Weather Come Lately

March 2, 2011

Expect more intense weather such as the repeating winter storms in the eastern US in the immediate future and for decades to come “until the climate grows so warm that we pass the point where it’s too warm for it to snow heavily.”


(Illustration found here).

A daughter lives in a small town just south of Nashville, Tenn., and has really endured some weather there this past year — first the rains and flooding last spring, the anointed 1,000-year-flood, and then there’s been snow storm after storm.
“Daddy, we’ve run out of salt,” she told me a couple of nights ago — meaning the road crews have no salt for the ice-packed, snow-driven highways.
Sorry, kid, but more is coming — I’ve tried to get her to return to California (where earthquakes rule), but she’s in college out there and has a year or so to go.

In this era of climate change via global warming means more wetness — warm air hold more water, whether it’s rain drops or snowflakes.
From Agence France-Presse (via Raw Story and the noted quote at top):

Climate change is not only making the planet warmer, it is also making snowstorms stronger and more frequent, US scientists said on Tuesday.
“Heavy snowstorms are not inconsistent with a warming planet,” said scientist Jeff Masters, as part of a conference call with reporters and colleagues convened by the Union of Concern Scientists.
“In fact, as the Earth gets warmer and more moisture gets absorbed into the atmosphere, we are steadily loading the dice in favor of more extreme storms in all seasons, capable of causing greater impacts on society.”

Even though spring in North America is just around the corner, Masters said more snow is on the way next week in the upper Midwest, and the melting snow pack could spark record floods in Minnesota, South Dakota and North Dakota this spring.

Masters has a daily most-great site for insightful updates of severe weather at Wunder Blog.

Despite recent polls showing the vast majority of US peoples know global warming is real and coming on quick, the GOP might be the terror of the future.
One crucial point to observe: The EPA and a hearing held early last month of the House energy subcommittee where shit-for-brains Republicans held a most-negative sway, even on the testimony of EPA Administrator Lisa P. Jackson.
From the Washington Post:

The tense atmosphere was a turnabout for Jackson, who for two years testified before a House Democratic leadership that embraced climate-change science.
Wednesday she faced GOP members who didn’t allow scientists to testify, and who don’t buy their assertion that human activity contributes to global warming.
“There is strong, credible…evidence” that it does, Jackson said in her testimony.
“Politicians overruling scientists on a scientific question – that would become part of this committee’s legacy” if the legislation passes, she said.
Jackson asked the committee to consider that the EPA’s enforcement of the Clean Air Act “saves millions of …adults and children” from expensive ailments that rise when “smokestacks and tailpipes” emit unrestricted amounts of pollution.
As soon as she finished, Chairman Ed Whitfield (R-Ky.) started in. Congress rejected federal government regulation of greenhouse gases three times, he said. “Do you object to an up and down vote in Congress?” Whitfield asked.
“I would not presume to tell Congress what to do,” Jackson answered, saying she was acting under the authority of a 5-4 Supreme Court ruling that allowed that the EPA could enforce the Clean Air Act, including heavy carbon emissions.

And Democrat Rep. Henry Waxman described the GOP assholes to a T:

“It’s underlying premise is that climate change is a hoax.
“You have the power to rewrite the nation’s laws, but you do not have the power to rewrite the laws of nature,” Waxman said to his GOP colleagues.

One day these GOP shit-faces will be hated and vilified — by their own grandchildren.

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