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Minus-56 degrees and more: Brutal cold-air outbreak is smashing records in the Midwest; here are some reports:
Temperatures dove more than 30 degrees below zero Thursday morning in the Midwest in this polar vortex outbreak’s last gasp, driving wind chills to dangerous levels and clobbering long-standing records.
Conditions in northern Minnesota took a nosedive in the early morning hours. The unincorporated community of Cotton measured an actual temperature — not wind chill — of minus-56 degrees. It was four degrees short of Minnesota’s all-time lowest temperature.
Central Pennsylvania weather: Record cold, wind chills from -10 to 5:
SUSQUEHANNA VALLEY, Pa. —
Sunshine is expected in central Pennsylvania's Susquehanna Valley this afternoon, but it's still bitterly cold.
A record cold high temperature could be set this afternoon. The record of 20 degrees was set in 1966, and the WGAL Storm Team is forecasting 16.
https://www.wgal.com/article/central-pennsylvania-weather-record-cold-today/26096618
Ann Arbor breaks 108-year-old cold temperature record:
A century-old record was broken in Ann Arbor on Wednesday.
As a polar vortex drove Arctic air into the Midwest, temperatures plummeted to a record daily low of 13 degrees below zero, and still dropping, by 7 p.m. on Jan. 30 in Ann Arbor, according to the National Weather Service.
The previous daily record, 11 degrees below zero, was set in 1911, according to University of Michigan records.
Madison sets record cold high temperature Wednesday:
While everyone knows we keep records for high and low temperatures, we also keep record for other extremes. One of those is record cold high temperatures in which Madison set a new one on Wednesday. The high temperature only made it to minus 10 degrees and that broke the old record cold high of minus 1 degree set back in 1951!
Record cold stresses furnaces into breakdowns:
INDIANAPOLIS (WTHR) – As temperatures plunged below zero outside, some people found the temperature in their homes dropping as well. The dangerous cold puts your furnace under a stress test.
Even with a gas fireplace running and four dogs with fur coats, the Underwoods felt a little chilly Wednesday morning in their home in Sycamore Springs on the northeast side of Indianapolis.
https://www.wthr.com/article/record-cold-stresses-furnaces-breakdowns
Homeless Face Record-Breaking Cold In Parts Of The Nation:
Rachel Martin talks to Debra Gonzalez, founder of the nonprofit organization in Wisconsin, Feeding His Flock Street Ministry, about searching the streets to find homeless people in need of shelter.
Chicago Weather Forecast: More Record-Setting Cold Ahead Of Snow Thursday Night
CHICAGO (CBS) — It’s another day of record-setting cold for Chicago, as Thursday immediately started as the coldest Jan. 31 ever at O’Hare, and kept getting colder.
The temperature was already -18°F when Thursday started, and by shortly before 4 a.m., it was down to -21°F, the coldest it’s ever been on this date. The previous record was -12°F on Jan. 31, 1985.
Thursday also has tied for 10th coldest ever in Chicago, following a day that tied for 5th coldest ever, when temperatures hit -23° on Wednesday.
(Score: 1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 01 2019, @05:56AM (22 children)
G L O B A L
W A R M I N G
(Score: 3, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 01 2019, @06:09AM
I thought they're calling it "climate change" now to invalidate that argument.
(Score: 5, Informative) by c0lo on Friday February 01 2019, @06:34AM (6 children)
G L O B A L W A R M I N G [abc.net.au]
There, I said it!
After those two months:
And this is Melbourne, with the long term average summer temperature of 25C-26C. So, yes, global warming.
Tasmania is worse now burning for the last 2 weeks if not longer [news.com.au]. Forest fires used to be rare there: the "historical" most recent one was 1967 [wikipedia.org], then suddenly they have 2013 [wikipedia.org], 2016 [wikipedia.org] and now this one.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 01 2019, @10:09AM (2 children)
Not very 'global' though, is it?
(Score: 4, Informative) by c0lo on Friday February 01 2019, @11:23AM
Neither global is the cold weather in US.
Betcha that the end of 2019 will still show a higher annual average temperature over the whole world.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 01 2019, @11:24AM
That is exactly his point silly. Its cold in the US, warm in AU. Somewhere in between in Europe at the moment. But GLOBALLY it is going to be yet another too warm year.
