Science a GoGo's Home Page Forums General Discussion General Science Discussion Forum Scorching U.S.: First Half of 2006 Sets Heat Record

"The average temperatures of the first half of 2006 were the highest ever recorded for the continental United States, scientists announced today."

http://www.livescience.com/environment/060714_record_heat.html

Is it global warming or just a natural variance? Does your hairdresser know for sure?

Yeah. Temperatures in the San Fernando Valley broke records set in... the late 1800s. It must be the Greenhouse Effect! Lots of greenhouses in the late 1800s?

Oh come now Al ... aptitutde before attitude.

Global warming refers to the average temperature on the planet ... not specific temperatures on specific days in specific places.

On average it is hotter than it has been during ANY previously recorded year. And the dryer forests, the earlier spring, the later fall, the melting of glaciers, and most importantly the temperature of the oceans at depth prove it.

But heck a little sarcasm is always nice on a hot day ... as long as it is accompanied by a decent beer. Got a Fat Tire or a Chimay?

Uncle Al has numbers - two lines of arithmetic.

http://www.mazepath.com/uncleal/arith.htm

Third World body heat annually melts 70 km^3 of ice. If you don't like that, what will you do about it?

Bird flu is one option but I'd prefer clearing out the religious zealots and teaching the value of birth control.

AIDS didn't even slow the rate of increase of African population. The only rational solution - and the very least expensive one - is to stop pouring wealth down a toilet. Aim those compassionate $billions at the hometown Gifted not at foreign losers.

Invest in the future you desire not in the future you loathe.

those "foreign losers" as you call them are not the ones getting the "compassionate $billions". the ones getting that are the conmen, and administer that expect to be extreamly well paid for every penny that gets through. only about 1 out of every 10000 dollars actually gets to the people that are suppose to be getting the money. IF we spent 1% of the money to make sure that another 1% of the money go through to the right people, we could save 95 % or better and do 100 times as much good. Instead it goes to charities that figure as soon as they send it, there is no need to pay attension to where it went.

DA, Al, and Dehammer:
How do your comments have anything to do with the posted topic, which was on record heat waves in the US today?

Could you try to stick a little closer to the topic at hand instead of derailing it?

Amaranth

Al wrote:
"AIDS didn't even slow the rate of increase of African population. The only rational solution - and the very least expensive one - is to stop pouring wealth down a toilet"

AIDS is too slow and too unpredictable a killer. There would be a lot of value in foreign aid if it was more than just graft for the greedy. Of all of the billions that have been spent (wasted) I'd bet that not 1% ever made it to the people that needed it.

unfortunately the best prediction is that it will get a lot hotter as the ice age winds down. the good news is that the tropics will get bigger and thus lots of areas that are arid will get more rainfall. unfortunately that will take some time, so there will be more droughts in the mean time.

dehammer wrote:
"the good news is that the tropics will get bigger and thus lots of areas that are arid will get more rainfall."


Global warming is NOT enlarging the tropics. It is enlarging the Sahara desert and causing desertification:
http://agrifor.ac.uk/browse/cabi/add566c4bdf0cdf89bf6c7f9155730ed.html

Read a book.

unfortuantely i cant find the link i had. it was to an article that stated that the reason for the droughts in north america was that the area covered by the tempature of the tropics was getting bigger pushing the arid areas north of it, farther north. I thought the link was something i found here, but cant find it now.

so if global warming was causing that and global warming is only caused by man's cars and factories (which you have claimed on several occasions) what was causing it to enlarge when man was riding horses.

it appears that once again you failed to read the link that you give as evidence of your theory. the desertification is not caused by global warming, its caused my the people there misusing the land. the green belt that kept the desert back has been destroyed by people using the land for farming and such, not by global warming.

dehammer wrote:
"it was to an article that stated that the reason for the droughts in north america was that the area covered by the tempature of the tropics was getting bigger pushing the arid areas north of it, farther north."

And you therefore assumed it was enlarging the tropics rather than an increase in desert and arid conditions. Why?

Read a book.

why? simple, the scientist said it was increasing the size of the tropics. i guess its not a good idea to assume that when a scientist says something that he means what he says.

the desert conditions is causes by mans messing with the deserts green belt. not by the tempature rising. the arid conditions are in an area that they normally dont go because the wet areas are pushing them northwords. they are doing this by increasing the area that is getting tropical weather. that does not mean there is more arid area, it means that the arid areas are in an area that has not been arid for a long time.

dehammer wrote:
"why? simple, the scientist said it was increasing the size of the tropics. i guess its not a good idea to assume that when a scientist says something that he means what he says."

What did the scientist actually say? His words not yours? Post a link.

Based on what you posted it appears you misread and misinterpreted the article.

I've already said that i cant find it. when i first posted, i thought it was from this forum, but i cant find it anywhere at the present time. If you chose to believe it was made up, that's your prerogative, but i did read it somewhere a few weeks back.

http://www.google.com
http://www.yahoo.com
http://www.fazzle.com

Try.

thanks for the link to fazzle, i had tried google, ask.com and yahoo, with no luck.

interestingly enough, i found one that kind of supported what i had to say.

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn9229-global-warming-stretches-subtropical-boundaries.html.

unfortuately, this site did not discuss the fact that the wetter areas would also mean more ares with more water. they only discuss the arid areas getting bigger. this dispite the fact that they say it will do so because of the wetter tropics getting bigger.

an interesting point they did bring up was that a 1 degree increase in size pushed the tropics 70 miles north. this is areas that were arid and dry, but now are wet. then they go on about if it goes 3 degrees more it will cause the desert to push 200 miles farther north. the thing is, if the tropics get 3 degrees bigger, that means 200 miles of desert will be turned into tropical areas. The problem is those desert areas are not lived in, while the areas north are high populated areas. So to their way of looking, this means that there will be a lost of 200 miles of liveable areas. why dont they see the wetting of the desert as making more room. The earth is a sphere after all. the three degrees near the equator cover more land than the three degrees much farther north. this was something that the other article i read pointed out. unfortunately, it did not show up in the search.

Well since John teaches here at UW ... I'll take a walk down the hall on Monday and see if he is in his office.

Good choice of a source. Easy to verify in person.

And finally you posted a link so something you said could be verified. I am truly, and pleasantly, amazed.