[NickD]

While it won't quit raining here in Central Wisconsin, California is going through a severe drought. So is my brother-in-law in Colombia, has to sell his cattle, and coffee beans plants are drying up. Houston is having floods, as home on the Mississippi River.

Some areas of the country are hotter than hail, my furnace is still running.

Is all this just recent? Not hardly, huge civiliazations were found in Central South America where are the people left in around 1000 AD and also in Peru. During the middle ages, all of Europe was going through a miniature ice age just as a couple of examples. Meteorologists claim the cause is wind currents. NASA said exactly the same thing about the ozone layer over the Antarctic, Gore blamed this on R-12 refrigerant, now saying excessive CO2.

Could Gore explain why some 13,000 years ago, where I live was a mile high glacier here? Would think it would leave a mile high mountain of cars.

What we do know, is staying home today, too dang cold and wet to go kayaking. Feel this is well beyond the power of the lawmakers, but don't tell them this.

 

[gulfcoastguy]

Yes, it rains so much here that I've still got the two gallons of house paint that I brought in April. Climate changes and so do the opinions of people making money by predicting it.

 

[obermd]

Still haven't repaired my sprinkler system. It's on to monitor soil moisture and rainfall but the water is turned off. So far this spring the soil moisture hasn't dropped below 25%. In June 20% indicates watering needed.

 

[NickD]

Certainly have different ground conditions, where I live have about 6-12 inches of top soil, then about a three foot layer of clay sitting on top of sandstone that goes down another 40 feet or so where it hits granite that goes down several thousand feet. Then with all the trees with shade, when it rains, can take over a week to dry out. Surface water drains off, but the ground is still soaking wet.

Son just lives about 30 miles away, entirely different, living on a sand pile. he wants a nice lawn so had to pay a small fortune for black dirt for a 12" layer. Use to be a buck for a cubic yard delivered, now more like 20 bucks. Ha, commented I can't use that phrase, dirt cheap anymore.

When he gets a downpour, about two hours later, his lawn is dry as soon as the sun comes out. He sure needed a sprinkler system, helped him install it. We put in a point well and hit water 8 feet down, but went down 25 feet anyway. Rented some kind of a jack hammer to ram that pipe down.

Kind of insisted on using a pressure tank with a regulator with the pump sitting on top of it, and installed valves for drains to make it easy. Even though nobody is drinking that water, law says it has to be potable. Has a 2 HP motor, plenty of water, but uses a plastic pump housing. First year, wasn't paying attention to the weather so that plastic housing broke with a crack in it.

Couldn't find any kind of glue to repair that crack, so we went to buy a new housing. Wanted more for that piece of plastic than a whole brand new pump, so its not only automotive we are getting robbed to death on. Anyway, this was around 8 years ago, so he watches the weather now.

Finally quit raining here at around 2:00 PM, called my kid at around 4:00 PM, he was out mowing his lawn. If I were to do that would leave mud tracks all over, so just left it. Can't fight mother nature.

 

[Aussie]

Everybody knows that you can stop climate change simply by imposing a tax on everybody.

 

[NickD]

Everybody knows that you can stop climate change simply by imposing a tax on everybody.

With the exception of the politicians that are trying to impose it.

 

[ChevyGuy]

Everybody knows that you can stop climate change simply by imposing a tax on everybody.

No, but you can use climate change to get your tax passed. :|

 

[BU54]

It's been raining buckets here in northern hellinois the last several days. The ground is saturated and the rivers over flowing. Mushrooms are growing the the yard and the fields of crops have standing water everywhere. Last night we had anywhere from 1/2" of rain in 4 minutes at midway airport to over 4" in less than an hour in carol stream. Needles to say it's difficult to keep up with mowing the lawn/mushrooms.

 

[NickD]

Read in a book a long time ago before Al Gore was invented that nature has its way of balancing itself, briefly.

When CO2 levels increase, so does plant life, and animal life decreases.

When CO2 levels decrease, animal life increases and plant life decreases.

Lately we seem to have an excess of CO2 production due to the burning of HC's, so how does this affect nature? Does this mean both plant and animal life can increase together?

In 1800's lumber barons literary raped Wisconsin of huge cedar and while pine trees that would consume much of the CO2. While some replanting was done during the depression, the northern half is mostly weeds, this was never replanted. Cities are destroying much of plant life. Replacing trees with black asphalt.

Our love for beef is generating tons of methane gas that causes global warming, some claim at three times the rate of all HC burning. But ethanol is sure cutting down our desire for beef at over five bucks a pound for fatty hamburger.

Just saying, its not just our automobiles causing the problem, another real source of CO2 production is hot air generated by politicians. This would be a good place to start, shut them up.

 

[brian v]

Hey Nick I wish the climate would change around here , and let it rain in California where IT is needed ..

Oh Well Bumper Crop year !

 

[MOTO13]

The thing with climate change, at least in my opinion, is that yes, it is changing. Why is it changing? No friggin idea. Was the El or La Nina years ago still impacting us? There may be some man made influence here, but it would be minor at best. I think it is 99% natural climate cycles. But when politicians and activists talk about it, they word in ways that make it seem if you doubt them in any manner, you are the enemy and willfully hurting the environment and you obviously are a lunatic for not fully agreeing with them. Even when these so called environmentalists have no clue what the **** is going on he pound the drum of BS. But they have found a way to make money off it or garner votes. Look at the joke named Al Gore. He made millions off "caring" about the environment and yet he has one of the biggest carbon footprints on the planet. If there was no money in it or no possibility of impacting the electorate, there would be ZERO interest.

