Like evolution deniers who comically cannot even agree on which fossils are ape and which are human, those who deny global warming use contradictory arguments.
Tell me if there is anyone out there who denies global warming without one day denying warming is happening then the next day when confronted with the news that 2010 is the hottest year on record globally, argue warming is happening but is natural because the dinosaur era was tropical, then flit back to the first argument again about warming not happening the day after. Sometimes they even put both contradictory arguments in the same post using the cold northern hemispere weather these last few winters and the snow in particular as 'proof' that warming cannot be happening. These contradictions should at least make you 'anthro-glo-warm' deniers pause for thought.
It isn't really that difficult to comprehend - CO2 and methane are greenhouse gases and human activity is pumping these gases into the atmosphere at an unprecedented rate causing 'the speed of global warming' to be without precedent and human activity the only reasonable answer to why that is happening so quickly. The distant past may have been hotter but the 'rate' of warming was slower so any sunspot activity would have had a much more gradual effect. That's it, a simple school chemistry lesson that was delivered long before the global warming debate.
So why the snow in the UK? Well if we actually believe our geography lessons at school were not also part of 'the great conspiracy of the global warming swindle', then the temperate climate of the UK is because despite being as far north as Moscow, we have predominantly south west winds off the atlantic, a gulf stream of water from the carribean that hits our coast and a smaller land mass which means we are cooled in the summer and heated in the winter keeping our climate temperate, i.e. without the extremes seem in Moscow and elsewhere on our latitude. In the past when the earth was cooler, the UK south westerlies could still be cold enough for snow, now only north winds bring snow but crucially it seems that maybe north winds are becoming more common. The jury is out on that, but it could be that the UK could lose its south westerlies and gulf stream and potentially its temperate climate. You see global temperatures are rising despite the colder UK winters. This means of course that elsewhere is baking. Ask Australians?
Ask Australians who are currently having snowfalls in the middle of what is supposed to be their summer?
ReplyDeleteGood idea.
Mark, some of the mountain regions might get a bit of snow, which is hardly that unusual. Melbourne in the South, one of the colder cities is predicted to be 18C on Xmas day - cold by its standards and certainly cooler than the 43C in January's bush fires. 2009 was the hottest the Aussies have ever experienced and most damaging. This summer they have had some cold stormy weather but they like us have a variable regional climate, but their hottest years have been in the last decade.
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