NOAA- State of the Climate

[Ellis]

Your friend is not a middle of the road republican. He is a right wing nut,

No. He's not.

He's more than willing to talk about things and can admit he's wrong when he knows he's wrong.

[PeterMP]

I am posting something a middle-of-the-road Republican friend from Colorado posted on facebook and would like to hear some opinions on it...

"I'm not convinced that we're experiencing global warming b/c technically we haven't finished thawing out from the last ice age."

I can honestly say iI've never heard this... is this the latest rhetoric making it's way through the politically slanted corners of the internet?

Technically speaking we are in an ice age. We are in what is called an interglacial period of an ice age.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interglacial

With respect to climate change, this is essentially an irrelevant point. With respect to things like ice ages and interglacial periods temperature doesn't change on the order of decades. You need multiple centuries to see the temperature trend that drives these things.

People don't expect this particular interglacial period to end in over 30,000 years and the most recent work puts it at about 100,000 years and that assumes CO2 levels return to pre-industrial levels.

[twa]

Wait, you mean climate isn't static? Whodathunkit?

We need a big central air unit....then we can fight over the thermostat

[China]

Report: Climate change behind rise in weather disasters

2:00PM EST October 10. 2012 - The number of natural disasters per year has been rising dramatically on all continents since 1980, but the trend is steepest for North America where countries have been battered by hurricanes, tornadoes, floods, searing heat and drought, a new report says.

The study being released today by Munich Re, the world's largest reinsurance firm, sees climate change driving the increase and predicts those influences will continue in years ahead, though a number of experts question that conclusion.

Whatever the causes, the report shows that if you thought the weather has been getting worse, you're right.

The report finds that weather disasters in North America are among the worst and most volatile in the world: "North America is the continent with the largest increases in disasters," says Munich Re's Peter Hoppe.

The report focuses on weather disasters since 1980 in the USA, Canada, Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands.

Hoppe says this report represents the first finding of a climate change "footprint" in the data from natural catastrophes.

Some of the report's findings:

-- The intensities of certain weather events in North America are among the highest in the world, and the risks associated with them are changing faster than anywhere else.

-- The second costliest year of the study period, 2011, was dominated by strong storms. Insured losses in the U.S. due to thunderstorms alone was the highest on record at an estimated $26 billion, more than double the previous thunderstorm record set in 2010.

-- Insured losses from disasters averaged $9 billion a year in the 1980s. By the 2000s, the average soared to $36 billion per year.

Global warming combined with natural cycles such as the El Niño or La Niña phenomena also intensify the risk of severe weather. "This will result in higher natural peril losses and affect not only the onset of heat waves, droughts and thunderstorms but also, in the long term, the intensity of tropical cyclones," the report finds.

Click on the link for the full article

[Koolblue13]

Not surprising really.

[twa]

Not surprising really.

Nope

Not that a study for a ins sees increased costs and risks....and a reason for increasing rates