whither the weather?

who knows? ask 12 people, get 20 answers

most don’t know what to worry about

greenhouse effect? global warming? climate change?

most people don’t understand the difference; is there a difference?

I was aware by the late 70s that background weather patterns, i.e. climate, were changing

I met people in Newfoundland 30 years ago who remembered that back in the day when Québec got 4-foot snowstorms with 15-foot drifts
[www.worldwidemetric.com/metcal.htm], they’d been able to drive across Trinity Bay during the 2 or 3 coldest months of winter

anyone who doesn’t know something’s happening is too young or asleep; figuring out why it’s happening is a different kettle of fish

a TV commercial suggests people and their SUVs are responsible for climate change; well, duh! along with jet fuel and steel mills and my laptop’s plastic case and …

except, people and our GHGs may only be exacerbating the unstoppable

of course, the crap we’ve pumped & dumped into the environment since the early days of the Industrial Revolution makes us sick, poisons our crops, air and water, weakens our immune systems, leads to birth defects, and is likely to have impacted global temperatures, not to mention upper-level ozone density and melanoma rates; hell, deforestation alone has impacted climate and that started in Europe, especially around the Mediterranean, centuries before the Europeans discovered the Amazon

but what if human pollution is just an extra push to an inevitable solar event?

the Sun stopped following its 11-year “cycle” years ago; the last maximum solar activity peak was, statistically, supposed to be in 2001, but sunspots continued years past that and one in 2005 was the 3rd-largest ever seen

in 2006 scientists said solar activity had [finally] bottomed out and we could not only expect sunspots to start up again, we needed to brace ourselves for one of the most active sunspot cycles in 50, maybe 100 years [depending on whom you asked], a veritable solar storm

now? er, what’s a sunspot?
Daily Tech

what’s the Sun going to do next? wanna watch?

btw, Danish researchers presented evidence in the 90s of correlations between global temperature and solar activity

some researchers report minimal declines in temperatures since 1998 [well before solar max], although others say they’re measuring the wrong part of the planet

if you dig talking to trees, you might be interested in a presentation from the Finnish Forest Research Institute and the University of Helsinki, who say Finland’s Scots pines (Pinus sylvestris L.) date a temperature tipping point - downward - back to the 50s

more next time

Blessed Be