Mad River Valley Vermont, Brian Mohr / Emily Johnson
January 2012 will certainly be known for one thing in the future… being really, really warm.
Anyone who loves winter weather and the activities that come along with it have certainly noticed the high temperatures and lack of snow.
For example, Vermont’s snow pack is well below normal. Mt Mansfield, the highest mountain in the state has only 44 inches of snow on the summit right now. That’s about 20% below average.
In fact, the entire northeast snowpack is WELL below what is normal this time of year. Not only is the snow pack low, it’s inconsistent. Some days this year have boasted great skiing conditions in the mountains, then the next day rain and ice ruin the fun for everyone.
NOAA
NOAA
But this problem isn’t just localized to the Northeast. The entire country has seen alarmingly high temperatures. According to the National Climatic Data Center just under 2,800 daily record high temperatures have either been tied or broken this January, compared to 160 record lows being tied or broken.
NOAA / High Plains Regional Climate Center
And anyone who knows how to use Google can easily figure out that the average global temperature has been on the rise since the late 1970’s.
NOAA
Now there are always going to be people out there like Sarah Palin. Yesterday because of unusually cold temperatures IN ALASKA she posted on her Facebook page… “Global warming? What global warming?”
And of course there are our friends over at Fox News who devote way too much time lying about climate change. But when facts like these keep adding up year after year, it’s amazing how people can keep denying what’s happening.
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Yep Global Warming = It Is Taking Place = And Of Coarse These gop-re-baggers Deny That It Is Happening - WHY ???? Who Knows Why They Are Sooo Purposefully Ignorant ???? Butt Then Again They Are Purposefully Ignorant Towards Just About Everything ??? Why ??? These Goofballs Have Absolutely NO Common Sense What So Ever !!!!???? Only Greed Makes Sense To Them !!!????
Why?
Because less fuel consumption means less money for oil companies, which pay all those Republicans to make sure their money keeps rolling in...
I wish there was an easier way to get around...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dcDN409ZBv4
I wonder how many car crashes that cause with distracted drivers?
Those ski slopes leave a little to be desired. At least they have grass, we have big rocks and fallen trees under our snow packs in NM. Yes we do have snow....more than usual.
People don't realize ice never stopped melting at the end of the last ice age. We are speeding that up.
Ice floats on the Arctic sea surface, so sea level doesn't change as the Gulf Stream melts polar ice.
The Northwest Passage opened up for the first time in 2007 so you can now take a ship directly from Europe to Japan without an ice breaker (impossible for the last 50,000 years).
It really ought to scare people when you can take satellite pictures of global warming as it is happening knowing that there is a gargantuan chunk of ice ready to fall into the ocean.
Antarctica has enough ice to raise sea level about 400 feet. The event that formed the great lakes at the end of the last ice age raised sea level about 150 feet in less than a month. So that could happen again.
The Antarctic ice cap has existed for about 4 million years. It seems to be melting.
Yes Global Warming is real and its happening and of course the GOP doesn't seem that Global Warming isn't real.
I tell you we have had few days when been in the 20s a little snow and 60 degrees in January in Ohio. We have had so much rain this year. Man I am loving this winter!My spring flowers are coming up. They say we are in LA Nina pattern again. I say like smog or anything we do to the environment it has a adverse reaction. Each year, Hurricanes, tornadoes, drought and flooding become worse. Phoenix saw sand storms that were unbelievable. Alaska had a snow storm to beat all snow storms. The icebergs are melting and Polar bears are loosing there habitat. Will we turn a blind eye to our changing climate and wake up when its to late?
Indiana almost tied a record of 66 degrees last Saturday. That would have beat a 95 year old record.......
There are some people who don't believe we are corrupting the earth atmosphere with our lack of responsibility. they are know as republicons.
I did think it was Feb. 1 today?
Thankful, Good Afternoon. I think our Native American ancestors were right when they told us to take care of Mother Earth. You have to wonder when they talk about earth cycles. When the super volcano erupts and ash clouds chokes the earth and brings on nuclear winter will the cycle become complete and we will gone by the way of the dinosaurs? Nat Geo documentary on Yellowstone is an eye opener for sure. I was reading in my Clinton foundation material. they are helping Cambodia with the effects of deforestation of there rain forests and effects its having. I am a firm believer for every action there is reaction. Its not rocket science but the natural order of things. We have pillaged this earth in every way possible. Many things come only once in a lifetime and are gone for ever !
