Apparently the world is getting warmer, but I can remember not needing a parka to brave January and February in NS until the last 4-5 years. I remember never needing a winter jacket to trick or treat when I was a kid. I can remember not having winter boots for my entire Junior High School career, and never having cold feet.
Either change the way you word your news reports on climate change (I refer here to the phrase “2009 is the 5th warmest year on record since we began recording average temperatures in 18-whatever”, not the term “Global Warming”). Perhaps on average, this is true worldwide, but how do you expect people to get behind the idea of saving the planet when many people have memories of far warmer times than now?
Yes, recycle, compost, combat pollutants in our air and water, because these are good ideas, but don’t force-feed me this idea that the world is getting warmer. Does anyone remember the whole “depleting the Ozone layer” craze? Where did that whole idea go?
—Enviroman
This article appears in Dec 3-9, 2009.
Overall, the planet is getting warmer. That causes changes to weather patterns which can result in drier, wetter, colder, hotter extremes depending on where you are which is why Climate Change is the preferred term over global warming.
The ozone layer is fixed now because the craze led to us stopping our use of CFC’s. Maybe the ‘climate change’ craze will encourage us to reduce our GHG emissions and 20 years from now we will be wondering what happened to the “climate change” craze.
well said Miles!
Worldwide is indeed one thing, and that is the scope of the Global warming mindset… global being the key world. There will always be minor fluctuations in climate in smaller areas – some will be even warmer than the average – some no change or colder!
I think the reason our climate in Atlantic Canada seems to be colder than normal is the torrents of fresh water melting from the arctic in spring and summer gets carried down to our neck of the woods via the Labrador current – which certainly helps to interfere with the warming influence of the gulf stream…
Go a few hundred miles further south past Boston and points south and they have experienced much more extreme weather events from a warming perspective than we have here. I’m sure it’s only a matter of time before we here in Atlantic Canada catch up – and current climate modeling confirms that suspicion, sometime around the 2050 time frame… Be patient – we will bake with the rest of them, soon enough.
Strangely enough though, NYC didn’t have one 90+ degree day this past summer – while we had three in a row. Weather is relatively subjective – As are hazy recollections of distant days in Junior High 😉
Who cares if the earth is getting warmer. I am not going to be here in 100 years so why should I give a damn. I will continue what I do everyday: drive my car, throw out trash, leave lights on, let the sink run when brushing my teeth, etc. And don’t even get me started on recycling.
Well lots of people care besides you Sebastian – and honestly when you start paying your own bills maybe you’ll care when you get a $250 electric bill because you leave your lights on all of the time! lol. Also I’m assuming you don’t have kids… that tends to change people’s perspective… hopefully!
Though I do let the tap run when I brush my teeth too – is that bad? Oh well can’t win ’em all.
yeah sebasian… that’s a pretty selfish and uncaring attitude…. seems to be a lot of that going around lately.
I’m not saying I’m the pillar of ‘going green’ but I certainly don’t wish the world to end any time just after my death. Ideally, I’d like my story to be told throughout the ages, something that is quite difficult if we all die off, though I’m also no achilles or odysseus.
“since we began recording AVERAGE temperatures”
“Perhaps on AVERAGE, this is true worldwide”
Most people don’t know nearly enough about statistics. More of it should be mandatory in high school, but that’s a different bitch.
OP, to guage the temperature trend of a PLANET for over DECADES for something as variable as WEATHER, you need a much larger sampling of temperatures both in terms of PLACE (as Miles and dartmouthy explain) and TIME. Comparing your two little data points of ‘your hometown now’ versus ‘your hometown a while ago’. doesn’t cut it…plain and simple.
In other news, knowing someone who smoked a pack a day and lived to be 95 does NOT mean cigarettes are not bad for your health.
…and just because this bugs me so much: Would you buy a car if all you knew was that the tires were in excellent shape? NS temp = tires, global temp = car. Don’t buy it.
Also, dartmouthy…love the pic.
…and you’re right to bring up the electric bill. Dollars before sense, for some folks.
People are generally not very good at planning for the future anyway, though. We have had lots of evolutionary selective pressure to be good at dealing with fast-moving things like tigers and spears, but not so much for, say, preventative maintenance, preventative medicine, retirement savings, and gradual climate change.
Thanks No Dogma – I think it’s cute! I feel sorry for the little blue suburban who isn’t getting any 🙂 haha
Where the hell are my palm trees.
Maybe a warm arctic is not such a bad idea. More land for growing food. But it ain’t gonna happen.
Why does man think they can affect the world so much? Hiroshima, Nagasaki (they’re rebuilt and people living there), the Valdez (the area is back to normal), Chernobyl (getting there). No matter what we do, the earth will take care of itself. It’s been through global warming, ice ages (both natural), earthquakes, hurricanes, fires, floods, volcanoes, etc and there is very little man can do to stop any of it. My bet is on nature.
Sure, we’ll probably destroy ourselves before we destroy the planet, we do have an incredible capacity to wreak havoc on nature. We almost destroyed the ozone layer without thinking about it. In 100 years we’ve almost exhausted the planet of oil. We’ve filled our oceans with plastic garbage. We’ve chopped down entire rainforests and made several species extinct. If there’s anything I believe in more than our ability to destroy things though, it’s our ability to meet challenges. If we can cause global warming without trying, I’m confident we can reverse the problem if we put our minds to it.
I’d like to see us actually *do something* about the garbage island the size of Texas instead of marvelling at it on Oprah…
The OP says they were never cold in NS up until 4-5 years go? What a crock of shit! We’ve always had cold winters here. Get you head out of your ass and stop making shit up just to substantiate an argument.
I personally have found the winters WAY colder here over the last few years, but then again, I lived in TO up until about 4 years ago, so I remember Ontario winters better than the ones of my childhood in rural NS…
Gidget, Maybe we can skim all the plastic off the surface of the water and recycle it. I wonder if that could ever be possible/profitable.
When I was a little kid in Nova Scotia I seem to recall massive snowfalls from December to February. Except for the odd big one we don’t seem to get that anymore.
Personally, however, I do hate having to bundle up in multiple layers to go to work on the bus and boil on the bus because everyone is over-heating once we’re all crammed in there together.
Just a few facts that the world is indeed getting warmer: the polar icecaps are melting at an alarming pace and there are little to no glaciers anymore. Take a look at this from one of Europe’s agencies: http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/
There is plenty more proof that the world is getting warmer. A 1 degree shift is all it takes.
We just had 10-15 degree weather for like half of November, that’s not normal. The worms were coming out because they thought it was spring.
ha ha. Worms are dumb.
I’m with the worms! 🙂 I was hoping for Spring in November too!! lol
I hate being cold… Bring on the heat!!!
Buahahahah (Flies by all of the environmentalists in his black smoke spewing nuclear coal-fired flying car)…
All kidding aside dartmouthy has mentioned the biggest concern of all that will affect the entire planet the most. The salinity change of the oceans. Once the oceans heat pump sputters to a stop…everything changes, and I really mean EVERYTHING. Say goodbye to the seasons as you know them, say goodbye to every environmental and ecological constant that you have based the foundations of your perception of the World since childhood.
I have old home videos of my family on Xmas morning snowblowing an ice rink off the lake to play some hockey and others of me making snow forts in huge piles of snow from the late 80’s and into the early 90’s. Looks pretty cold , I doubt we will be skating on any lakes or making snow forts in 6 foot high piles of snow come Xmas morning this year. Warmer weather seems to be ringing true to me.
the fucking sky is still fallng,oh my dear.