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Australia heatwave part of global trend, says U.N. climate panel chief

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Nice to have some of that Australian heat wave come up to Tokyo right about NOW!

1 ( +2 / -1 )

Really Elbuda? The people of Tokyo start dropping dead when the temp gets up to 38'C. It was 43'C in Sydney last week and central New South Wales topped the chart with 52'C. I think half the population of Japan would drop dead at 45'C.

Heat waves and drought have always been a cyclic part of weather patterns in Australia, but I have to agree they are getting more severe. Records have only been kept in Australia for around 150 years, so there is very little evidence to support this is a direct result of global warming. It may very well be a natural cycle. It's a shame the aborigines didn't have thermometers to keep records of the last 50,000 years.

0 ( +1 / -1 )

The only way to calculate temperatures from before thremometers is to take ice cores from old glaciers and Antarctica. By matching layers from years that temperatures WERE known, you can guestimate what tempereatures were for years prior. Using that method, they've been able to go back to about the time of Jesus. Temperatures HAVE cycled up and down, but that pattern veered sharply upward shortly after the time of the industrial revolution (the mid to late 1800's) and hasn't shown signs of a slowing trend. Glaciers around the world are receeding at an alarming rate. There is now a northern passage from the Atlantic to the Pacific as the polar ice retreats from Northern Canada. And ALL that ice melting is releasing trapped CO2 and methane - increasing the greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere. If this warming trend is being caused by man, I fear we're already too late to avert catastrophe. Even if the entire world suddenly stopped burning fossil fuels, the climate would continue to warm for years afterwards. The Earth's climate is like a fully laden supertanker: once it get's moving in a particular direction, it takes a L O N G time for it to reverse direction and the current state of the Earth's climate would be the equivilent of a fully-laden supertanker cruising along at 60 knots.

2 ( +2 / -0 )

I thought many experts said that global warming is a myth?

-1 ( +0 / -1 )

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