Personally I have been enjoying the nice warm weather. It is also predicted that we will have less mosquito's this year. Yea I think the earth is warming up but how much of it is man made and how much is just the earth going through it's normal cycles?
Don't forget this same area once was covered with over a mile thick piece of ice....I'll bet climate scientists would have been concerned when they started melting. Yes we should do as much as we can to keep our earth clean but we also need to live and not cripple ourselves over theories that are politically motivated.
I though we had less land mass?
Doesn't seem any one wants to take responsibility, so we will just blame God. But I remember he assigned us the responsibility to take care of the earth. Must be the devils work then, hell we don't seem to want to be responsible.
Blaming God for what? I just said I'm enjoying the nice warm weather?
Think very hard about which theories are actively crippling you.
Tap = Yes; There Will Be Less Mosquitos - As Long As The SWATTER Is Here !!!! Oh OH OH !!!!
MD....LOL....If I get too many mosquitos in my hay field can you bring that bad boy over and swat them for me?
TAP even though your avitar says otherwise.
Hope you enjopy all that warn weather this summer when there's a water shortage.
The earth is going through a natural cycle. Man is SPEEDING it up dramaticly. There will be more fires, more draught and more farmer won't be able to water as much, which meens less food.
Hey Larry,
You could be correct about the dry summer. Let's face it the Sahara was a savana at one time. The geography changes with the weather. Nothing is constant. You may be correct about man speeding the cycle up. What should we do about it if you are correct?
To be quite honest I am glad that there are people who are on the left side of this issue. I don't want our planet polluted. I also don't want our economy to go down the crapper either. I guess what I am saying is keep up the good work. I think we will know who is to blame very soon and we will take care of the problem....Have a wonderful day Larry.
"What should we do about it if you are correct?" -- We should reduce the amount of carbon that we dump into the atmosphere and then begin pulling as much out as we can.
"I also don't want our economy to go down the crapper either" -- Actually our economy would do better because we would need to employ people to make the needed changes. Someone has to install solar panels. Those are jobs.
"I think we will know who is to blame very soon" -- We already know who is to blame, we are. Human activity is responsible for the increase in CO2 which drives global warming. We know this for a fact.
And at what point do you stop? How much is enough to STOP global warming? Can it even be stopped?
and where is the money going to come from? The government? You? Increased taxes would do nothing but pull money out of the economy causing a decline. Problem with solar is you still have to have a full time running backup for night and when output doesn't meet demands. You can't get rid of the nuclear or coal powered plants, not yet at least. Battery technology is not there yet.
So do your part and don't create any extra CO2. Get rid of your car(s), grow your own food, cut your own wood for heat, etc... essentially live like you were in the 1700s. See how long you like that life.
I am really concerned that when the powers that be wake up and actually do something to make a positive impact, it may be too late. I'm not so concerned for myself, but for my children and my grandchildren. At the center of everything, is money. Simple. Yet, how do we (the general public) make an impression upon those who have the power and ability to effect real change? Greed. Unfortunately, will be the undoing not only of the USA but the world. We only get 1 planet, if we muck it all up beyond repair, it will be the end of all of us. In the end, your money will not save you when your home (planet Earth) is dying from abuse. We have the means and the will. The money people won't come on board until they can see a clear path that makes them just as much it not more money than they do now. They will keep that position until the oil, gas and coal runs out. Sad, but true.
Hey Lora,
I think eventually technology will allow us to drastically reduce our fossil fuel consumption but we are just not there yet. Man I would love to hop into a solar powered car that cost me nothing but maintenance and was affordable to boot. That would be great.
The oil companies are actively fighting that as hard as they can. They don't have your best interests at heart. They are only concerned with keeping people buying oil as long as they can.
Why wouldn't greedy oil luvvin people like you are all describing actually want temps to go down, causing an increase in markets for oil?
You tell us, Rusty.
I should chime in here.
