If you read this blog regularly, you'll notice that I'm 100% convinced the weather is experiencing changes with this big warm-up process. However, I don't think this is the case to the Australian drought.

Why? Well, if you are somehow up-to-date with the weather around the world you'll notice an El Nino event. Of course we all know this has a world-wide impact. So, I started looking at previous El Nino events. And guess what? South America got drenching rains in 1997/1998 with a strong El Nino, while Australia received little -if any- rain and several wildfire reports hit the headlines...

To sum up, I think this time it's too early to blame Global Warming.

Emiliano

While we are thinking about changing government policy due to global warming, I direct the reader to two interesting articles. The first one is from a British Lord who challenges Senators Snowe and Rockefeller for their attempt to use their weight as Senators to limit the free speech of Exxon because Exxon does not agree with the Senators' politically correct views:
http://www.breitbart.com/news/2006/12/18/prnw.20061218.DCM029.html

The second article discusses the prediction of solar cycles using daily geomagnetic measurements taken since 1868. These measurements predict solar cycles 6 years in advance with 94% correlation. And the next solar maximum in 2010 is going to be "one of the most intense cycles since record-keeping began almost 400 years ago..." So the earth will likely see more global warming, which will be blamed on humans by governments and mass media. This is another reason to be very wary of dictating economic policy based on uncontrollable facts of nature that need to be understood and quantified. Here is that link:
http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2006/21dec_cycle24.htm

I'm not sure if the current ENSO event can be blamed for the Aussie's drought. This year's ENSO event only manifested itself in July, and is weakening and drifting southward.

Here's the current SSTs for the PAC:

http://tinyurl.com/tj6pl

Here's a composte for the 97-98 ENSO event:

http://tinyurl.com/vq4w7

Granted, the 97-98 event was the most intense since the Medeval Warm Period (800-1350AD), but the 2006 event never really took hold. Also, drought associated with ENSO spreads from Austrailia to Borneo, India, and eventually East Africa. Austrailia has been in drought for a year and it never really spread Westward.

Speaking of drought, some of the worst droughts in Europe and North America occured during the coldest years of the Little Ice Age. The years 1665-1666 were one of the coldest in North Europe since 1000AD, but they were also one of the driest. The Great London Fire of 1666 occured after 7 months of no rainfall. The drought that killed the colonists at Roanake Va extended into Georgia and South Carolina, and forced the Spanish missionaries to evacuate thier missions in the Tidewater. That drought was the worst to hit N. America in 700 years.

Not every weather clamity can be attributed to AGW.

The point here is, at least to me, not whether global warming is causing a specific weather event. Global warming is certainly a factor in the current weak El Nino, as much as it is a factor in every other aspect of the properties of our atmosphere. There is no argument, take a finite amount of a mixture of gases in a contained space, mix in any amount of any chemical element and you have changed the properties of what you had in that container. The other variables will all be influenced by the changed mixture. Some will be influenced to cool the atmosphere more, some will be influenced to warm the atmosphere more. Whether the overall effect is cooling or warming of the entire thing, it has unquestionably been influenced by the changes in the mixture.

The real question is, how does a planet sized machine, with an enormous inertial lag, that has been running for 4.5 billion years to reach its current state of near equilibrium, react and change/adjust to the introduction of billions of tons of carbon that had been accumulated over hundreds of millions of years in organic matter and locked away under the crust of the planet as fossil fuel ?

We only have a rudimentary knowledge of the inner workings of this machine. It could be that even our current CO2 production is enough to throw a wrench into the machine and we can't realize it yet because it takes decades for such a large machine to respond. When we finally realize it's "broken" will we have a clue as to what maintenance action will fix it ? Will we be able to wait for a couple of decades to see if our repairs are working ? What will the cost be in terms of human suffering and displacement, violent adjustments in the form of severe weather, the extinction of some species while others, like insects and viruses and bacteria overpopulate ?

We must begin to take real action in reduction of fossil fuel use. Besides possibly destroying the planet, we as Americans are enriching foreign countries, some of which certainly do not have our best interests at heart. As our lifestyle has evolved with technological advancement, so must the way we produce the energy that runs it. We can do a lot more to make ourselves less energy consumption intensive right now without any exotic technology. The barrier is in mindset. Reject the status quo and take responsibility for being a part of the solution instead of another small part of the problem. Turn off that unused light, weatherstrip that leaky door, consolidate those car trips. It doesn't cost... it pays. If you have the money, use and support alternative energy with things like solar water heating, geothermal heat pumps and hybrid cars. If there is a market, they will make it.

I fail to understand why this remains an either this or that argument The protagonists and antagonists of greenhouse warming must come to compromise.

dear pittsburgh_reader,

i read the article you referred to in your blog about solar cycles, but i'm still confused as to what the exact link is between the solar cycles and global warming. the article you provided the link for did not say anything about how a solar storm effects our global weather. now, i may be missing the obvious, and i've never, before today, heard of a solar storm. could you provide some more information?