On Aug 23, 4:17*am, Quadibloc wrote:
On Aug 22, 5:21*pm, Chris L Peterson wrote:

Sure. But nobody is predicting the return of massive glaciation here.
Just something like the Little Ice Age that hit the northern
hemisphere a few hundred years ago.

True. But if the crops fail all across the Northern Hemisphere because
of a "year without a summer", it's unclear where we are supposed to
buy our food from.

So that it could be more catastrophic, even if just for the developed
world, than the ordinary consequences of global warming does seem
plausible in that case as well.


Isn't cooling supposed to make for drier conditions? Cold air holds
less moisture. Lack of rainfall leads to drought. Crops are stunted or
fail. We already have months of permafrost at only 55N in Scandinavia.
The last two years we have had many months of snow cover. Over the
previous decade you couldn't give away kids sleighs let alone sell
them. They were about as useful as chocolate teapots! Snow, if it
came, was very short lived. Where were the iced over lakes and ponds
which produced the demand for thousands of ice skates?

Temperatures haven't been particularly low compared with some previous
winter extremes but the snow lay long and undiminished where it was
undisturbed. Frost heave was having unwanted effects on surfaces,
poles, gates, tracks and structures. This suggests (to me at least)
that only small changes in local climate can have quite remarkable
effects.

The cost of repeated snow clearing and regular road salting has been
hurting local government budgets too. Britain ran out of road salt and
had to import it. The lack of salt made the headlines. Long winters
mean building work is delayed. The modern use of huge vehicles to
supply even the smallest supermarkets is far more subject to weather
conditions. Leading to repeated shortages of basic foodstuffs.