(Score: 2, Touché) by shrewdsheep on Friday February 01 2019, @11:29AM (1 child)
Just wait a little while for the average to catch up, problem solved.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Friday February 01 2019, @11:37AM
Would love to. Seriously. It would mean 50-75 years of life ahead.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday February 03 2019, @05:22AM
As usual the Victorian complains about heat totally forgetting that South Australia is hotter and Adelaide beat the all time record for the hottest capital in Australia.
Typical Victorians clanging their pots and pans, will somebody please think of the poor Victorians! They are only proof that Tasmanians can swim.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 01 2019, @06:40AM (5 children)
C L I M A T E
I S
N O T
W E A T H E R
(Score: 2, Insightful) by AthanasiusKircher on Friday February 01 2019, @08:24AM (4 children)
R A N D O M
U S E
O F
L E T T E R S P A C I N G
I S
A N N O Y I N G
(Score: 5, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 01 2019, @09:37AM (3 children)
BU T
RA N DOM
U SE
O F
LETT E R SP A CIN G
WO U LD
LO OK
LIK E
T HI S!
(Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 01 2019, @10:07AM (2 children)
MYSPACEBARISNOTWORKINGWHILECAPSLOCKISQUITEWELLTHANKYOU.
(Score: 3, Touché) by c0lo on Friday February 01 2019, @11:26AM (1 child)
ˢᵗᵒᵖ ˢʰᵒᵘᵗᶦⁿᵍ!!!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0
(Score: 2, Disagree) by Joe Desertrat on Friday February 01 2019, @11:44PM
STOP SQUEAKING!
(Score: 5, Informative) by HiThere on Friday February 01 2019, @05:23PM (4 children)
OK. Global warming. That doesn't translate into evenly spread global warming, or local warming.
When the jet stream slows down because the arctic is warmer that it used to be, the barriers to arctic air flowing south weaken, causing "polar vortex", i.e. polar air at polar temperature, to spill south. And because the jet stream is slower, this happens over a longer period of time than it did in prior times, and is even more likely to get stuck in place for awhile.
So, yes, global warming can yield colder winter periods in temperate areas. Also hotter summers from a similar, but not quite identical, mechanism. And "can" doesn't mean it will always happen, or that it will happen everywhere. FWIW, here on the west coast the winter locally (I don't know the extended region) has been unusually mild. But the summer wasn't very nice.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 2) by julian on Friday February 01 2019, @07:30PM (3 children)
I commend you for tirelessly making this rebuttal. Most of the people advancing the argument you're addressing are not acting in good faith. They know their reasoning is fallacious and not even superficially plausible to an educated person--they don't care. It's some combination of trolling, disinterest, nihilism, and cynical self-interest that compels them to spread this nonsense.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 01 2019, @07:35PM (2 children)
When summer rolls around, and the stories are about how warm it is, will you attribute it to the same factors?
(Score: 2) by julian on Friday February 01 2019, @09:09PM (1 child)
If they’re making the same uninformed point *against* global warming, certainly.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 01 2019, @09:27PM
What do you mean by "against"? It is fine to take warm weather as evidence for global warming but not cold weather?
(Score: 2) by istartedi on Friday February 01 2019, @07:18PM (2 children)
Average(20 20 20 20 20)=20.
Average(21 1 41 21 21)=21.
Appended to the end of comments you post. Max: 120 chars.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 01 2019, @07:24PM (1 child)
mean(c(21, 1, 41, 21, 21)^2) = 601
mean(c(21, 1, 41, 21, 21))^2 = 441
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 01 2019, @07:31PM
As the values become more uniform, the two results converge:
mean(c(20, 20, 20, 20, 20))^2 = 400
mean(c(20, 20, 20, 20, 20)^2) = 400
Of relevance here, temperature scales with the 4th root of radiative power: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stefan%E2%80%93Boltzmann_law [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 01 2019, @06:08AM (4 children)
You should have moved to Florida, the Belgium of the USA, like all the smart kids did.
That's why Florida is the Belgium of the USA, up-to-the-brim full of smart kids. And crocs.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by BsAtHome on Friday February 01 2019, @06:29AM (1 child)
and soon to be under water...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 01 2019, @02:33PM
The late 1970's called. They want their "Florida will be underwater in a decade." prediction back.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Friday February 01 2019, @07:18AM
My high school friend Chris Bixler is now a long haul truck driver. He's heavily into photography.
During a polar vortex a few years ago, he posted a photo of the Florida State Line sign in a snow-covered landscape.
