O.T. Weather???

Does the weather seam more intense this year?, I have lived in the south east for 9 years now, I have never seen a year like this... when I lived in California I never dreamed of a hot bright summer day (can't forget humid), with bright blues skies, then driving into a BLACK storm that looks something like HELL (not that I would know but you get the point), I saw that stuff on TV but it did it know justice.

If we could only get that energy, the power that is going over my head right now. How can we capture it?

Is anyone else think it's getting worse or is it just me?

Hi genius. I have lived in the Southeast all my life. To me it (weather patterns) do seem to be getting more chaotic. I guess its hard for us to judge individually since our lifespans are so short, but in my time the weather appears a little more "wild" than in my youth, but then I also remember my grandfather saying the same thing.

This may be of interest: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/13474997/

I've lived in Flori-duh twice, once as a teen and currently, and while I cannot vouch for the overall weather, I see storms like this almost every afternoon.

The state's interior heats up through the morning, generating huge powerful thermals of hot air that hover around over land. In the afternoon, the sea breeze blows moist cool air in off the ocean and when they collide, kaboom.

It produces more than just some outrageously powerful thunderstorms - they are also broken up and scattered about. It's nothing to drive into and out of a god-awful blast in less than ten minutes, or to be stopped at a light and watching the rain sheeting down - across the street. Where you sit, hardly a drop.

We joke that when the weatherman says "30% chance of rain today", he means "it will rain 30% of today."

TM

Your illustrious Mr.Bush tells us its all OK, so it must be then.

All other countries are quite concerned, but when the leading industrial nation acts like an ostrich, the rest of us are in trouble.

Analysis of tree rings and other such data shows that there have been extended periods of extreme weather (cold, hot, rainy dry) long before man got to work pumping massive amounts of CO2 into the air. Of course the fact that the CO2 used to be there, millions of years ago in case of fossil fuels, tens to hundreds of years ago in case of wood doesn't make this particular concentration unusual. Just in our own lifetimes.

I think our memories tend to average out the weather we experienced in previous times and compare todays variances to that average. (Climate is what you expect, weather is what you get.) Living through it is another thing. The long term weather records is what truly tells the story.

We, in the USA Pacific Northwest, had a volcano (Mount Saint Helens) go off in our back yard. That was a bit unusual, it's a bit rough breathing rock dust, and it doesn't melt either. Though not strictly weather caused - that darn plate tectonics - it sure had an effect on it and on the lives of at least 50 people. I know other places have volcanoes too, and at more regular intervals, it was an odd event here. We keep looking over our shoulder at Mount Rainier checking if it will go off.

If you doubt it, try searching for climate change hockey stick.
For example look at http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/3569604.stm?ls

I've lived in the Southeast most of my life. If anything, it is a bit warmer in the winter time, than it was when I was 6-7 years old.



As far as storms go, they are quite normal. If anything, storms are not as strong as they were twenty years ago. Thunderstorms that is; hurricanes seem worse. Until this year, we had been having more rain, but less intense storms.



Knowing that the Earth has already been through at least two "Ice Ages" ant that the land I'm walking around on now was once the seabed, it’s hard to give a lot of credit to those who push panic buttons. The Earth changes over time, pure and simple.



I'll admit that human activity has done its part to change the climate, but we have slowed this trend considerably in the last fifty years. Just for a second, think back to steam power, and all the deforestation that took place then, and all the carbon dumped as a result of dirty power sources. Lake Erie was a cesspool in the early 70's. We have made a lot of progress, and need to continue making progress, but freaking out will not do anyone any good. The US has more forest land now than in the early 1900’s. We have better control of our wet lands than when South Florida was devastated for housing developments. At least look at the positive moves we have made. Political theatrics are just that, and should be recognized for what they are.

I am by no means a scientist, but am somewhat sceptical of the 'Global Warming' fascination. Not because I don't believe the earth is warmer now than it's been in the past, it may well be, but are we the cause?

I think it is somewhat arrogant to believe humans actually can control the climate of this rock we are spinning around on, for the better or the worse. Don't get me wrong, I think we should do what we can to keep from killing each other off, it's just that the grand sceme of things is out of our hands (save for some man-made nuclear holocaust). I find it hard to believe that scientists can tell us what the temperature was 10000 years ago within 1/2 a degree, but have a heck of a time predicting tomorrows weather here in Nebraska.

For each article you can find touting man-made global warming, you can find one explaining that in the time of dinosaurs, CO2 levels were much higher, that the scientists thought in the 70's we were entering a 'Global Cooling', that we are in an 'orbital cycle' in our solar system, or even that global warming is caused by cows passing gas (don't know who volunteered for that research)

My personal hypothesis IF the earth is warming, from a Process Control standpoint is simple. I see the earth as one big closed-loop temperature control system. Besides the constant supply of heat from the sun, our ecosystems cycle mostly on their own, we have a finite amount of each element on the periodic table in some form or another on earth. From the time we pull our energy supplies out of the earth, to the time it sits in our gas tanks, coal stockpiles, natural gas reserves, it is stored energy and emits no heat. Through some type of phase-change, these items release their heat-energy eventually into the air or water through cooling towers, radiators, river-water heat exchange etc... in exchange for providing transportation, fueling production plants, heating homes etc... and return to the ecosystem in some different combination of the same elements that made it up to begin with, through smokestacks, mufflers, chimneys etc..

