Is global warming rapid enough to see a measurable difference in 10 years?

Question

I live in Western North Carolina. Our elevation is about 1,500 feet. I remember in my childhood getting a significant snow (3-5 inches) almost every week. My parents remember frequently not being able to make it up our driveway on account of all the snow. I remember trudging through snow up to my knees. That was almost 10 years ago. Now, we recieve very little to no snow. Up until this year, we had several years with no measurable snow whatsoever. This year we've had two storms with a 2-3 inches (not much really though), but nothing like it used to snow. In fact, I can't even recall a day in years that our high daytime temperature was below 30F. It used to be in the 20s routinely. Is this due to global warming? Is global warming quick enough to make that much of a difference?

Answer 1

10 years is enough to measure scientifically the change. Human perception is:
- unreliable
- may not be related to global warming. Loads of variations happen without global warming
So yes and no....

Answer 2

This is what I like to call a "penetrating question". It is one we should all be prepared to answer ten years from now because the more of us who have an answer the more likely it will be that we will be inclined to solve the problem. I think what will be needed, however, is really more than a "measurable difference" as you have noted. We have that kind of data right now but it is being discarded or rejected out of hand and out of ignorance by most of us. And whether it will be more than a measureable difference is for most of us too difficult to answer now. Certainly if the Florida coastline goes under water I believe we will all agree that we have exceeded that threshold of doubt. The trouble with many of us is that we are unaccustomed to using our ability to observe, record, and begin to draw conclusions based on these and other observations together with the fact that global climate change has so far been a subtlety that we don't grasp. In my neighborhood here in Maryland there is a pond in which someone a few years ago dumped his or her fish aquarium. In this aquarium there was some myriophylum aquaticum (common name "parrot's feather"), an aquatic plant common to Brazil which only in recent decades has become adaptable to Florida. Well, lo and behold the plant took off in this pond and has lived through several winters thus far. It is these kinds of observations that we all need to be able to document that will help us decide that "yes indeed there are changes taking place that we need to address and correct". I think you are probably on track to be able to answer this question in ten years with your current interest in the subject.

Answer 3

5 years ago, there would be a lot of debate about this question. We were told that a decade, or even a century, were just a blink of an eye in terms of climate change, and that everything is cyclical in nature with reference to temperatures.

Now there is pretty much consensus about human impact on climate change, and every year brings more evidence as to this.

Answer 4

It is suspected now by M.I.T that global warming may be caused by methane gas produced by 'Big Foot' up in Montana. Little has been proven yet, but a Federal chump fund is being raised by farmers to support Nuclear Scientists at Los Alamos in order to save our country. I fully support them.

Answer 5

Yeah global warming is rapid than we think.It has made a lot of big differences already.

Answer 6

no
i think the climate is wierd because there are monsters in the center of the earth that are all slowly drilling out and the lava is getting closer to your house