Fun Facts About Global Warming and Climate Change
- In 1974 Time Magazine published a cover story warning of Global Cooling. Richard Milhouse Nixon was president and the Oakland A's beat the LA Dodgers in the World Series of American Baseball. The Time article cited extreme dry spells, flooding, mild winters and also very cold winters as evidence of a coming ice age. The article can still be found online.
- Some climate measuring stations are located in urban areas near hi-rise buildings, wide expanses of pavement, and even air conditioning units. Pavement reflects heat and buildings generate heat. There are strict standards for locating and configuring these stations, but the rules are not always followed.
- Water temperature readings are taken from ships. Sometimes the methodology is as simple as throwing an analog thermometer in a bucket or canvas bag overboard, waiting a few minutes, and retrieving it. In some situations the thermometer is dropped into the water close to the exhaust ports of the ship. In other situations the crew performs the operation at night, requiring a light source to read the temperature upon retrieval. Sometime near the beginning of World War II, sailors realized that using the light made them an easier target.
Some methodologies permitted water temperature readings from water that was already on-board the ship, as it entered the systems used to cool the ships' engines.
- Throughout his administration, US president George Herbert Walker Bush was vilified in the press for not ratifying the Kyoto Treaty. In reality, the treaty had already been signed by a representative of the preceding administration and submitted to Congress for ratification by his predecessor, William Jefferson Blythe Clinton. It was voted down, 95-0.
- Ice melting in Greenland has improved the economic circumstances of sheep herders and farmers. The growing season has lengthened, allowing vegetables such as potatoes to be sown there.
- The ice between Canada and western Greenland is the most plentiful it's been in the last 15 years.
In February 2008, the temperature in Embarrass, Minnesota sank to 40 below, only one degree above the all-time record in the state, set in 1888.
- Vice-presidential candidate Sarah palin is credited with the quote "A changing environment will affect Alaska more than any other state, because of our location. I'm not one though who would attribute it to being man-made."
- For the last 11 years we have not observed any increase in global temperatures. For the past few years the Pacific Ocean has been losing some of its' warmth and has actually been cooling.