You can now travel from England to Japan through the Arctic Ocean for the first time in over 50,000 years without an ice breaker.
People fail to take into account is that global warming did not stop 13,000 years ago when Arctic ice melting raised sea level about 400 feet.
More Arctic ice is melted by the Gulf Stream than is replaced by snowfall and sea surface icing. The Arctic ice that still covers the sea surface is a remnant of the las Ice Age, so ice in the northern hemisphere is still melting.
One of the more alarming situations is that Antarctica contains enough ice to raise sea level about 400 feet, and Antarctica appears to be melting.
Holly poop!
Various businesses have been planning sea routes across the North Pole for quite a while. They want it to melt, so they can ship directly across it, without taking the longer route around all the various continents. Canada is already worried about pollution, because there are no anti-pollution measures for what will become sea coast.
That is somewhat ... what's the word I'm looking for ... stupid?
There is a permanent low pressure zone over the poles that exists only because ice is colder than the air over the pole, so dry air sinks. This produces very little snow.
If the Arctic ice goes away completely, then the gulf stream will begin heating up the Arctic Ocean enough to cause air to rise over the pole the same way air rises at the equator.
The difference is that air rising over the equator does not produce snow.
Big difference.
I'm not sure I understand the point of your comment.
ALTERNATE PASSAGES
Besides, two other ways through the Arctic will likely become viable before the Northwest Passage does. One is the Northeast Passage, the one that hugs the northern coastline of Eurasia. More commonly referred to as the Northern Sea Route, this waterway provides a more straightforward path than the labyrinthine Canadian archipelago allows; rather than Canada's thicket of islands, Russia's route has just several straits for ships to pass through. And its summertime ice conditions are often better. The Northern Sea Route is already open up to eight weeks a year, with at least a million and half tons of shipping going through.
The other Arctic sea route that will likely open before the Northwest Passage is one straight over the top of the world. "What if there was some sort of international icebreaking fleet, and we broke a shortcut like an E-Z Pass lane right over the North Pole?" says Scott Borgerson, a foreign policy expert at the U.S. Coast Guard Academy. "You would already save 5,000 miles by going over Eurasia or North America, but if you can save 8,000 miles—that would be an interesting idea." And not a pie-in-the-sky one. "Before the Northwest Passage itself becomes a regular shipping route, I expect that there will be a regular shipping route from Murmansk to Tokyo right across the North Pole," says Falkingham, one of several experts who mentioned this likelihood.
Despite all the obstacles, one wild card might speed efforts to open up the Northwest Passage sooner rather than later: fossil fuel. With supplies dwindling worldwide and prices soaring to record levels, known and suspected fields of oil and natural gas beneath the Arctic are becoming increasingly coveted. How the energy situation plays out in coming decades may very well determine how soon ships begin plying the Northwest Passage.
For this reason—as well as existing and potential threats to Arctic wildlife, ecosystems, and Inuit residents arising out of both the melting and the burgeoning international interest in the Arctic—many experts feel it's not too early to start readying ourselves for a working passage.
"It's not the Wild Wild West up there, but it's pretty damn close it," says Borgerson. "Nations are scurrying to protect their own national interests without any clear direction or framework in which to do it. Something needs to exist up there." For his part, Borgerson feels the U.S. should take the lead in articulating a vision for how Arctic nations should manage the Far North—with or without an opened Northwest Passage.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/earth/opening-the-northwest-passage.html
I probably shouldn't like the fact that it's been almost 60 degrees for the last two days, but I do. I know we should have snow for the moisture this spring, but it's been great having to shovel only once so far! Not to mention the lower heating bills!
MJB....Why should you feel bad for enjoying good weather?
No more than morbidly obese people should feel bad about eating!
Not to change the subject, but have you noticed the forehead on Rancid Priebus? You could put a billboard on that thing! The rest of his features just slid down toward his chin. Can't stand the worm, can you tell? LOL
You know ... he has prominent eye brows ... no chin ... large face ... hmmmm.
Looks a little like this guy.
At this time last year and the beginning of this year we had over 50 inches of snow in Connecticut. The only snow that we got was the Halloween surprise storm. We had a small storm and thats gone.