Meanwhile, About That “Global Warming” . . . .
A few new articles from the past couple of days (hat tip to Drudge for these links):
- Unusually cool summer leads to fall colors . . . in mid-August.
- 90F days in DC? Unusually few this year – 40% fewer than average.
- West Virginia sees record low temps in mid-August.
It’s not just this month, either. In July, we saw record lows in the central Midwest, and in the deep South as well. In general, July and August are the two hottest months of the year for most of the US.
It’s not just the US, either. Australia saw record lows back in April. And it saw the same again in mid-July, too.
Must be because of that global warming all those scientists keep telling us about. And scientists are never wrong, right?
Yeah, right. Forty years ago, “the coming ice age” was the great climate fear. Then runaway “global warming”. Today, that’s morphed into “global climate change” – but some scientists still insist that man is causing the planet to warm uncontrollably.
Give me a break, folks. The earth’s climate has always been changing, irregularly and due to things we simply do not yet understand, since long before man arrived. It will continue to do so long after man has departed the planet.
Just man up and admit you don’t really know what’s going on. Hell, if you pitch that correctly you’ll probably still get plenty of $$$ to study the matter.
Category: Global Warming
I’m happy to report that a well-known weatherman has said, on camera, that this year has had the strangest jet stream pattern he has ever seen.
Check the Old Farmer’s Almanac for general forecasts for your region, and the other Farmer’s Almanac, too. If their forecasts are close to each other, and they usually are, then prepare for a funky fall and winter.
My tomatoes are not ripening (TX Panhandle). Other people between 35 and 32 degrees N are reporting similar problems, and there’s some speculation floating around the gardening boards that the decreased solar radiation this summer is causing the problem.
I’m having a hard time finding any okra in the stores. The folks with gardens that I happened to know say they their okra is not producing. Ditto for the tomatoes. I am looking forward to planting a garden next spring in NE Texas.
Toasty Coastie told me a couple weeks ago she didn’t have enough tomatoes from her garden (FL-SE) to can.
My one and only Bush Baby hybrid is poorly leafed, spindly and gave me three tomatoes worth picking, which I ripened in the house, off the vine.
I live just outside Chicago and I’ve got about 20 fat ripe tomatoes that I’m going to pick along with a cucumber, a fat onion and 4 green New Mex peppers and make gazpacho. Even though I’m mostly a meat eater, I really appreciate an ice cold bowl of gazpacho while sitting on the deck on a hot summer night. And I make the best gazpacho around in these parts.
My wife grew peppers in this area since the summer of 2000. She’d normally have them in the ground in April, they’d start growing fast in April, and they’d be bearing red peppers by May, harvesting them until December.
That has gradually changed to where they’ve ripened latter. She’d plant them in the ground in April, but they’d start growing in June instead of April. Last year, they didn’t start growing till late June, and they barely provided hot peppers.
I noticed that as the years passed, she had taken the peppers down earlier in the ear, just as it has been getting cooler/colder earlier.
This year, she didn’t garden as we moved, but there were seeds from last year that started to grow in July. So far, they haven’t produced hot peppers.
She does everything right as far as gardening, she grew up on a farm. The weather conditions here in SE Virginia have gotten colder/cooler/less hot over the years.
I meant earlier in the year.
I grow radishes in pots on my front steps. My cats like to chew on the leaves. Last year and every year I’ve done this, until now, I got nice globed radish roots with few of the root hairs that they put out for water. I also got short bunchy leaves above the soil.
This time, I got poor leafing, tall, spindly stems with flowers in July – never had that before – and either no bulbous root, or roots so small and/or deformed that they were unrecognizable, covered with loads of root hairs. They were fertilized, watered regularly and thinned appropriately. Nothing came of this crop.
I think it’s partly due to the 15% less sunlight we’ve been getting, from wildfire smoke coming down from Canada and the PacNW blocking sunlight. Other people in my area are having bumper crops of cherry tomatoes, but not much else.
If you pay attention to weather stories, you know that unusual weather patterns are showing up everywhere. That is what we should be looking at. This change in weather patterns can become permanent without our realizing it, and that is when it becomes climate change.
And just what is wrong with climate change, anyway? It’s out of our hands. We have no power to do anything about it, other than prepare for it, so alarmists arguing about it are only making themselves look ridiculous in public.
If anything, we should all be using this time to make adjustments to our own habits of food stocking and preparations for bad weather. What if we have another blizzard like the one that swept across the country in February 2011? I’d just assume that will happen, and stock the shelves accordingly.
I believe that man is changing the climate. Since the government jumped on the Gore-wagon about global warming and cut massive CO2 levels, it’s been getting colder. I think that our greenhouse gas production has been holding off the impending ice age. Now, since people are making money, they are ignoring the science for the politics.
As a NOVA resident, if man made climate change is what’s keeping the 90 F days away then I’m going to start burning tires in my backyard.
It’s only the 33rd warmest summer on record over the last 120 years.
At one time the majority of scientists believed that light was conducted by luminiferous ether…science often does not advance due to the caterwauling of the massed but the dissent of the cranks who believe the masses are totally wrong.
VOV…Thank you. I wanted to add something but as usual, you said it better. Great post.
Maples in my back yard are losing their leaves. Not all of them, but more than I am used to seeing in the middle of August.
And I see no wildflowers in places that should be awash in them at this time of year. Even the goldenrod doesn’t look good. And there are fewer of the wild bee species out and about, as well.
Yeah, my sinuses are grateful for the lack of goldenrod so far this month. That said, the last two nights featured lows in the lower 40’s. And, we have yet to approach 90° this summer, at all.
What we expect is climate. What we get is weather.
That’s what Neil degrasse Tyson says as well….
Leaves are already turning in the North Country, and will likely be faded and gone by early October versus mid- to later October this year.
You are all heretics and will be reported to MiniTrue for reconditioning.
Oh! Oh, no! The Bardabunga volcano in Iceland is showing signs of burping. Now at orange warning level.
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/aug/18/iceland-volcano-risk-raised-to-orange
So that means that it’s one of – how many? – volcanoes erupting on the planet at any one time.
It’s all a matter of perspective, you know, so I just threw that bit of news in here for the fun of it.
Nothing like a few BCF of sulfer dioxide to cool the planet. 🙂
Hey on the radishes, try watering them with toilet water intead of Brawndo! Brought to you by Carl’s Jr.
We had frost here in the U.P. on the morning of August 14.
http://www.uppermichiganssource.com/news/blog_post.aspx?id=1083581
Climate HAS always changed. It’s worth study to perhaps be able to anticipate change so that humans can adjust to it – water conservation, modification in the way crops are grown, additional shelter/clothing/fuel sources, etc.
It’s also worth remembering that far more people die from the cold (and animals and plants too), than from heat.
This just in. http://bbc.com/news/science-environment-28870988
Who would have thought there was other shit going on besides co2? /sarc
Well, until sonar studies were done after WWII, everyone thought the ocean floor was flat. Then they discovered ridges and seamounts and rift zones and got all confused. Then they got even more confused when they found those black smokers down in the depths. Then James Cameron found the Titanic covered with rusticles.
Now I’m confused. Never mind.