Now, I _do_ agree that Florida during that particular Climate Change Incident was likely quite a lot warmer than Minnesota, but consider as well that the hurricanes are quite a lot larger these last few years and during 2018's hurricane season, a hurricane hit Portugal and Spain, one of only three to do so in hundreds of years.
Chris' brother Bart is a Coast Guard Enlisted man. That he travels widely too - especially when on vacation - leads him to be a shutterbug like his brother.
He's been to the North Pole. I'd lost touch with him a while back; the only hit I could find anywhere I was dismayed the name of his ice-breaker wasn't visible. Bart was standing on the ice next to the boat.
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
(Score: 3, Interesting) by c0lo on Friday February 01 2019, @09:06AM
Ocean acidification dooms Florida, the limestone [wikipedia.org] will dissolve [kobeemanatee.com] from under their feet (grin... or maybe not)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 01 2019, @06:14AM (10 children)
Americans are the only idiots who worry about wind chill. Russia is colder, but they probably don't even have an expression for it.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 01 2019, @02:52PM (9 children)
I swear, Canada is 10x worse than the US when it comes to windchill.
The media knows that reporting a windchill of -40C will be much more dramatic than reporting the ambient temperature -25C so they go with the windchill. Then everyone runs around screaming 'It's -40C outside'. Then when you try to explain to the younglings that it's not really -40C outside they reply with "yes it is, the TV told me so. They wouldn't report it if it wasn't true."
Same with humidex. I think it was invented by Canadians so when visitors in July say "It's only 23C today..summers are cool in Canada" Canadians can reply with "It's not cool, the humidex is 30C".
In July the ambient temperature will be 31C, humidex will be 42C, and the media will be reporting that 'It's hotter than Dubai today, it's hotter than Death Valley today." and Canadians will start running around saying the same thing.
(Score: 4, Informative) by hendrikboom on Friday February 01 2019, @03:26PM (8 children)
That said, wind chill is likely a better predictor for frostbite than temperature.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 01 2019, @03:43PM (5 children)
For those going outside naked.
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Friday February 01 2019, @06:21PM (3 children)
i spent enough winters in Chicago to know that, while the exact number can be debated, the 10MPH wind is what transforms an uncomfortable temperature into a scared-for-your-toes EL platform wait...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 01 2019, @07:44PM (2 children)
Have we Americans forgotten that boots, scarves, gloves, hats and coats exist for a reason?
(Score: 4, Informative) by bob_super on Friday February 01 2019, @07:56PM (1 child)
Oh, someone who didn't experience it !
We're talking about temperatures at which the question is whether you can change your clothes when you get to work, because to stand outside waiting for a train/bus, you need at least two layers of pants (preferably ski ones), and some seriously padded shoes and socks, yet you'll still feel the cold because of the breeze. The usual gloves (driving-friendly ones) also need an upgrade if you need to operate anything for more than a few seconds.
Don't think "cold". Think "polar gear".
Even Chicagoans, because they are used to the cold, typically don't have much sub-zero gear.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 02 2019, @02:50AM
Au contraire. I live in an affected area, and while I can't stand the cold, appropriate clothing made it ok. This weather is not that unusual, as someone else said, about once every three years we get weather like this.
I admit that I don't need to wear skimpy clothes to work.
(Score: 2) by hendrikboom on Wednesday February 06 2019, @01:54AM
Some part of you are usually naked, if you want to see where you're going.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 01 2019, @08:26PM (1 child)
Maybe for prisoners or army grunts who can't choose what to wear. And if you're riding a bike or scooter, the airspeed has little to do with the wind.
(Score: 2) by acid andy on Friday February 01 2019, @11:07PM
It has quite a lot to do with it. The effective wind created by your motion will soon make you colder in cold temperatures and if you're riding into the wind it will certainly make it even worse.
Master of the science of the art of the science of art.
(Score: -1, Troll) by bradley13 on Friday February 01 2019, @06:59AM (9 children)
You can laugh at this two ways. One the one hand, we have the news blathering about how this has never, ever happened before. This despite the fact that it happens about one winter in three, and despite the fact that the -56 was "four degrees short of Minnesota’s all-time lowest temperature" - so not a record at all.
On the other hand, it did set cold records in some places. Whereas there hasn't been a single high-temperature record set in the US since 1995 [infoplease.com]. Which is just fascinating, since this is supposed to be driven by global warming.
Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.
