Well let me explain what i mean. The easyiest way would probably be by explaining what i mean by the weather changes.
Where i live the typical weather in the different seasons are as followed:
Summer- generally fine weather. Temp usually between 20 and 25 C. Not much wind.

Autum- still fine weather. Over cast queit often. Tepm between 15 - 22 degrees C

Winter - A lot of rain. a few fine days. NO SNOW EVER and tepm usually around 16 but never dropping below 5

Spring - Strong winds, fine weather, temp almost the same as in summer

Well thats the typical weather around where i live and now i'll tell you about some of the "strange" weather which we've had resently.


1999 - We had snow!!! Never before in recorded histroy has this happened

2002 - 2003 We had no winter at all. This summer which had just past we had no rain at all and still haven't seen any rain at all. No wind what so ever and in New Zealand Wellington (where i live) is known as windy wellington, so as you can see by the name its usually pritty windy.

So what i want to know is what people think about this. Have humans done this? or Would this have even if humans weren't on this planet?
or Do you think that humans have mearly speed up a natrual process? Or is this a stupid topic which i shouldn't continue to go on about?

[ May 03, 2003, 05:18: Message edited by: Blackthorne TA ]

Are we humans no longer part of nature??

Did i ever say humans weren't natral?

You look at three years and claim the weather has changed. It might just as well be coincedence that the weather was a bit odd in those three years. If you want to claim that the weather has changed, take a look at the bigger picture, compare the weather from now with that a hundred years ago.

Did i ever say humans weren't natral? Yes, by questioning if humans caused the changes in the world or if it is a nature thing

Silverblade, The nearest mountain to me, 100 years ago right through the year would be completly covered in snow. Now a days we would be luckey to get 1 week worth of good snow right up the top of the bloody mountain.
But if you do look at a bigger picture, you can't say that the world isn't heating up, the water levels rising etc etc.
@Morgoth
Would you say a nuclear bomb is natral?
I know for sure i wouldn't.
What i'm trying to say is that what humans have done certainly isn't natraul. Global warming, pollution and many more things certainly are not natral things.

100 years is still a too short period to claim the weather has changed permanently. From my point of view, things would have been abnormal if the temperature and weather stayed exactly the same for thousands and thousands of years. It varies all the time, and it is very likely that we have nothing to do with it. But of course, we're not completely sure on that and should still take our precautions.

Here in Greece we should have about 25 C but right now it's 38 C :eek: :melting because of the heat: (this should happen only in mid-August and now it's spring).
2002-2003 is always raining as if we were in England(that's a good thing because 2000-2001 we were short of water because of the heat(42C in July 2001 :jawdrop: )).
It SNOWED three weeks ago(completely unnatural). We hardly had any snow in the city where I live in (actually it snowed three times but never laid even a thin layer of snow) while in other areas the lowest height of snow was about 2 meters.
The temperature in winter was below 0 C reaching -5 C(never happened before in Thessaloniki).
So are all these "coincidences" or natural? No, I don't think so. We, humans, are responsible for these problems. That's my opinion.

It's fact that the climate is changing. How much is "natural" and "unnatural" is antother question. I personally say a lot is "unnatural".

Here, glaciers are melting away. In recorded history, alpne glaciers were never so small.

The snowline is getting higher and higher. And are tourism industry is worried. Until the 1960s the big seas were usally frozen and save to walk. Traditional crossing of the frozen sea has become impossible lately. I never had a chance to do it. Now, every year there's a big discussion, will the seas be this year frozen enough to walk on them ?

@Mallusken
the weather has been changeing for much more than 100 years. As Yago pointed out with the glaciers melting, this has certainly been happening more than 100 years. It takes 1000's of years for such a great mass of ice to melt, not just a mear 100.

Well then, ruler of the universe. You've just said that humans haven't done anything with the rising temperatures then, since we have been polluting only for the last 100-150 years ;) .

No Mollusken, your twisting my words.
the weather has been changeing for much more than 100 years. As Yago pointed out with the glaciers melting, this has certainly been happening more than 100 years. It takes 1000's of years for such a great mass of ice to melt, not just a mear 100 Not once there did i say that humans have had nothing to do with the rising temperture. I said that it has been happening more than 100 years, yes before humans started polluting, but i still think that humans have speed up a natraul rise in temp. to a completly unnatraul speed.

Might be a good time to invest in a houseboat.

What's unnatural? Mother nature itself is capable of changing the climate much faster or even completely destroy it much faster than we could ever hope to do.

What's unnatural? Mother nature itself is capable of changing the climate much faster or even completely destroy it much faster than we could ever hope to do. Examples of that mollusken please!

Might be a while yet, aye Rastilin.

In Athens Greece we never and i mean never had so harsh changes of the weather as these last three years. We had all four seasons respectively meaning that spring was spring summer was summer winter was winter autumn was autumn. Now we have only two seasons harsh winter and summer nothing more the other two are gone these last three years.
I think that this is pretty unnatural and yes it is our fault i believe. :(

Exactly, here we have two seasos: harsh winters and HOT summers. :(

Well Mithrantir, I agree with you, these harsh conditions that are now spread right over the planet are caused by human. COMPLETLY UNNATURAL if you ask me.

How many other people think this is so?

Some scientists have theorized that it's about time for another ice age, in that case it would explain the differences in temperature.

