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3:09:00 PM EDT
Is the Heat Wave Due to Climate Change?
Not Directly, But Expect More Like It: Over the last 10 days or so, a stifling heat wave has hit the United States, Europe and Japan. Temperatures were expected to hit 112 today in Los Angeles and had been in the 100s all week in California's Central Valley.
There were 29 deaths possibly due to the heat in California since July 16. Add to that 21 deaths in France, three in Japan, two in Spain and two in the Netherlands. Britain had its hottest-ever July day: 97.3 degrees at London's Gatwick Airport and 96.6 south of the city. The average July temperature for southeast England is 70 degrees; now that's the nighttime temperature.
No single weather event can be linked to climate change, but as Reuters quotes Asher Timms of Britain's Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research: "... globally, it seems that there's quite a shift in our weather patterns." ('Heatwave in Europe, U.S. But is it climate change?')
Climate change means we'll see a more unstable climate, due to the rise in average global temperature. Scientists predict more days each year that are hotter than normal, especially in North America. We could see more heat waves each year and more days in the 90s and 100s.
In Britain, where they are not used to hot weather, some roads are melting, judges are now allowed to remove their wigs and the royal guards at Buckingham Palace had their shifts shortened to one hour from two.
In the United States, electric power use hit a record high in California as people turned on -- or cranked up -- their air conditioners. Some areas lost power -- 158,000 homes and businesses in St. Louis, 25,000 households in Queens.
What can you do to weather the heat? Here are some links to help you stay cool, save electricity and save money.
- Video: Five Ways to Save Energy and Money
- 12 Ways to Help Slow Down Global Warming
- Cool Your World With Energy Star
If you have additional tips on how to keep cool without using more electricity, please share them.
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Is the Heat Wave Due to Climate Change? : Not Directly.
NOT DIRECTLY?! Why are people and the gov't still fooling themselves, seriously. -
Everyone is for the environment and driving big cars. Let's everyone get with the plan instead of just blaming the cigarette smokers for all the problems in the world.
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There is no doubt (the vast majority of the scientific community-educated people who have spent liftimes studying the atmosphere-are in agreement that global warming has a man made component) that there is a close corellation between man's activies that have released carbon dioxide (primarily burning of fossil fuels) and an increase in global temperatures. Changes that use to take thousands or maybe even millions of years are now happening in centuries and decades. Man has accellerated the the heating of the earth's atmosphere and when changes occurr this fast we can expect the unexpected. As for stellar evolution being the cause of global warming in one's liftime, stellar evolution takes millions of years not decades!
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Climate change means we'll see a more unstable climate, due to the rise in average global temperature. Scientists predict more days each year that are hotter than normal, especially in North America. We could see more heat waves each year and more days in the 90s and 100s.
And the scientific reason for this world wide change is the SUN, I am 65 years young at this writing, when I was a child the sun was a dull orange and on a cloudless full moon you had to have a light to travel, now the sun is white and on a cloudless full moon you almost have to have eye protection to look at it and it makes shadows of items on the earth, even with my waning eyesight I can see to go most anywhere that the moonlight reaches without a light.
As the sun grows whiter and hotter it is also getting larger, much larger, this makes it closer to the earth as well as the extra heat it is producing, and the real bad news is that it is a snowballing effect, as it gets hotter and bigger the more fuel it consumes, which makes it bigger and hotter, more fuel consumption, more heat, grows bigger.
And we humans are not doing anything to cause this heat rise, it is the natural life and death of a star (our sun is a star) The estimates of our sun range from 10 to 14 billion years, the best computer estimates I have viewed places it at 10 to 11 billion years, and we are in 4.4 to 4.6 billion years of the stars life at this time.
The life of a star is computed from start (Birth) to finish (all heat disapated) This places burnout of all fuel at near mid-life and the rest is cool down time.
Our stars life grows shorter, the shorter it grows the faster it grows, bigger and brighter, pretty soon it will be turning blue white then blue, the last color, the color it will die with.
Ask your leaders what this thing is that they are calling GLOBAL WARMING.
8/2/06 11:19 PM