Thread: Weather - whats happening

Originally Posted by Stevo_62

John

I'm no greeny, just a realist. This is no drought but the first real signs of global warming. I think the weather patterns have been changed forever.

I'm afraid that while the temperature figures support this, the rainfall statistics do not, certainly not for Eastern Australia anyway. It is quite possible the weather patterns have changed forever - although I would hardly use such a permanent word, but even if this is the case, the statistics do not show it. Even the temperature figures do not conclusively show it, although they certainly are suggestive.

But the point is that historically, there is no relation between the temperature figures and rainfall that I can see, and the climate variability is such that any conclusion that the current drought is related to climate change is certainly premature. The present drought is simply too similar to past ones to say. The other point that needs to be made in this regard is that except for a few isolated locations in Australia, weather records only go back about 100 years. In fact, the situation is worse than that - the number of locations with continuous detailed and accurate records even this long is very limited (and almost all on the coast) - the majority of places set up record keeping during WW2, so we are looking for a trend with records that mostly are only as long as two or three drought cycles - hardly enough to draw any firm conclusions. There is a good reason why a lot of the BOM's graphs only go back to the 1950s or 60s!

If we had a consistent historical relationship between temperature and drought, plus the rise in temperature over the last thirty years, plus the drought, then it would be a reasonable conclusion that the drought was related to the rise in temperature, and also a reasonable conclusion that the temperature rise was due to climate change. But one of these links is missing.

Let me make it quite clear - I strongly suspect that we are seeing climate change due to rising global temperatures, and this rise may well be man made. What I very much doubt is that the current drought has anything to do with it - the change so far is so small compared to historical fluctuations that it simply could not have had this effect so soon.

While on the subject of global warming, I might point out that Australia's total greenhouse gas contribution is so small (less than 1.5%) that any change made by Australia could only affect worldwide total emissions by example - even if we ceased to exist it would make no perceptible difference. For example, the weekly increase in emissions from China currently exceeds Australia's total annual emissions.

What amazes me is that almost nobody is prepared to even think about, let alone discuss or take action on the root of the problem - the steady increase in population. If you think about it, most if not all problems faced everywhere are, at root, due to the steady increase in global (and local) population.

John

Originally Posted by 87County

ie. Are we are still emerging from the last ice-age?

Umm... We are still IN an ice age. There is permanent ice at the south Pole. There is permanent ice at locations in the northern hemisphere too.