 

[Beelzebubba]

Climate change has always existed. Change is the only constant.

The only question is whether or not we, as a species, are actually affecting it.

Wouldn't we feel stupid if we were able to globally go carbon neutral and we went through a global warm period anyway?

I'm not saying that we shouldn't try to preserve the environment. We absolutely should. I'm just saying that it is foolish to think that the climate will magically completely stabilize itself if we were, as a species, able to actually go carbon neutral. It won't. It never has even before we starting filthying up the planet.

 

[NickD]

Mount St, Helen erupted May 18, 1980, that winter we had was the coldest ever, with temperatures in the -45*F range.

Back then, claimed all that dust left in the atmosphere caused this. But also claim if that nameless huge volcano in Yellowstone Park blows its cork, Mount St. Helen would be nothing compared to this disaster.

Wonder who told the politicians to quit saying global warming and start saying climate change instead. Ha, we have an old saying in Wisconsin, long before Obama was even thought of. If you don't like the weather, wait five minutes, it will change.

Still 98% of our energy requirements is obtained by burning carbon based materials, so why aren't AH's addressing this problem? And look at all the wars that were caused by this! Japan has no natural resources, so when Roosevelt quit shipping our oil to them because of their invasion to China, they attacked us.

While we saved their can, after WW II, they joined up with the Soviets that didn't help them at all.

Nuclear fusion may be the answer, bit too much for some guy to do in his garage like all the other great inventors over the last 150 years. But fusion is a bit too much, government is only spending pennies on this.

Had no say on being dumped on this planet in 1939, all I could hear my mom talking about was the great depression and how she suffered from it. But when WII broke out, suddenly their was tons of money to put people to work and for destructive means.

So why wasn't this money available for peacetime use? Should I post this in the stupid question section? Crash of 1929 put Hitler in business. Japanese learned better to buy Hawaii than to bomb it. With North Korea, the Chinese joined the Soviet to kill us. Today, putting us deep in debt with all their crap.

We select politicians for what they claim they stand for, but have yet to hear very few say, they will listen to us and represent us. Have no idea whom they are representing, but sure in the hail isn't us.

 

[Patman]

Yea today is a monsoon in Cincinnati.... Prior to today "hotter than the sun" hot is not the problem as "muggy" not quite like in southern California Where my cousin reports 100 100 99 100 99 99 100 and no rain. Kinda reminds me of going back to see the in laws in Vietnam. If we tax it tho, it will go away.

 

[obermd]

Last night the news reported that Chatfield Reservoir southwest of Denver was 6 inches below it's highest recorded level. Chatfield was built as a result of the 500 year flood in 1965 that wiped out most of central Denver.

 

[Beelzebubba]

Fort Worth is swimming through the remains of Tropical Storm Bill. California remains dry.

My friends in Los Angeles get upset when anyone refers to Southern California as a desert. Much of it is desert though. LA only averages less than 15" of precipitation a year. Compare that to Amarillo, TX that gets 20" a year. A few minutes out of Amarillo and no question, you are in the desert.

At one point in history, virtually everything here in DFW was under an ocean. It's plausible that could happen again.

 

[NickD]

Heard Pope Francis is joining the act on climate change introducing a 192 page encyclical tomorrow. Based on "rich" nations causing the poor nations to suffer.

Assume the US is a "rich" nation he is referring to.

Only thing I know is that my family and I have to work our cans off just to make ends meet, had to give six years of my life to my country, and without an automobile, we would starve to death.

If the pope really wants to pick on something, should chose Latin America with all their dictators and corruption. And I can tell you this, they nearly don't have to work as hard as we do.

Wonder if in this 192 encyclical, if the pope is going to offer alternative solutions to climate change problems. Or just be critical.

 

[Beelzebubba]

Wonder if in this 192 encyclical, if the pope is going to offer alternative solutions to climate change problems. Or just be critical.

I like the current pope, but that is an amazingly good point you made. :th_dblthumb2:

 

[ironflower]

My grandmother thought climate change was caused by sending rockets into outer space. That would be inline with the rich nations theory.

 

[Boog8302]

Nuclear fusion can be done in the garage.....just saying. I cant do it....but it has been done.

https://www.ted.com/talks/taylor_wilson_yup_i_built_a_nuclear_fusion_reactor?language=en

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iIOZ_aMrKos

As far as the climate change goes, the Earth has taken care of herself for how many years now? I mean baring some catastrophic event like an asteroid or some God made cataclysm, she has taken care of herself. The climate has a cycle. The climate change is just another way that the Earth is taking care of herself. Its not just humans that are causing pollution. Like someone mentioned in an earlier post, cow poop gives off insane amounts of methane. Now where humans could do better is to use the cow poop methane as an alternative way to power their house or whatever. Yes this can be done. The New Belgian Brewery has reduced their waste by using most of their byproducts to power their brewery. There is enough wind power in the U.S. to power the country, and that doesnt mean that we would need a plethora of wind turbines. There are things that we can do to reduce the overall carbon footprint. Not just the footprint of cars and trucks, but the carbon footprint that we leave behind everywhere. Climate change is natural, it is going to happen, but I do believe that humans are speeding up the process.

Link the the New Belgian Brewery: Living Our Values Everyday - New Belgium Brewing