Republicans pushing for higher US gas prices

Something the Dog Said wrote:

Something the Dog Said wrote:

PrintSmith wrote: the Polar Vortex is actually the jet stream encircling the Arctic which keeps the arctic cold in place . The deflection of the jet stream downward is allowing the Arctic Cold to move downward across North America. This is also referred to as a "stratospheric phenomenon warming event" although that sounds counter intuitive. The deflection of the jet stream (weakening of the Vortex) releases that arctic cold downward over North America. The physics of this action is complex and not fully understood as yet, but the evidence is that as the polar ice cap warms, high pressure builds over the Arctic which weakens the polar jet stream allowing it to deflect downward over North America. At the same time the mid Atlantic jet stream is being strengthened by the warming of the oceans to interact with the deflected Polar Vortex in creating the recent cold weather.

Unfortunately, this portends even further cold weather for North America.

So if I am understanding you correctly, what you are saying is a warmer climate produces colder weather, as well as warmer weather, as well as more and stronger storms, as well as fewer and weaker storms, and less ice in at the northern pole and more ice at the southern one. Maybe global warming was responsible for the severe winter when Washington was camped at Valley Forge as well?

No you are not understanding my explanation of the stratospheric phenomenon warming event. I will see if I can dumb it down even more. There is credible evidence that the warming of the Arctic creates a high pressure system that is causing weakening of the Polar Vortex, which causes deflection of the jet stream downward so that the polar cold pushes downward over North America. I tried to type slowly so maybe you can understand this time.

And it is this same deflection of the vortex that brings unusually warm air from the south up to the north, so the same deflection causes both warming and cooling of weather, right? That's what the video that SC linked to shows, which is the answer to the question that I earlier posed, yes?

The winters during the Revolutionary War were exceptionally cold, occurring during a period known as the "Little Ice Age"? Might a deflection of the Polar Vortex have been responsible for that as well or didn't it exist 230 years ago? There was, after all, a period called the Medieval Warming" that preceded the "Little Ice Age", wasn't there? What caused those?

Now, granted I am not one who ascribes to humans sole responsibility for the current warming trend, as some are, but I am curious to know what the "scientific consensus" is with regards to the cause of the "Little Ice Age". If the current science allows an identification as to why it is happening, it should also be able to explain why earlier warming and cooling cycles touched off, shouldn't it?

The "Little Ice Age" and the "Medival Warm Period" were not global climate changes but instead were independent regional phenomena. The Little Ice Age was actually a modest cooling of less than 1 degree C occurring primarily over the Northern Hemisphere over a period of around 400 years. It was not a singular event as the recent stratospheric polar warming phenomenon (weather) but was a regional climate change. Since modern scientific instrumentation and computer modeling was not available at that time, the causes are not fully understood but were probably a combination of factors including some relating to man. There were numerous volcanoes active at that time, the oceans were undergoing changes in current, and other factors that were not trackable as they are at this time. One interesting factor was the orbital forcing due to cycles in the earth's orbit around the sun had been causing long term cooling in the northern hemisphere at a rate of about .02 degrees C per century. This orbital forcing has recently stopped in the last 150 years due to greenhouse effect. There were also significant solar disruptions during that time period as well as significant volcanic activity.
I am not sure why you attach significance to the winters of 1777 -1778. Those winters were actually considered to be moderate. http://www.ushistory.org/valleyforge/hi ... ather.html

Printsmith, don't you find it interesting that Little Ice Age ended relatively abruptly just as the Industrial Revolution began? With no observable forcing other than carbon emissions?