Third week of record breaking heat...

[knn9]

Global warming is real, man. We're going on the third week of triple digit heat here in Washington state. A couple weeks ago it was 111F - the hottest temperature ever recorded here. It's kinda miserable when you're stuck inside with an AC that can't keep up and a computer that works like a space heater.

Is anyone else experiencing a heat wave like this?

[helios]

That's not what global warming is, though. Would it disprove global warming if next summer stayed at a cool 25° C?

[MiiNiPaa]

We had a snow 2 days ago... And temperature not going over 12°C and constant rain for two weeks before that.

[Peter87]

We had global warming this weekend with temperatures over 30 °C (in the shadow) but today it's raining so the global warming perished, at least for now.

[Disch]

Global warming is proven fact:

http://www.nasa.gov/topics/earth/features/2011-temps.html

Anyone that tries to deny it hasn't been paying attention to actual scientific findings or has been willfully disregarding them.

[knn9]

Was it not obvious that that was an exaggeration? My god...

[Ispil]

Disch, no one was disagreeing. Those were jokes about the mistake of claiming that the weather outright was warming, versus the climate.

[helios]

Welcome to text-based communication. Rule #1: text conveys neither intonation nor non-verbal cues.

[knn9]

OK, fair enough. We're just not used to these temps here.

[giblit]

Meh 111F is an average day here in Arizona

[Computergeek01]

Disch wrote:

Global warming is proven fact:...

It is also a largely misunderstood one: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quaternary_glaciation

So yeah, the planet is getting hotter. But this is the Earth returning to its norm not the slippery slope man made destruction of the planet that some people would have you believe. Now global carbon emissions aren't helping the process by any means, but we are only slowing down the inevitable. We have to face the fact that as a 'mother', Earth is a neglectful little b*%$^ and doesn't give a hoot about us. It's up to us, to evolve so that we are able to survive on her.

tl;dr: Everyone here was born during an Ice Age.

EDIT: I feel like I should apologize to Disch, I'm not trying to start a flame war here. Its just that I literally just got back from Cape Cod yesterday and the absolutely fantastic exhibits in the Woods Hole museums are still fresh in my head.

[Ispil]

Well, it's really just a matter of whether the CO2 levels will continue to rise (at which point the next glacial period will be too far away to matter) or fall (at which point the next glacial period would be close enough to actually be worth noting). For all we know, our contribution to global warming could be the delaying of the next glacial period (since we're currently interglacial) by so long that none of us will survive to see it (us being humans; all of the users here will be well-dead by then). Yes, the atmosphere is heating naturally as it would normally in an interglacial period. However, we are artificially boosting the CO2 concentrations that would normally predicate a dip back to a glacial period. If anything, we're delaying the inevitable of another glacial period.

EDIT: What's really scary, though, is that if all of the ice caps melt, the Earth's albedo will plummet. From there, I have no idea what will happen.

[Computergeek01]

@ Ispil: Now there might be a 'fun' calculation. If the ice caps melt then, hypothetically, the oceans will rise increasing their effective surface area. With a normal angle of incidence, water absorbs about 95% if the light energy impacting it. However light only penetrates something like 400m into the water which gives it a butt load of volume to sink heat into. In addition to that the entire surface area of all of the oceans is never experiencing this exposure at the same time. Damn you Ispil, I wanted to sleep tonight...

[helios]

Don't the ice caps account for only a tiny fraction of the total reflected energy? I mean, at any given time only one is in sunlight, and even then it's at very low angles of incidence. I would think the clouds are much larger contributors.

[Ispil]

Well, clouds are always a contributor, but it doesn't mean that the ice caps don't have a significant impact. Also, clouds themselves are quite convoluted in how they reflect light; low clouds tend to have a higher albedo than higher clouds, and clouds also reflect light back down.

http://www.sjsu.edu/faculty/watkins/cloudiness.htm sums it all up rather nicely, even in regards to ice caps.

[chowmein]

To add to OP's mention of Washington State's record high, Britain recently had its hottest July day on record.

http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2015/jul/01/heatwave-hits-heathrow-temperature-airport-flies-past-32c

It's all very unsettling. Strange things are happening the world over.

[TheBeardedQuack]

It's kinda miserable when you're stuck inside with an AC that can't keep up and a computer that works like a space heater.

You might actuality help yourself and the planet out by turning those off.

[chowmein]

You might actuality help yourself and the planet out by turning those off.

Would he/she be helping themself because they are helping the planet, or would it help because you're alluding to some kind of immediate health hazard linked to air con?

I've often wondered if there's something unnatural and dangerous about air con.

[Ispil]

I would turn off the AC in my house, but I live in Arizona and doing so would be literal suicide. As in, heatstroke as you sleep because it doesn't actually get cold here overnight. Even if the AC is environmentally damning, there's nothing that I can do here without serious risk of health.

[Avilius]

Are you trying to put your life above the planet's health? I have respected you before, but now that I know of your selfishness...