Re: OT No Winter by 2105
- From: David Goldberg <david_asbnll@xxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Thu, 20 Oct 2005 21:44:16 -0700
s_knight8 wrote:
> http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2005/10/1017_051017_warming_weather_
> 2.html
>
> No Winter by 2105? New Study Offers Grim Forecast for U.S.
>
http://www.globalclimate.org/Newsweek.htm
The Cooling World
There are ominous signs that the Earth?s weather patterns have begun to
change dramatically and that these changes may portend a drastic decline in food
production? with serious political implications for just about every nation on
Earth. The drop in food output could begin quite soon, perhaps only 10 years
from now. The regions destined to feel its impact are the great wheat-producing
lands of Canada and the U.S.S.R. in the North, along with a number of marginally
self-sufficient tropical areas ? parts of India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Indochina
and Indonesia ? where the growing season is dependent upon the rains brought by
the monsoon.
The evidence in support of these predictions has now begun to accumulate so
massively that meteorologists are hard-pressed to keep up with it. In England,
farmers have seen their growing season decline by about two weeks since 1950,
with a resultant overall loss in grain production estimated at up to 100,000
tons annually. During the same time, the average temperature around the equator
has risen by a fraction of a degree ? a fraction that in some areas can mean
drought and desolation. Last April, in the most devastating outbreak of
tornadoes ever recorded, 148 twisters killed more than 300 people and caused
half a billion dollars' worth of damage in 13 U.S. states.
To scientists, these seemingly disparate incidents represent the advance
signs of fundamental changes in the world's weather. Meteorologists disagree
about the cause and extent of the trend, as well as over its specific impact on
local weather conditions. But they are almost unanimous in the view that the
trend will reduce agricultural productivity for the rest of the century. If the
climatic change is as profound as some of the pessimists fear, the resulting
famines could be catastrophic. ?A major climatic change would force economic and
social adjustments on a worldwide scale,? warns a recent report by the National
Academy of Sciences, ?because the global patterns of food production and
population that have evolved are implicitly dependent on the climate of the
present century.?
A survey completed last year by Dr. Murray Mitchell of the National Oceanic
and Atmospheric Administration reveals a drop of half a degree in average ground
temperatures in the Northern Hemisphere between 1945 and 1968. According to
George Kukla of Columbia University, satellite photos indicated a sudden, large
increase in Northern Hemisphere snow cover in the winter of 1971-72. And a study
released last month by two NOAA scientists notes that the amount of sunshine
reaching the ground in the continental U.S. diminished by 1.3% between 1964 and
1972.
To the layman, the relatively small changes in temperature and sunshine can
be highly misleading. Reid Bryson of the University of Wisconsin points out that
the Earth?s average temperature during the great Ice Ages was only about seven
degrees lower than during its warmest eras ? and that the present decline has
taken the planet about a sixth of the way toward the Ice Age average. Others
regard the cooling as a reversion to the ?little ice age? conditions that
brought bitter winters to much of Europe and northern America between 1600 and
1900 ? years when the Thames used to freeze so solidly that Londoners roasted
oxen on the ice and when iceboats sailed the Hudson River almost as far south as
New York City.
Just what causes the onset of major and minor ice ages remains a mystery.
?Our knowledge of the mechanisms of climatic change is at least as fragmentary
as our data,? concedes the National Academy of Sciences report. ?Not only are
the basic scientific questions largely unanswered, but in many cases we do not
yet know enough to pose the key questions.?
Meteorologists think that they can forecast the short-term results of the
return to the norm of the last century. They begin by noting the slight drop in
overall temperature that produces large numbers of pressure centers in the upper
atmosphere. These break up the smooth flow of westerly winds over temperate
areas. The stagnant air produced in this way causes an increase in extremes of
local weather such as droughts, floods, extended dry spells, long freezes,
delayed monsoons and even local temperature increases ? all of which have a
direct impact on food supplies.
?The world?s food-producing system,? warns Dr. James D. McQuigg of NOAA?s
Center for Climatic and Environmental Assessment, ?is much more sensitive to the
weather variable than it was even five years ago.? Furthermore, the growth of
world population and creation of new national boundaries make it impossible for
starving peoples to migrate from their devastated fields, as they did during
past famines.
Climatologists are pessimistic that political leaders will take any positive
action to compensate for the climatic change, or even to allay its effects. They
concede that some of the more spectacular solutions proposed, such as melting
the Arctic ice cap by covering it with black soot or diverting arctic rivers,
might create problems far greater than those they solve. But the scientists see
few signs that government leaders anywhere are even prepared to take the simple
measures of stockpiling food or of introducing the variables of climatic
uncertainty into economic projections of future food supplies. The longer the
planners delay, the more difficult will they find it to cope with climatic
change once the results become grim reality.
--
"If you think health care is expensive now, wait until it's free."
~P.J. O'Rourke
.
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