(Score: 4, Informative) by MostCynical on Friday February 01 2019, @07:16AM (4 children)
So, no record maxima, but increasing averages [hamiltonproject.org] should have you worried.
"I guess once you start doubting, there's no end to it." -Batou, Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Azuma Hazuki on Friday February 01 2019, @07:23AM (3 children)
This is a problem of philosophy (or politics) with bradley13, not science. The data don't fit his worldview, so they are ipso facto false and/or falsified. I have no idea what to do about people like this, or at least no ideas that don't involve a wood chipper.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 5, Funny) by coolgopher on Friday February 01 2019, @07:45AM (2 children)
B ark.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 01 2019, @11:35AM
W oof!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 01 2019, @08:27PM
You know, I don't remember hearing from A ark or C ark lately?
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 01 2019, @07:45AM
ATTENTION SOYLENTILS!!! We have our new frojack! Not as suave and subtle as the old one, but the best we could get in the Trump Era.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 01 2019, @01:06PM
In the 2000s or 2010s, Georgia, South Carolina and South Dakota matched records that had been set earlier. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S._state_temperature_extremes [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 2) by MostCynical on Friday February 01 2019, @07:56PM
also lots of records elsewhere [smh.com.au]
"I guess once you start doubting, there's no end to it." -Batou, Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 01 2019, @08:36PM
The data in the list misleading.
1) The data is listed state wide. I live in California, we have Death Valley. You can set thousands of local heat records and never beat the highs from Death Valley.
2) Some meteorologists dispute the accuracy of these early records.
3) Many records have been set for weekly or monthly average highs
4) The USA is not the world. Talk to some folks from Australia about high temps.
(Score: 5, Informative) by Azuma Hazuki on Friday February 01 2019, @07:03AM (21 children)
For all the idiots who think they're being clever by picking up a handful of snow and going "hurpaderp shore cud use summa that global warming, hyuk hyuk hyuk..."
The planet, which is (near enough to) a globe, has a steadily-increasing net energy balance as a result of radiative forcing, mainly by greenhouse gas emissions, i.e., it is warming. Hence, "global warming."
Because the planet is not a featureless, barren, perfectly uniform ball of rock with an axial tilt of zero degrees and zero orbital eccentricity, we do not see this increase in energy budget translate into uniform warming the globe over. Instead, what we have in the form of our ocean-atmosphere system is a complex web of interconnected sources, sinks, and feedbacks.
That means the planet's energy budget gets moved around, stored (ocean heat), circulated (Gulf Stream, North Atlantic Deep Water, etc), literally blown off (hurricanes and other extreme weather), and so forth. This results in the emergence of a set of negative feedbacks, meaning the net effect is for the system to settle around an equilibrium point and "attempt" to return to it--scare quotes because Gaia is not alive no matter WHAT Professor Lovelock thinks--like a spring with a weight on it after someone gives it a tug.
The problem is, though, that just as the spring can tolerate only so much force before snapping, the planet's negative feedbacks can take only so much increase in energetic load before failing. Overload the systems too much, and there is a period of chaos and unpredictability until a new equilibrium point is reached...and it need not be one compatible with human civilization, or even complex life. Venus, for example, is technically at equilibrium with its surroundings.
Then there is the concept of the "tipping point," which is the point in time at which these feedbacks are overwhelmed. As an example, the ocean possesses a chemical buffer system, a literal double-buffer, involving the equilibrium of carbonate, bicarbonate, and CO2. Like any buffer solution, the entire mass of liquid can absorb a certain amount of solute with little to no observable change in pH...until it can't anymore, this being the "tipping point" at which the buffer runs out. In the case of the oceans, more CO2 in the atmosphere means more pressure of CO2 downward into the oceans, which is consuming the carbonate and shifting the buffer system from carbonate-bicarbonate to bicarbonate-CO2. Run out the carbonate, and the oceans will become a *source* of CO2 to the atmosphere rather than a sink. THIS is why ocean acidification is so dangerous, because that particular tipping point could very well lead to a runaway greenhouse effect.
This isn't easy stuff, but it's well understood, and anyone with ears to hear and brains to understand had best avail themselves of it.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 0, Disagree) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 01 2019, @07:39AM (7 children)
You say it like its a bad thing
Truthfully, it isn't.
A planet with temps on par with the PETM would be a tropical paradise even in the arctic and antarctic.
Rainforests would be everywhere and you could skinny dip in the great lakes with out so much as a shiver.
