3 replies »

1. It’s not as though volcanic activity can’t affect the climate. Consider the following.

   “In the summer of 1816, the Northern Hemisphere was plagued by a weather disruption of seemingly biblical proportions. Following a relatively ordinary early spring, temperatures in the eastern United States plunged back below freezing, and communities from New England to Virginia experienced heavy snowfalls and crop-killing frost during June, July and August. Europe also found itself in the grip of an unseasonable chill. Winter snows refused to melt, and between April and September, some parts of the Continent were drenched by as many as many as 130 days of rain. The unrelenting gloom inspired author Mary Shelley to write her famous novel “Frankenstein,” but it also wreaked havoc on farmers. Crops failed across Europe and China, spawning deadly famines and outbreaks of typhus and other diseases. In India, the disturbances gave rise to a virulent new strain of cholera that eventually killed millions. The suffering in the United States was less pronounced, but many still felt the squeeze of soaring grain prices. Some poorer Americans were even reduced to eating hedgehogs and scrounging for wild turnips.

   What caused this calamitous “Year Without a Summer?” At the time, many people believed the chaos was some form of divine retribution, but most scientists now place the lion’s share of the blame on an Indonesian volcano called Mount Tambora. In early 1815, Tambora roared to life with one of the most devastating volcanic eruptions on record—an explosion 10 times more powerful than Krakatoa. Along with killing thousands of locals, the blast also spewed sulfur dioxide into the stratosphere. The ash cloud drifted across the globe in the months that followed, blotting out the sun and creating a volcanic winter. When combined with the lingering effects of the Little Ice Age—a period of global cooling that lasted from the 14th to 19th centuries—the sun-sapping pall was enough to lower the planet’s average temperature and send weather patterns into a tailspin.” – http://www.history.com

   “Temperatures seesawed up and down throughout the Year Without a Summer, bringing hope on warm days that the crops could be harvested after all. Then sharp cold spells brought despair.

   On June 22, for example, temperatures reached 101 degrees in Salem, Mass. But July 4 was cool.” N.E. Historical Society

   And Laura Sibilia thinks she can control the weather with taxes. Go figure.

   Loading...

2. To be honest, I post this issue often here because there’s generally a conversation about warming in direct relation to carbon. But there’s really a lot more to it. I actually saw this video earlier, because it’s a fun channel, and obviously, thought about those comments. So what the study seems to say is that the explosion didn’t seem to cause warming or, really cooling, (which is what most volcanoes do as a result of particulates, and to my mind suggests the possibility of multiple effects canceling each other out… as far as temperature goes.) But the real question, since it usually comes up in relation to Vermont weather, isn’t as simple as just warming or cooling. The real question is how do various things affect the weather patterns. And the studies didn’t address that. More rain in Vermont could happen for eight million reasons. Global cooling would bring more rain to some places. Issues completely unrelated to temperature could do the same. And I don’t believe it’s actually established that there haven’t been similar storms and flooding since, say 1927. In any case, an electric car & a heat pump certainly aren’t going to change anything at all, especially here in tiny little Vermont, that’s already basically carbon neutral. I wish people could understand this instead of voting to make everything pointlessly expensive.

   Loading...

   • S. Lowry: Your assessment is spot on. But human nature, being what it is, has a dark side. People like Laura Sibilia not only have the desire, but the need, to assert control over others to vindicate their own personal choices in life. While conservatives simply wish to be left alone to their own devices, progressives, like Sibilia, are constantly trying to reaffirm their relevance in their own lives.

     One need only review the 1960s Milgram Experiments that researched how far people would go in obeying an instruction if it involved harming another person. Laura Sibilia is ‘the teacher’, relying on the authority of ‘the experimenter’ (the ‘expert’), to impose instruction on ‘the learner’ (the average citizen).

     “[In] the agentic state – people allow others to direct their actions and then pass off the responsibility for the consequences to the person giving the orders. In other words, they act as agents for another person’s will.” – https://www.simplypsychology.org/milgram.html

     “Half the harm that is done in this world is due to people who want to feel important. They don’t mean to do harm; but the harm does not interest them. Or they do not see it, or they justify it because they are absorbed in the endless struggle to think well of themselves.” ― T.S. Eliot

     Loading...