Global climate change, or just nasty weather?

[urbpan]

It has become a fashion in our day, to notice short weather patterns and blame them on Global Climate Change. To be sure, by definition, Global Climate Change is a factor in every meteorological event. But it is specious reasoning to cite, for example, the fact that this winter in Boston was unusually warm, as a trend that we can blame on "global warming." The danger is that there is still a subset of "skeptics" (a strange breed of skeptics who are skeptical of science, which itself is the work of skeptical inquirers) who doubt that Global Climate Change is a reality, and if we take the warm winter as evidence of it, then if next winter is colder than average, that will be taken as evidence to the contrary.

Nonetheless, while I was walking on the snow this morning, I wondered if Global Climate Change was going to result in more ice, less real snow for the future of Boston. We have had two serious storm events this winter, and both of them have left us with this durable ice-foam rather than snow. During the course of each storm, the temperature rose and then dropped, melting and then freezing the accumulated slop into this stuff. You can't really play with it. You can slide around on it a little (it would be good for a light kid in a saucer sled) but you can't make a snowman out of it (the snowman I posted yesterday had to have been hastily erected while the slush was still malleable), you can't make snowballs (but you can hurl icy chunks that would give your target a gash) and walking on it is dangerous--whether you will punch through, slip, safely trod on top of it varies with every step. You could build with it if you were highly motivated and had the proper tools. You could use a steel shovel (not a snow shovel--those things are worse than useless with this material) to chop it into blocks and lift them out, and build yourself an igloo or a heavy wall.

In any case, the stuff is unpleasant, and if you don't shovel it off the sidewalk or out of your parking spot quickly, it will harden into epoxy and make life difficult and hazardous. Is this the substance of future winters? I have three more winters to find out.

Comments

[nutmeg.livejournal.com]

You have experienced a mid-atlantic winter!

What is it doing up there in Boston. It was on order for down here.

Actually our winter opened an office up in Boston. We are expanding.

As kids, we used to get a few inches of snow maybe 6 sometimes a foot and then on top of it we would get sleet and there would be a nice thick crust on the snow. And then you could get a similar excitement as walking on a not quite frozen lake, without the deathly consequences when you fell through. When you fell through you just ended up with a crust of ice threatening to pierce your skin just above your knee (or below, depending on how deep the snow was.

Suffice it to say... I know what you are talking about. And agreed about blaming WEATHER on CLIMATE.

[interfecta.livejournal.com]

Ditto to nutmeg. My husband used to laugh at Virginians and our panicky attitudes to "winter weather," till he found out how much harder it is to deal with sleet/freezing rain/snow/rain than just good ol' blizzarding.

[ziggysinamerica.livejournal.com]

I've been noticing uncharacteristic snowfalls here in Jersey too. We had two snowstorms this year, which is on the low side, but each of those snowstorms were really bad for driving, which is not usually the case. Ice, sleet, freezing rain. Usually it snows and it's manageable, but not this year.

[mycrust.livejournal.com]

It is, after all, an El Niño year (http://www.noaanews.noaa.gov/stories2006/s2753.htm).

[cavalaxis]

That's really strange. An El Niño year typically means lots and lots of rain for Southern California, and yet, we've had the second driest year on record.

That and a heat wave last week that broke record temps by 10+ degrees. And Santa Ana winds all through February and March.

Global warming or not, it's been bizarre weather all around.

[calypso72]

Don't fall into the trap of confusing weather with climate. This is difficult for mortals :)

[cottonmanifesto.livejournal.com]

seems like he's talking about the effect of climate on the weather?

[calypso72]

Right, all I mean is that it doesn't make sense for us to say on a 90 degree day "oh! must be global warming" and on a 30 degree day "oh! there's no such thing as global warming". A wierd winter in one part of the world isn't enough to judge what is going on with global climate one way or the other. That's all.

[melannen.livejournal.com]

Well, while we should be careful about blaming individual yearly variation on long-term climate change, it *is* pretty firmly established that one of the effects of climate change is (going to be) more extreme and erratic weather in general - more and stronger and unseasonal storms, greater short-term temperature fluctuation, less predictable precipitation amounts, and so on. So as long as you blame climate change for the weather being "weird" rather than for the weather being warm, you should be theoretically on firm ground. As a bonus, the weather's *always* subjectively weird in one way or another, so that doesn't give any ammunition to the anti-science people!

[copperwolf.livejournal.com]

Why do you have to stay for three more winters?

[urbpan.livejournal.com]

We are staying around while cottonmanifesto's daughter finishes high school.

[bunrab.livejournal.com]

[grammar geek]Tread. Trod is past tense. The present tense is to tread. Thank you.[/grammar geek]

[candent.livejournal.com]

No offense, but does it really matter? We all understood what he meant.

[urbpan.livejournal.com]

That's okay, if I intend to sell my writing (and i do) I can use as many editors as possible :)