Coastal property values would reduce to where mere mortals could afford it and currently non-productive swaths of land like the tundra in Canada, Alaska and Siberia would become the world's breadbasket.
I sincerely say bring it on!
In the meantime, please bring back the "warming" side of global warming, those of us up north sincerely miss it!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 01 2019, @08:32AM (1 child)
so what do you do when ALL of central america wants to go to canada because they don't like starving or being killed by heatwaves and hurricanes? I assure you, a wall 30 m high would not stop them.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 01 2019, @09:05AM
How is that different from today?
People should be free to live anywhere they want to live productive law abiding lives and nations should welcome them whoever "they" are as a valued member of the tax base.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by c0lo on Friday February 01 2019, @11:20AM (2 children)
You're an idiot.
Tropical paradise it may be, but not for humans and maybe not even for animals.
There [wikipedia.org], this is how your paradise looks like [opb.org], with dead and rotting fishes [theguardian.com] for a starter.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0
(Score: 0, Disagree) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 01 2019, @12:13PM (1 child)
None of which were caused by warmer temps. Most of these mass die offs are the result of nitrate and fertilizer run off from large scale commercial farming operations.
Take a look around you at any place that gets both warmer and wetter, tell me about things that actually die, there are a few, frankly I don't care about them, I'd rather have the arctic opened for bikini parties, but you could at least cite the things that will die if the temps climb the 8 degrees or so needed to get us there.
Go ahead, I'll just sit here waiting for you to make a coherent point.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 01 2019, @12:23PM
3 separate fish kills in less than a month without any rain [theguardian.com]. In a region which is about to run out of water with temperatures in high 30C for 2 months. Fertilizer run off my ass.
I think you're full of shit.
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Friday February 01 2019, @06:27PM (1 child)
> you could skinny dip in the great lakes with out so much as a shiver.
Two things:
- People swim in the great lakes without shivering already, despite the fact that their bathing suits have no thermal effect
- In most places, regardless of temps, skinny-dipping in the great lakes will get you a fine (or shot if you're not white), because naked is bad bad bad, mmmkay?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday February 02 2019, @12:27AM
Yep. Except for Lake Superior; that lake is damned cold even in the middle of summer!
Fined? Yes. Shot? Not likely. We Michiganders are a bit prudish, but there are limits to what we will do to stamp out skinny dipping.
(Score: 1, Troll) by krishnoid on Friday February 01 2019, @09:32AM (2 children)
Something something blah blah blah -- "The fact that the cold that used to be all over the planet is now it's freezing specific places out while it fries the rest is totally proof of global warming, isn't this obvious?" How come scientists can't take a little literary license and write stuff like this for the popular media, maybe get themselves interviewed on the news wearing a parka in the middle of an ice storm in Michigan while holding up a frozen Erlenmeyer flask and test tube? I bet it would work.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Azuma Hazuki on Friday February 01 2019, @06:43PM (1 child)
I don't know who troll-modded you. This would work. Given that most of the country seems to be about on the level of a kid's show with all the "mad scientist" props anyway, this may very well be what's needed to bring it to their attention and make it stick.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 01 2019, @07:27PM
Some of us have a direct perception that circumvents all the math. We are keenly waiting to be proven right/wrong.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 01 2019, @10:24AM (5 children)
Meanwhile the chinese are building "ghost cities" all along their coasts and throughout africa to handle all the climate refuges they expect from inland and the north. Historically, chinese dynasties are overthrown during grand solar minima, so they are acutely aware of where famine strikes and the land becomes too dry or cold to live.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by kazzie on Friday February 01 2019, @11:30AM (2 children)
Building "ghost cities" along their coasts sounds counter-intuitive to me: I'd expect them to plan to move people away from there due to rising sea levels.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 01 2019, @11:53AM
They are preparing for a different climate change than you are thinking of, the colder temperatures that have accompanied the grand solar minima in the past.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by deimtee on Friday February 01 2019, @11:55AM
Depends on the coast really. There are plenty of places where the land rises fairly steeply. Not saying I know anything about where the chinese are building cities, but just being close to the ocean doesn't necessarily mean you will go under if the water rises.
