inconsistent weather

[anarchista feminista]

Well, today got down to around 15 (celcius) in Sydney CBD I believe. Bit windy and coldest November day in 100 years! There was snow in QLD, and fires and snow in the Blue Mountains. The weather has been very unusual lately. Discuss thoughts?

[encephalon]

the weather's unusual every year. We really haven't collected enough data to conclude that the weather has drastically changed its patterns, as much as it may seem so to us (just as much as it seemed to people living in the late 1800s); while we can verify that the ozone layer is indeed disintegrating, and in conclusion suppose that the weather will change because of it, we can't provide any evidence that today's weather is the result of global warming. It's correlation, perhaps, but no evidence for causation (though I suspect there is causation).

One should remember that unless you've lived over a century, you really have next to no basis for subjectively judging weather patterns; and while we've been collecting statistics worldwide for over a century, we can't link it causally, only as correlation--though once again, it makes perfect sense that there should be a causal relationship. It just needs empirical evidence to suggest causation instead of correlation.

Aside from that, though, it was 76 degrees Fahrenheit last saturday here; on sunday, the high was 40. It's been cold since then.

[Clutch]

Where I live in Australia, it's so damn cold that the only reason it isn't snowing is our proximity to the ocean. It's 17°C and summer is only 2 weeks away.

Encephalon is right, the earth is some 2.5 billion years old and we've only been seriously monitoring climate change for the last 50. Global warming is a real problem but I'm not really convinced that these erratic weather patterns are being caused by it. Then again, I'm not really an expert on the subject though.

[Janus]

Originally posted by AP
Australia's devastating drought is far more likely to be part of a natural cycle than a result of the man-made greenhouse effect, an Australian climate scientist has said.

Barrie Hunt, a researcher with government science agency CSIRO, dismissed suggestions that global warming, believed to be caused by carbon emissions, is responsible for the "Big Dry" gripping much of south-eastern Australia.

"It is very, very highly likely that what we are seeing at the moment is natural climatic variability," Hunt told the Australian newspaper.

After studying a CSIRO model of Australia's natural climate patterns over the past 10,000 years, Hunt said the current drought, whose severity has led some scientists to label it a once in a millennium event, was by no means unique.

Natural cycle (http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20061228/wl_asia_afp/australiaclimatedrought)