to be heating and cooling cycles that last roughly 25 or 30 years, then reverse, and seem tied more to ocean temperatures than anything else. Â These cycles are documented in my second post in this thread by a geologist at Western Washington University, Dr. Don Easterbrook. Â Also well worth reading is this speech by Michael Crichton in 2005 at the National Press Club in Washington D.C. Â Crichton was no mental slouch, having gone through med school before becoming a writer: Â http://www.crichton-official.com/speech-ourenvironmentalfuture.html
Like Crichton, I firmly believe in recycling, saving gas, and doing as little harm to the environment as possible. Â But I also extremely dislike being bullied by fake science and scare mongering public figures, who themselves don't abide by the rules they're trying to force on us. Â Whatever happened to the mantra 'Question authority!'?
Like Larry, we should definitely do our own research before deciding.
I took the advice of a recent letter to the editor ('Global warming theory crumbling') and checked out the recommended Web site, www.climatedepot.com. I enjoyed reading the article about 'The Big Climate Change Fraud' on the recommended site, and wish that the global warming theory was in fact a fraud so that I would not have to eventually give up my gas-guzzling SUV, pay for higher energy bills, etc.
However, being critical by nature, I went further and read statements regarding this controversy on the East Anglia University Web site, http://www.uea.ac.uk/ where the controversy started with the hacking of scientists' e-mails. I also went to Bloomberg.com and read a Dec. 2 column written by Eric Pooley regarding this controversy as well. http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=aBE1_bXtraio Both helped to clarify and provide perspective.
I will leave this to the readers to search out and read the statements and articles for themselves. However, I am now planning on replacing my SUV with an energy-efficient vehicle, adding more home insulation and turning down my thermostat.
I hope everyone has a wonderful and happy Christmas and New Year's holiday.
A great vid produced by the British. It's about an hour and 15 minutes long. A curious thing: about 13 minutes in, it points out that beginning with WWII in about 1940, industrial production took off, then continued to increase after the war with the prosperity that followed. Common sense would say that all this man-made activity resulting in the production of more CO2 would result in higher global temperatures. But in fact, temperatures dropped from 1940 until about 1975. Remember in the early seventies when people were saying we were headed for another ice age?
So what would explain the phenom of getting colder in the early 70s? There must be other cycles at work here. You know, the old '100 year flood,' '7 years of drought followed by 7 years of rainy weather' cycle, etc. I'm sure that Seattle and the Pacific NW have cycles of weather, too. Could the colder weather of the 70s have been part of some other cycle we simply didn't recognize? And could what is happeinng now be the same thing - a cycle that runs in a longer time frame, enough so that we are not familar with its patterns?
And could what is happeinng now be the same thing - a cycle that runs in a longer time frame, enough so that we are not familar with its patterns?
Just a thought... and a hope, too.
Exactly, Phyllis. The fact that much of North America was once covered in glaciers shows it is a long-term cycle and probably has little to do with our behavior, although we certainly know how to make things worse.
