2020 officially saw a record number of $1 billion weather and climate disasters.

If someone disagrees with you are they automatically a communist? I've never called you anything but by your logic I'm a communist as well because I have a different opinion to yours. You're from N. America though, its very polarised and crazy there between the two sides. A lot of it is hyperbolic nonsense.

Your post has a real strong sense of victimhood. I couldn't even finish reading it to be honest because your last couple of posts have been long rants whinging about leftists, communists, how you're victimised if someone thinks differently to you, conspiracies etc. Just too much North American whinging for liking.

This thread has always been a s hit show so I don't know why you're surprised. At times neither side covered themselves in glory, not all one sided as you're trying to portray. And no just because people disagree with you on here doesn't mean they've come from a different website. I haven't come from another website. Not everyone will agree with you MT, its not that hard to accept or a conspiracy.

For clarity, I commented about rudeness without specifying individuals, and somebody (Tyrone __) who has not been rude or controversy-provoking then took issue with me over that. I can't recall any rude or boorish posts by that poster, and I wasn't thinking of his posts when I commented. He might have a good point about polarization of political opinion over here, I guess not everybody actually wants to live in a communist dictatorship. If that seems extreme or whinging, so be it. It is a bit more complex than that of course, globalism is not communism as we knew it before 1990, and it is not exactly the same as the sort of government and society they have in China either. However it does have similarities in terms of attempting to censor any thinking that is not fully aligned with the state. What makes it worse from the point of view of dissidents like myself is that our governments do not run on election platforms that always match their later actions and rhetoric, meaning that they have a weak mandate to do what they are doing. The COVID situation complicates matters further, and we are all generally living in a kind of fog of low value information that may or may not have any merit or truth attached to it. I don't find that my views are that unusual around this forum in general, not just in the weather forum but in other areas, although I don't think a majority would share my views.

Perhaps there has been a somewhat more successful campaign to demonize anti-globalist sentiments in parts of Europe, it seems more advanced to me in the UK than in Ireland, but I am at a distance and my only way of judging this is by what I read on line, which I realize is a poor substitute for actual understanding. Also it should be emphasized that whatever the polarization of views evident in the USA, Canada tends to be a domain where people consciously avoid saying what they think and identifying what they see, so that we have a rather muted political discussion going on here, the opposition to more progressive politics tends to be rather subtle (which to my mind means people have been intimidated) I am very much out of step with most Canadians on a number of issues, and this was probably already known to some people here, not that it makes for very interesting reading but that is the truth of the matter, you would be further ahead to assume that Canadians are different from me rather than like me.

One other perspective on all this, having read the Weather Forum charter, some people seem to be in continuous violation of that charter with every post they make. It might make sense to take all the climate change stuff over to an existing but underused climate change forum in the Science area, appoint moderators from among those who are interested, and have a sort of echo chamber of true believers that the rest of us will probably avoid like the plague. There is no real middle ground unfortunately, either you believe there's a climate emergency and we should disable the economy to deal with it, or you don't think that and find the economic suggestions somewhere between unwise and catastrophic. This is not something I invented. I don't feel like an isolated victim, if bad things are happening on a large scale in the world then a lot of people will notice and feel like they want something different to happen. That's more accurately how I feel. There are people far more directly impacted by the changes ongoing than myself, as a retired person none of the political changes affect my personal finances or job security, but I empathize with those who are finding the revolutionary political changes destructive on a personal level. Some are probably saying good, those people deserve their problems and others will be lifted up (the usual revolutionary call), and I happen to disagree. If that's not acceptable then I don't need a lot of further aggravation, nor can I really influence how this plays out anywhere but perhaps on a very local scale so having a lot of arguments with European globalists is sort of pointless for me, I suppose I step in when I don't see arguments being raised by others (very often anyway), and my guess is that a lot of people prefer the quiet life and want to avoid heated political arguments. This of course is what fanatics always count on to get ahead.

You guys may or may not believe what you're saying, but either way, there was never any point in saying it. That would be my last contribution to this rather tedious thread. Please take these climate change lectures over to that climate change forum that sees no traffic, maybe you can get something going over there. My only real interest in all these topics is that we can somehow find ways of increasing the fresh water supply and avoiding all the problems that a lack of water will create especially on this continent. I guess Europeans have plenty of water, it's always falling from the skies.

In more 'routine weather news, it's new years eve and Colorado is experiencing a state of emergency as hurricane force winds drive massive wildfires, made possible due to extreme drought that of course is totally normal and nothing to do with climate change

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.independent.co.uk/climate-change/colorado-boulder-fire-evacuations-latest-b1984741.html%3famp

A week of dry weather with know lying snow is enough to create conditions suitable for wildfires.

fires in winter are not impossible. It’s unfortunate that the winds, which are the driving factor hear are present.

The winds are also suspected of starting the blaze by blowing down power lines, thus igniting the blaze.

It’s a perfect storm, where the holes in the cheese have lined up. Be nice if Arkasia if you nominated a % of the possibility of this happening without AGW, as all factors bar the ignition source are natural and possible without a warming climate.

Is this where the climate change denial camp has set it's final stand?

I can go outside right now and throw a bucket of petrol on the ground and throw a lit zippo onto the puddle

The petrol will ignite, the fuel will burn, but I can stand a few feet away and not be at all worried that i'll catch fire

Why? Because the ground is wet

Wildfires require drought conditions to sustain them..

Climate change deniers have always blamed arsonists, and now electricity poles, but the real culprit is the change in rainifall patterns.

There will always be a spark eventually, whether it's lightning, or an arsehole with a box of matches. There are 8 million lightning strikes a day on this planet. The cause of the wildfire is no the spark, it's the drought that dried up the fuel and created the tinderbox waiting to be ignited.

The Colorado fires from yesterday were in grasslands. They were caused by a combination of a spark, drought and a powerful windstorm