As I said, I am no scientist, but I'm surprised a tree hugger somewhere isn't out protesting that there ISN'T ENOUGH CO2 in the atmosphere and we should increase the levels so plants could flourish, the earth could be covered with lush green forests like when the dinosaurs roamed the land before the lush greenery and dinosaurs became fossil fuels....

Hmmm...meanwhile, I would welcome a good 10 degrees for a Nebraska winter....

It only rained twice here last week. Once for three days
second time lasted four days

You "see the earth as one big closed-loop temperature control system". Actually that is not so far off the Gaia idea. And the originator of that, James Lovelock is now a believer in global warming - and Nuclear power I might add. (Lots of PLC's in a nuke.)

Interesting. First I've heard of Lovelock's Gaia.

http://www.gaianet.fsbusiness.co.uk/gaiatheory.html

I was glad to see that some people admit that there are things other than burning fossil fuels that affect Earth's temperature.

[QUOTE]...that the heat of the sun has increased by 25% since life began on Earth, yet the temperature has remained more or less constant... they managed to uncover a number of feedback loops which could act as regulatory influences.

An example is the carbon dioxide cycle. Volcanoes constantly produce massive quantities of carbon dioxide. Since carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas, it tends to warm the planet. If left unchecked, it would make the Earth too warm to support life. While plants and animals take in and expel carbon dioxide through life processes such as photosynthesis, respiration and decay, these processes remain in balance and don't affect the net amount of the gas. Therefore there must be another mechanism.

[font=verdana,arial,helvetica]One process by which carbon dioxide is removed from the atmosphere is rock weathering, where rainwater and carbon dioxide combine with rocks to form carbonates. Lovelock, Margulis and others discovered that the process is greatly accelerated by the presence of soil bacteria. The carbonates are washed away into the ocean, where microscopic algae use them to make tiny shells. When the algae die, their shells sink to the bottom of the ocean, forming limestone sediments. Limestone is so heavy that it gradually sinks underneath the Earth's mantle, where it melts. Eventually some of the carbon dioxide contained in the limestone will be fed back into the atmosphere through another volcano.

[font=verdana,arial,helvetica]Since the soil bacteria are more active in high temperatures, the removal of carbon dioxide is accelerated when the planet is hot. This has the effect of cooling the planet. Therefore the whole massive cycle forms a feedback loop. [[/font]/QUOTE]

Somebody tell Al Gore that things are under control. [/font]

Control loops only keep control provided the disturbances they have to deal with are within the capabilities of the process.
Natural systems are massively more complex than the sorts of loops we control with our PLC's and DCS's, and less understood.
But, the best science we have is finding out much more, and it all points the same way. The counter arguments, funded in the past by the Texan Oil companies and such like were maybe plausible a decade or two ago, but not now. And in fact they are fading away.
It is not reasonable to pick out one phenomenom such as soil bacteria to base an argument on.
Well done Al Gore
It rained here today, good for the garden.

Some statements being made leave out a few things or state some that are not exactly correct.

Animals do not use carbon dioxide, it is an end product that they expel.

Plants, through photosynthesis, use carbon dioxide and expel oxygen. The problem is DEFORESTATION, there are fewer plants each year, therefore less carbon dixode is used and less oxygen is produced.

Scientists can determine the age of ice caps and from the ice caps, which have captured gas pockets, they can determine facts about atmospheric conditions in certain time periods.

Dinosaurs, y'all know there were other periods that lasted as long, if not longer, whats a few million years one way or the other.

The key difference is that in none of those periods did life itself have an effect on the planet, the planet eventually had an effect on life though.

Today though we are removing trees etc, burning millions and millions of gallons of fossil fuels etc each year but the sentiment appears to be "We can not be affecting the EARTH".

The difference between the Jurassic (dinosaur) and other time periods from OUR time period is that we KNOW things are changing, like the atmospheric content of greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide have increased enormously...in just the last 60 years but started with the Industrial Revolution.

Lets say the Earth does have a cyclic period where temperatures may increase every so often then decrease after X period of time. As engineers or engineer trained you are a form of scientist that should know what happens when you insert a variable into a situation...you get an undesired end result. Never forget that the human race is a variable the EARTH has never had before.

A machine we can turn off and remove the variables, EARTH we can not turn off nor remove the variables easily. If we know, or it just appears, that the enviroment is changing and we know that the atmosperic content has changed then wouldn't it be a good "assumption" or possibility there is a connection?

It has nothing to do with controlling the climate, it is preserving the climate in a manner conducive to supporting human life.

I will use the Law of Conservation of Mass on this issue. It states that mass cannot be created or destroyed, but can change its form. That means that thru an action that the oxygen content of the atmosphere can be changed into other forms which in itself should be of concern since we, as we are, can not survive without oxygen.

Yeah, there are cycles but one that develops globally within 50 years or so, instead of hundreds, thousands, or millions of years? That should be disconcerting.

It is funny, the dinosaurs that were mentioned lived for 60 million years but we have only been around, depending on who you talk too, for 11,000 or so.

The difference between dinosaurs and humans is that the dinosaurs only used what they needed, we take what we want and destroy life every day.

I read too much I guess.