No problem is insoluble, but at Ksp = 2.943×10−25 Mercury Sulphide comes close.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Friday February 01 2019, @02:27PM (1 child)
Utter nonsense. They're building ghost cities for the same reason that others build infrastructure to nowhere. Because they got ahold of other peoples' money and came up with an excuse to spend it. Further, I doubt "climate refugees" have anything to do with the climate. After all, the "inland and the north" wherever that might be, is not going to be much different over the course of a human lifespan. And if they're planning that far ahead, why not build the "ghost city" in 50 to 100 years when they might actually need it rather than now when it's just going to go to rubble by that time?
And you know when "grand solar minima" occur historically because?
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 01 2019, @02:40PM
https://electroverse.net/grand-solar-minimums-and-the-fall-of-empires-a-great-crash-looms/ [electroverse.net]
(Score: 5, Informative) by c0lo on Friday February 01 2019, @11:15AM (2 children)
Oh, girl, I see you like horror stories. Let me suggest some others as reading before bed. So:
Usually, things like limnic eruption happens in meromictic lakes [wikipedia.org] - in which layers of water that do not intermix... most of the time. However [wikipedia.org],
If this kind of event was to happen in the Black Sea, Fukushima and Chernobyl would be a paradise by comparison.
Fortunately, in the Black sea, global warming "managed" to only reduce the depth of the oxic boundary "from 140 to 90 metres between 1955 and 2015." [phys.org].
Another essay [robertscribbler.com], with interesting graphs and facts on H2S-rich/oxygen-depleted waters (Cthulu indeed)
Tropical paradise [soylentnews.org] my ass. Maybe for Desulfovibrio vulgaris [wikipedia.org], not for the human race.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 01 2019, @11:26AM
Do not forget the beavers: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4293363/ [nih.gov]
Basically unless the plan is to have a beaver holocaust they are going to triple atmospheric CO2.
(Score: 3, Touché) by Azuma Hazuki on Friday February 01 2019, @06:45PM
Yyyyyyup. I know all about all of these, having done earth science way back in college (useless, it was). Knowing all of this is like the climate change equivalent of being able to read the Necronomicon and understand fully what it means, while everyone else goes about blissfully unaware of what's sleeping under their feet.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 01 2019, @05:38PM
you are the idiot leaving all the industrial capitalism fuckups out of your clever wall of text. Well you and the retard who moded you 5: informative
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 01 2019, @07:55AM (1 child)
Appears that the IRC server is frozen. Perhaps solid. Will wait until Spring, but if it has not thawed by then, perhaps the damage is irreparable.
(Score: 2) by kazzie on Friday February 01 2019, @11:34AM
Try WALLOPing it, see if that shakes the ice off.
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Friday February 01 2019, @06:27PM (4 children)
I only got a fairly mild dose here in northern Ohio: we were down to -5F or so at night, +10F during the day or so. This wasn't even the worst one in recent years - a few years back it was at something like -15F.
But no, this didn't used to be normal, and in fact is exactly what was predicted by those egghead climatologists, and is the real-world idea that was Hollywoodized stupidly in The Day After Tomorrow. In short, as air pockets warm up that didn't used to warm up, the barriers that were preventing air movement between the arctic and the tropics are going away, which means all of a sudden Michigan might feel like Alaska, and in the summer all of a sudden the Yukon might feel like Minnesota.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 01 2019, @07:16PM (2 children)
Source?
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Friday February 01 2019, @08:52PM (1 child)
I don't know the GP's source, but I got the same info from the Scientific American. Only a couple of years ago, but they weren't reporting on new research, but telling people about old established results.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 01 2019, @08:55PM
Can you find it online?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 01 2019, @10:55PM
Didn't used to be normal? How long back are you considering "normal" to be? Back in the 1990s and 1980s, most of Ohio had winter days down to the -20s. I looked it up really quick to verify dates, but I knew it happened because I remember it -- I was there at the time.
This is not unusual. It doesn't happen every winter, but it happens plenty of winters during a human lifetime. If you honestly think this is out of the ordinary, perhaps you haven't lived long enough (in the same place) yet.
(Score: 2) by iWantToKeepAnon on Friday February 01 2019, @06:57PM (2 children)
"Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way." -- Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
(Score: 2) by takyon on Friday February 01 2019, @07:43PM
Oh we're thinking. Let us know where we can hork some free beer.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by Joe Desertrat on Friday February 01 2019, @11:50PM
I'll volunteer to give them a home!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 01 2019, @07:37PM
Stupid bird come in! (no not you this time TMB)
I'm sure there are plenty of dead crows after that cold spell, get to eating PhoenixDumDumDum!