whats going on in the arctic (Page 4)

Sweet.  We have a Nest which you can access through an app on your phone.  It can sense when you aren't home and will automatically turn the heat down if you go out.  We have a wood stove too which we love.  Basically, if the wood you're burning comes from deforestation it's not green.  If the trees are replaced, which is likely, it's neutral.

Since you guys are so green I assume you have the right amount of insulation in your houses.  That's another pretty easy one.

We have Solar City in Colorado and they have a new plan where you purchase a solar system (heh) via a loan from them and then you pay the loan through the savings.  So essentially you pay the same or slightly lower electric rates, but all your electricity is coming from the sun and when the loan is paid off you own the system (and only have to pay for electricity you use over what your system produces) and it's an asset when you sell your house.  I checked though and it doesn't look like Solar City operates in Nebraska or Missouri.

I always buy our wood from the contractor who does tree trimming/cutting for the city.  I would guess it's fairly neutral because it's from felled trees from storm damage that typically get replaced.

When we built our house 13 years ago I was adamant about the insulation from not only heating/cooling but also sound.  I even insulated most interior walls for soundproofing, but also discovered it's nice when the furnace is off downstairs at night because the heat stays in the part of the house I want it.
We could have done a little better with the windows, but they're still pretty good.

haha, AFV just posted this on Facebook
https://www.facebook.com/AFV/videos/10154013432341661/

LOL  The screaming at my house put that to shame.

In case anyone's interested in an update - Feb 2016 just set the record for the hottest month ever above normal (+1.5* F above) - in the satellite record ("Whopping(!)" as Roy Spencer, the overseer of the dataset said).  This is not unexpected since the satellite records shows slower warming than surface measurements and generally lags surface warming since it takes time for the heat to get up in the atmosphere to where the satellites measure.

A couple of notes - this is a single spike. Huge, yes, and likely driven (though not entirely) by a record el nino (which itself is likely made stronger by climate change - we know that about 90% of the extra heat the earth retains goes into the oceans.  Occasionally, like now, it comes  back out) , but the long term record is what we really care about.  Unfortunately when you compare only years with an el nino, there is the same warming trend that we see when you compare only neutral years and only la nina years.  A record warm month like this is eye catching, but it's the long term trend that is dangerous.

Another interesting thing is that the northern hemisphere was 2.11*F above the long term avg according to satellites, driven by crazy temps in the arctic.  Some parts of the arctic had a avg Feb temp almost 30* F above normal!  That's not for one day, it's the entire month.  That's interesting because not only is the arctic warming twice as fast as the rest of the globe, it is also much less influenced by el nino / la ninas.  

Another thing to note is that contrary to the latest skeptics talking points, satellite data aren't the end-all-and-be-all of measurement.  They actually have significantly higher uncertainties than ground based measurements due to a number of factors (orbits drift, altitudes change, sensors need recalibration, you are comparing data between different satellites since several different satellites have been operating since 1978).  And most importantly, they measure the temperature 6 miles up, not where we actually live.  Satellite data are useful because they provide an additional data point and in this case, they're showing the exact same thing that ground based measurements are seeing.

When you say the hottest month ever, how many years does "ever" consist of?

Here's a decent graph that shows it in context with the last 30 years:

I don't think there's anyone whose seriously arguing that things aren't warming, but I do find it a little interesting that in comparison to the 1998 "El Nino of the Century" we're .74 degree C warmer this year.  

You are absolutely correct that the overall Trend is what really matters, so I'll be curious how the La Nina looks in the next few years in comparison to 1998.

Another interesting point of inclusion is how the rest of the world wasn't anywhere near as "warm" as the arctic and especially Europe.  Here's the global satellite(top) and surface(bottom) picture for February:

Thanks, cause I know according to the bible it's been at least 2,000 years or so.

lol, yeah that.    

1998 definitely was the el nino of the century - last century .  1998 was an el nino year, so I don't really know why you'd want to compare the next la nina to it, unless you mean it'll be interesting to see that what we used to consider a "super" el nino warming soon will be beaten even in the cooler la nina years.  Here's a chart from NASA if it helps that shows the warming during the different ENSO cycles (note - 2015 should actually be a red el nino year, I think it wasn't official when they made this).

i don't know when the "Ice Age" was, the first or second century or before but, I do know, if it wasn't for Global Warming, the earth would still be in the Ice Age. 

