Spain and Portugal are at their driest for 1,200 years

Welcome to Climate Change, the nutters on here don't believe in it though.

Big problems in Italy too. The sh*t will really hit the fan when these droughts lead to food shortages.

And all we want is one dry warm sunny summers day.

There's always been Climate Change only now man made pollution interferes with the earth's natural system of Climate cycles. So it's quite a dangerous mix really.

So are you saying that planetary motions are or are not causing the unusual global weather (record rains, record drought, record heat, record cold, etc)? Or are you just talking about what your personal views are and how your disagree? I may have misread your post but from my point of view, you don't seem to have constructively added any valid input to this chat however I admit that I'm just as guilty on that part with this reply.

Because it's a regular occurrence. Statements made but no discussion. Banned from other sections of Boards, I've been informed, but not this section for some reason. "planetary motions" are mentioned very regularly and I've argued that such topics should be in the astronomy section, not here in weather. Poster is allegedly banned from the Astronomy section, hence probably explains why poster posts the statements here.

When we start getting reports of giant Icebergs breaking off Antarctica and drifting up to New Zealand latitudes, then that will be the 4th horseman of the apocalypse showing up.

Global temperatures rising, CO2 levels increasing, the gulf stream slowing and stopping and icebergs from Antarctica drifting unusually far north - all precursor signs for the beginning of a glaciation event - often erroneously referred to as an ice age.

But the good news is that there might be a 400 year lag between these events and the cold setting in.

While Spain and Italy might be experiencing a dry spell, rainfall in Australia seems to be increasing, which could boost agricultural outputs by more than is lost in Spain and Italy. Every cloud has a silver lining.

One thing that gets glossed over in a scare story like driest summer for 1200 years, is that 1200 years ago, the climate was doing similar stuff without it being humans fault. Go back further and all the bog areas of Scotland and Ireland were forest, because the climate was nicer and less wet. then it changed; again without any input from us.

Climate change has been a constant for billions of years.

Climate change is constant is so true.

I only read recently about the Roman warm era where between 300 BCE to 200 CE the med region had a localised increase in temp that were not recorded in any data collected from elsewhere in the world. Grain was the lifeblood of the legions on the frontiers and it's thought that the climate cooling after 200CE lead to reduced crop yields which in turn weakened the empire's ability to sustain legions furthest from the med.

Climate change is real folks.

It has always changed over long spans, millions of changes in the billions of years of this Planet. Its changing now.

The question is whether anthropomorphosis is 100% to blame, or whether the actions of humanity can in fact, now, do much to halt and reverse current trends. My own view is that the reality for both, lies somewhere in the middle.

However, whats not in doubt, is that we should no longer be incinerating material from the crust of the Earth to heat and cool ourselves and move about. Only through renewables will we de-monetise energy and try to end the economic pain suffered by those at the mercy of fossil fuel markets. Only through renewables, can each Country, each region, become entirely energy independent, from clean, predictable sources.

Yes Spain and Portugal are suffering, but they aren't standing still, they are creating the World's biggest solar arrays and investing in technology to keep their land arable and their livestock healthy.

In the meantime, if the worst thing Ireland has to worry about, turns out to be a scarcity of snow, we won't have much to complain about.

Yeah if antarctic glaciers increase calving while also expanding and those icebergs survive to higher latitudes then this would be a sign of a pending ice age.

However if the glaciers are calving because of retreating ice in Antarctica or because the ice shelves are breaking up. This is absolutely not a sign of a coming ice age

'The climate is always changing' is wrong if you don't consider the timescale. Climate is stable over human lifespan timescales. The speed of global climate change is unprecedented since the human species emerged and that speed is accelerating.

When climates change slowly life adapts. When it changes rapidly life migrates. When there is nowhere to migrate, those animals die and species go extinct

We're in a mass extinction event now caused by human activity

We do it faster here. Extreme heat June, severe floods November 2021. Blah blah.

In a region where you can see pretty much with your own eyes that the landscape has been shaped by extreme weather events over many thousands of years.

Why should the snowflakes of 2022 get to live in a dome with a controlled climate? Who ever did in the past?

