Saudi Arabia Builds Dystopian Nightmare City, Is Rewarded For It

What do you do when you have absolute power and near-infinite money? If you're Saudi Arabia, you build NEOM, a "smart" city which will feature The Line, a giant 170-kilometer long building stretching in a straight line across the desert. Yes, you read that right. Over 100 MILES long. One gigantic building with all the luxury and expense oil money can buy. If that sounds like something out of a George Orwell (or Aldous Huxley) novel, congratulations, you have more self-awareness than the Saudis. 

If you'd like further evidence that life is just a big cosmic joke, go no further than this announcement: Saudi Arabia will be hosting the 2029 Asian Winter Games at NEOM and The Line. Saudi Arabia. A country that is essentially nothing but baking-hot desert. That country. They're going to host a major winter sports competition. There is no possible punchline I can add to this. 

Good News for Alaska Golfers

Global warming is generally considered not to be a good thing. When it comes to golf, global warming threatens to disrupt rainfall patterns, making it more difficult to keep courses irrigated, and rising sea levels threaten to wash away coastal golf courses, especially the classic links courses of Great Britain. Not even St. Andrews, the home of golf, is immune to increased storms washing away its dunes.

That said, if you're an Alaskan golfer, you'll be very happy this year, because Alaska golf courses are opening earlier than they ever have. Normally, courses in the Anchorage area open in mid-April, but this year, they'll be opening this weekend, easily breaking the record (set last year) of March 21st. It's so unnaturally warm in Alaska this year that the golf courses are actually opening the day before the Iditarod starts. You know, the dogsledding race. The one that takes place in winter. With all the snow. It's been so warm they actually had to ship in snow this year to Anchorage so the race can begin. Come on guys, how absurd do things have to get before we do something really substantial about global warming? It's getting downright comical now.

More Snow Does Not Equal a Cooler Climate

Lake-effect snow in action.

In fact, it basically means the opposite of that. The massive snowstorms that have hit the Great Lakes region have been well-publicized, and for good reason. Buffalo, New York under several feet of snow, in November? They get a lot of snow, but not that much, not this early anyway. It's also been very cold basically all over the country, and no, it's not because of the "polar vortex."

It's complicated, because weather always is; but a typhoon that was in the Pacific maintained cohesion much further north than it should be able to, because ocean waters are warmer than they should be. The jet stream is weaker than normal because the Arctic is warmer than it should be, and when the typhoon remnants smacked into it, the jet stream dipped south, bringing cold air with it. That's why it was so cold everywhere. Lake-effect snow occurs when cold air moves over an unfrozen lake, and the Great Lakes were very unfrozen. Water temperatures were about 50 degrees Fahrenheit above air temperatures, and that is a lot. This is a bad time for lake-effect snow anyway, but that temperature differential equates to prodigious snowfall totals for Buffalo. If the lakes were a bit cooler, like they should be in mid-November, the snow would not have been so bad. Still a lot, but not 7 feet.

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Expanding Ice in a Warming World

The planet is getting warmer. This is a fact, backed by data. This year is looking to be the warmest on record, even if the year doesn't end all that warm. However, it is important to note that despite this fact, the world has not gotten warmer overall, and that some regions may not behave how you might expect.

This year, Antarctic sea ice covered 7.72 million square miles, the biggest area since the 1970's, when accurate measurements began. It's theorized that changing wind conditions from global warming have caused cold air to move across the Ross Sea, allowing for large scale ice expansion, since there's no land to stop anything. Warm air has instead started moving across the Antarctic Peninsula, and it's worth noting that ice coverage in that area has shrunk from past years.

Another area that is not behaving as expected is half a world away, in the Himalayas. Glaciers in the Karakorum region are not shrinking like other glaciers in the area, and if anything, are expanding. As the planet warms, the Himalayas receive more moisture, and for most mountains, this moisture comes in the summer, as rain. Because of geography, the Karakorum receives most of its moisture in the winter, so it falls as snow, feeding the glaciers in the area.  So again, even though the area is warming, not everywhere behaves the same way. It is important to note that while some glaciers are expanding, many are not, and that some inconsistency does not mean global warming is not an issue. It would be more remarkable if every place on the planet was warming in the same way.

Global Warming

I just read an interesting article on the current global warming situation, which can be found here:

http://www.cnn.com/2013/07/24/world/climate-arctic-methane/index.html?hpt=hp_t3

If methane is being released, that means that the average temperature of the planet is going to rise.  What the article doesn't really talk about is the exponential nature of methane release.  There's a lot of methane frozen in permafrost, but only a small amount is entering the atmosphere right now, as the temperature isn't warm enough.  But the released methane raises the temperature even more, which means that more permafrost melts, and even more methane enters the atmosphere.  This cycle will continue until all the methane is released, and by that point the planet will be rather warm.  A situation like this has happened before, about 55 million years ago.  The planet's temperature shot up to an average of 90 degrees Fahrenheit, and there were no ice caps.  I know we're supposed to feel bad for the plight of polar bears, but let's face facts, ice is the enemy of life.  The only reason life exists there is because they've found some way to cheat, but if there was no ice, biodiversity would explode, as the environment would become suitable to more generalized life.  The downside is that if the ice were to melt, the oceans would rise quite a bit.  These are the facts.  Hopefully I've presented things in as unbiased a manner as possible.