Some scientists have theorized that it's about time for another ice age, in that case it would explain the differences in temperature. It is true that Earth has her climatological periods as scientists have proved but i don't think that we are not responsible for these changes. In fact i think that we have caused a lot of pressure to the climate with the polution and our reckless destruction of flora and fauna.
Only the last few years the goverments of Earth are trying to take measures to decrease the polution but the economical interests of the companies are not giving room to radical decisions. :(
I've also read once a very interesting book whch was called "the third alternative solution" that designates this problem was known from 60's and there were three solutions to this problem two of them not applicable and one not so good for the whole of the mankind. :( Read it it's very enlighting

Please explain to me then the global warmingand other changes in the weather, has anything to do with another ice age? Wouldn't the world just get colder. Not hoter and colder. It just doesn't make sence. And then the changing of the seasons like Mithrantir and Alexander said sounds more like the worlds becoming on big tropical planet. Certainly not another ice age.

[ May 06, 2003, 09:44: Message edited by: Ruler of the Known Universe ]

Hm, yes, I don't like the ice-age theory neither. Wouldn't that mean more snow, not less snow ? At least here, where snow is supposed to be ?

The theory does not say that the climate will turn to cold immediately rather it says that there will be great changes to the global climate with extreme heat changing to extreme cold maybe a cataclysm and then the ice age. Of course we'll be dead before that. I'll try to find something on the net for that scenario

I don't know but all this about the ice age(OFF TOPIC: have you seen the movie? very funny)coming again makes me feel...(a little)frightened. :(

I read a theory somewhere that the next ice age would start with global warming. The thought was that since warm air can carry more moisture than cold, the water-saturated warm air that made it's way to the poles would cool and drop much more snow than is normal on the existing ice/snow. Remember, Antarctica is drier than the driest desert on Earth. If that much extra snow fall dropped it would eventually increase the size of the glaciers which could then begin to expand across the globe.

I'm not saying that this is necessarily true, but the facts are correct.

Do a Google search for "Great Ocean Conveyor." This is a massive, world-wide system of heat transfer that contributes to long cycles of climatic warming and cooling. When the individual cycles are looked at together, they show even longer trends that could lead into or out of the ice ages. I'll see if I can find the link to a long article I read a few months ago.

The example that stuck with me was about George Washington camping at Valley Forge and crossing the Delaware River during the Revolutionary War. Winters in this area aren't usually that severe. In fact, the winter of 2001-2002 was unusually mild (70 F on Christmas!). However, the winter of 2002-2003 was extremely cold with lots of snow.

Mankind's influence, or simply El Nino? ;)

Weather always changes. This is not a new phenomenon.

The most influential factors on our weather are the Sun and ocean currents, neither of which we can directly effect, so no, in the main our weather follows natural patterns.

Extremes over the last 25 years has been effected greately by the increased El Nino activity seen since the mid 70's, but there is no question that anyone has demonstrated any sort of link between this and human activities.

We have influenced the temperature, but please remember that the total increase in the last 100 years is less than one degree centigrade.

Read this (http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/climate/globalwarming.html) for a bit of background stuff, and do a web search on El Nino / La Nina to discover what causes most of our weather extremes. Particularly in the Southern Hemisphere.

I don't know much about weather changes but aren't ice ages caused by shifts in the earth's axis?

@ Viking,
We can affect the sun. Well atleast the power of the sun rays that hit us. By destroying the ozon (spelling?) layer above the earth we are letting more UV rays hit the earth, which could have an affect on the ocean currents. And the destcution of the ozon layer certainly is human caused.

The point really is that climactic changes cannot be observed from year to year in any meaningful way.

Next year: cold winter, year after warm. What is that supposed to prove? Climactic changes are very long term, often many thousand year trends, so although we have influenced the global temperature some, again, it's not likely to be the only cause of weather changes, indeed it may well only be a very minor factor.

Thus to directly attribute the differences in your last three winters to "Unnatural weather changes" is rather meaningless.

Here's one theory I've heard regarding the "Ice Age" subject, but it goes a different way. It explains that a major contributing factor to the melting of the ice caps has to do with the fact that we are still coming OUT of an ice age, not heading into another one. Global warming and whatnot are speeding up this process, but the earth's natural cycle would have eventually finished the job. Of course, as I can't remember the source, this little story of mine could very well have been diseminated from the oil or auto industry and their VERY powerful lobby in an attempt to throw off or discredit the environmentalist arguement.

This theory would put me at ease, but when I think about the amount of polution that JUST ONE automobile creates per year, specifically greenhouse and ozone depleting gasses, and then I think about all the single car drivers in the US alone, plus all the factories, coal-burning powerplants... All this, standing next to all the dramatic change that has occured to ecosystems and climates of the world forces me to consider putting 2 and 2 together. One needn't look much further than the brownish-gray fog that hovers over Houston every morning at rush hour for evidence about the impact our "daily grind" is having on our world.

I use to think that as well, about 3 years ago, but then i did a bit more research in to it and found enough evidence, well not really evidence, theres not much of this about this topic, and all the evidence that there is is bias in some ways. You have the government reseachers who try to make it sound completly natural so they don't have to do anything about it, and then theres the enviromentalists who make it sound like someone droped a nuclear bomb on some huge city the way they go on about it.
Well back to what i was saying - I found some really interesting information which really made me change my opinon, and about that smog thing, where i come from we have none of that
Clean Green New Zealand :)