Part of the problem is that we don't have thousands of years of weather records so when trying to assess things like medieval period warming, we are only able to estimate roughly, the wording often sounds quite dire, as in various "yeares of great heat" but was it like 2006 heat, or even worse? It's really difficult to say, isn't it? Some of the records of colder episodes are a bit easier to estimate in numerical terms because there are such signs as ice formation and snow cover to assist. And record rainfalls can be estimated from their flooding consequences, droughts are mainly about duration so a report of a certain duration of drought is in and of itself useful.

Don't get me wrong here, I would love to see cleaner technology and a reduction of greenhouse gases and I can't imagine how some developed countries could be moving much faster towards them (other than these recent course corrections brought about by Putin misadventures). Everything has to be balanced though, what's the point of fixing the climate (if you really could do that) if everyone is hungry, broke and cold in the winter because of a lack of heating fuels (albeit in slightly milder weather)? And if there is some agenda about reducing the population by some huge fraction, who gets to decide that, you can bet there won't be any activists saying, "for the good of humanity, we'll go first" but that would probably be the ideal solution. :)

I had to explain to my children, when they were in PS and being indoctrinated with that Irish fascination for the buy goats for africa charity stuff, that maybe it wasn't exactly what that continent needed: more of the vermin that have eaten nearly every green shoot across the middle east and much of Africa.

Way wrong. Even in recent history we have evidence of big fluctuations in climate in fast timescales, events like the Roman and Medievil warm periods, the maunder minimum. The climate can change quite drastically and quickly at times, and all this pre-industrialization. The idea that the Earth's climate and geology only ever changes at tiny increments over long periods of time is a fallacy with very little to back it up

One of the main causes of desertification in Zimbabwe is poor farming from when Mugabe seized farms and gave them to people who hadnt the first notion.

That they could go from the breadbasket of Africa to a starving basketcase, some here would blame that on climate change too🤣

The reality is post revolution they simply didnt maintain water infrastructure (dams, water mains, irrigation systems) and also didnt know how to farm, and the result is an increasingly desert and poor yielding landscape. That you could reverse these effects with a bit of cop on is not surprising.

The Ankorians (of Angkor Wat fame in Cambodia) were thought to have collapsed due to changes in water levels nearby, with river levels having fallen drastically in parts, which would have effected their complex irrigation and transport systems. Theres many ruins of bridges and irrigation channels that in present day are almost 10s of meters above the current rivers, levels that wouldnt even be reached in current floods. One theory is the water levels rapidly receded over some years and their agriculture simply couldnt cope with feeding that many people in the empire. This coincides with the end of the Medievil warm period and the beginning of the Little Ice Age, which may explain the water levels decreasing.

No and no. Also why would you think it's in a farmer's interest not to believe in man made climate change? How does not believing it benefit a farmer?

Claims like the "vast majority of scientists believe X" are dubious at best, like those toothpaste ads with 9/10 dentists recommend Colgate. If you ever dig down into who is counted in these majorities, and who they deem a 'scientist', the results are a lot less convincing. Many of those big climate action statements of late with all the signatories from concerned scientists, most weren't even scientists at all, or had anything to do with climate or weather research, but by god were there names going to be tacked on to give the whole thing a better veneer of credibility.

Unfortunately climate science lately has taken on a more religious belief, a faith that the consensus is correct rather than following the true scientific, data-driven approach. As M.T alluded to earlier, the cult of man-made climate change now has every extreme weather event being used as proof of man-made climate change. Climate change causes the rain, and the lack thereof, the heat, and the cold. It's a dogmatic belief system.

Natural climate change is real and observable. Anyone who would dispute that the earths climate naturally changes is a fool. Man-made climate change, is hard to judge. We do not yet know what if any impacts mankind are having on the global climate. Anyone spouting definites about it only exposes their own ignorance. The truth is we do not know.

From what you can tell, i.e. no evidence you just made it up. "You had a feeling", "you reckon". Then we're playing buzzword bingo about the greens and "D4 Wokerati" lol. Right.

To date your only argument to support your position that anthropomorphic climate change is 100% definite real and to blame for all these weather events is just an appeal to authority - "the general scientific consensus says so". A weak and fallacious argument to be sure.

My wife is a scientist and does not agree with the consensus, but like so many others world wide, she's not going to stick her hand up and say so as the cancel culture thing has seen several academics lose their job because they expressed doubt about the anthropogenic origins of CC.