That was such a good tag line,,,,,, very sad when I was forced to remove it. :-(

Also, if it weren't for global cooling there would still be crocodiles and palm trees at the north pole, which would probably surprise the hell out of the eskimos.

Oh Man! You're gonna make my head explode, 12,000 years, who knew the earth was that old?!? I guess I'll have to blame it on Catholic school education.

I thought it was Global Warming and now you bring out this hidden gem "global cooling"!! When was that, before the ice age or after?

Honestly, I'm ok with this warming trend, Global Warming, Climate Change, whatever the correct term is today. ....... Don't get me wrong, I don't mind the cold, until it gets below 80!!

I've got 4 more years until I retire......more water means more fishing!!  I believe I'm in favor of warming. 

This is a depiction of the Greenland ice core temperatures over the last 11,000 years.  To be clear, this isn't a global temperature measurement it's just for greenland.  However, it is kind of interesting to see how temperatures there have gone up and down through the various events in history.
One thing that I think everyone can all agree on is that the earths temperature has been changing for a very long time.  I believe the surface temperatures were around 2000 degrees F 4.5B years ago, so we have a long ways to go before we get to our highest temperature in history benchmark.  hehe

Here's what the actual author of the dataset had to say about it ""Whether temperatures have been warmer or colder in the past is largely irrelevant to the impacts of the ongoing warming. If you don’t care about humans and the other species here, global warming may not be all that important; nature has caused warmer and colder times in the past, and life survived. But, those warmer and colder times did not come when there were almost seven billion people living as we do. The best science says that if our warming becomes large, its influences on us will be primarily negative, and the temperature of the Holocene or the Cretaceous has no bearing on that. "

But eventually it'll be about 10 million degrees on earth, so I'm guessing that'll probably set the record.

Yeah, there's no question the Greenland data gets taken out of context a ton.  It would be awesome if we had satellite data over the last 10,000 years, but those dang Atlantians didn't build their satellites good enough to last that long.  grr

One thing that I do find interesting is the true global effects of warming.  There's so much conflicting information with heavy political influences out there it's hard to get real solid data.  Obviously higher CO2 does cause benefits and us two legged creatures tend to do much better job of surviving when it's warm out versus when it's cold out.  Obviously there are huge implications with food supply and water supplies, so I'm not naive enough to say that all is better with a warmer planet, but I do find the studies of it very interesting.  
My personal feeling is we can tolerate a substantial amount of warming and thrive just fine, but obviously there's a limit.  I also think the rate of change is still slow enough that we can adapt our food supplies much faster than the earth changes.  No scientific studies to back it, mostly gut feel based on recent history of warming.  
It's actually a little unfortunate that the "alarmists" spouting doom and gloom really hurt the legitimate science because people discount everything when the dumb "NY will be flooded in 10 years" type of predictions don't come true.

I agree that the effects are really where it's at, and unfortunately, they are harder to predict than the warming.  The scary thing to me is that in almost all of the cases we are seeing effects happening much sooner than expected and happen much faster than expected.  I agree that the over the top "alarmists" can really hurt the conversation, but so far, we are definitely trending more towards the serious consequences side of the spectrum than the "it's overblown" side.  And yes, there will be some positive benefits, but these are usually overblown as well.  For example, yes, warming will mean that conditions will be favorable for agriculture in large parts of Russia and Canada.  but what people counting that as a blessing fail to realize is that most of the northern forests have peat for soil which is crap for crowing corn in.  The rate of change feels slow to us as humans, but in terms of the earth, the warming we're seeing now is faster than anything we've seen before (even farther back than 2000 years!) and is going to happen too fast for many species to adapt.  And as I mentioned before this is a one way ticket.  If we get 30 years down the road and find that our crops are failing left and right, droughts are forcing migrants across our border, sea level rise is causing coastal cities to flood every 5 years, well too bad.  That's how it's going to be for the next 1,000 years.  This hope that things won't be that bad (or maybe even better) despite what all the experts are saying may have been viable in the past, but with the effects we're already seeing happen now and the predictions not only coming true. but happening faster than we thought, that strategy is just reckless.

And I'll also say that that stuff we talked about before - the LED bulbs, the insulation, etc., that stuff is important.  No, you switching a bulb to an LED isn't going to solve the problem, but it's a part of the solution, and that stuff adds up.  So encourage your friends and neighbors and family to do it too.  If nothing else it'l save them some $.