[CC licensed photo courtesy of Flickr user Ferdi]
Canal ice skating is part of the Dutch national identity, but according to the International Herald Tribune, climate change and pollution have turned Holland's annual canal-freeze into a rarity. Holland's canals have frozen for the first time in twelve years this month, thrilling the citizens of the land of Hans Brinker:
Hundreds of thousands of skaters, their cheeks as red as apples in the freezing temperatures, took to the ice, and hospital wards were filled with dozens of people with fractured arms, sprained ankles and broken legs.Do we have any readers here who have found themselves out on the ice in this winter? I've heard that canal skating is popular in Ottawa, Ontario. Is anyone enjoying any other skating hot-spots?
Train engineers were ordered to go slowly to avoid hitting skaters who clambered across railway tracks to get from one frozen canal to another. Even the minister of defense, an avid skater, fell and broke his wrist. His ministry announced that the national defense remained in safe hands, even if one of them was in a cast.
[International Herald Tribune]
Except it's not. 60+ cold weather records set in the US in recent months, including snow in Vegas. Canada had its first white Christmas across the entire country in almost 40 years.
And remember folks, the Romans grew GRAPES in England. If that happened now, they'd say "Look, global warming!". So what is the explanation for that hundreds of years before the industrial revolution?
And what bugs me more than anything is how people who question global warming (not deny it, but question it, like any sensible person should), the arguments from the people who agree with it are getting so rabid and desperate that they're comparing them to creationists.
Yes, because believing some fictional being created all this 5000 years ago is exactly like questioning the hype about global warming as we all sit and freeze our asses off across the northern hemisphere...
See, the observed cooling proves that it's getting hotter!
C'mon. Think about it logically! =)
Yes, I do believe that climate change is occurring and that much of it can be linked to human activity.
For the record, however, it is the International Herald Tribune that stated that the failure of Holland's canals to freeze in recent years was due to climate change - not me. That being said, I certainly think that it is possible for "global warming" to be responsible.
As for the larger argument, I am suspicious of the movement afoot to discredit the concept of global warming because it is so closely tied in to the petroleum and energy industries. Big Energy is so very clearly interested in convincing the world that global warming is a myth. Why is this? Furthermore, why do some efforts by industry to discredit climate change happen clandestinely - through energy-funded think tanks with names like "The We Like Nature and Puppies and Groovy Clean Air Foundation"?
I smell petrodollars at work.
It never ceases to amaze me when I see folks declare a cold day during winter justifies dismissal of an empirically evident shift in the climate.
I tend to divide people who don't 'believe' in global warming into two camps:
(1) Those who simply haven't seen or read the facts.
(2) Those who don't want to face the truth because they somehow feel 'guilty' for having been born in North America and unconsciously a bigger part of the cause than someone from Ghana.
So for those who feel guilty: get over it. None of us knew about it. So how do we fix it?
And for those who simply haven't seen or read the facts? Why haven't you? Is it because you never had the time... or is it because you don't want to know about it because you might then fall under Category 2?
If it's the latter... the answer is the same: None of us knew, so Get Over It. How do we fix it?
Regardless of whether the earth is warming or not; that said warming is caused by man, the sun, faeries, or cattle flatulence; there are far more reasons to take up the "green" mantle than to not. Conservation for the sake of conservation should be enough for everyone. This isn't our planet, we're only borrowing it from the future generations.
needless to say, kinda a stupid thing to do, when you're not 100% positive on how frozen the lake is.
I think myself that this is a natural heating/cooling of the planet. We just havent been educated enough since the past hundred years or so to deal with it.
Our carbon emissions are a stones throw into a big pond compared to natural carbon emissions.
Time will tell, it may get a lot hotter in the summer months, and a lot colder in the winter months. Could be the entire opposite! We wont know until its happening.
Im all for reducing carbon emissions however at the same time I think there needs to be the same measures in place to increase global warming if need be.
The latter should be much easier.
Its not going to be easy either way though. Were just going to have to evolve as a species to make it past any changes.
This crap takes the Neat out of Neatorama.
Now, on to global warming! The planet knows what it's doing, and has been through far worse threats than us. But I've seen the Dennis Quaid movie, which seems like good science (I'm looking at you, ozone layer hole), and the polar caps are collapsing, spreading icy air/water currents south.
It's tragically unnerving when someone comes in out of the record-breaking cold, and says, "Global warming, my ass!" It's like saying you're not sick because you're not sneezing.
And no, just because it gets cold somewhere for a week, doesn't disprove global warming. That's not science.
I guess I should have said...I bet that was a cool sight to see in Holland this year. I know we're freezing our tulips off here.
just more indication of this "global warming idea" being bs...
also... record lows this week...
i rest my case
HAHA OMG
Please stop denying it just because there is a cold winter one year. Lets look at this instance. In Holland what was once so regular that it became ingrained in their culture is now something that hasn't happened in 12 years!
And to an earlier poster who said that the "global warming crowd" gets angry when you question them, that is because the science is there and unquestionable and you people refuse to accept it. It's like watching a smoker dying from lung cancer and then he tells you it cant be the cigarettes because he knows a guy who lived to 92 and smoked everyday.
Unfortunately for us, Dutch, the best of winter is already over. We had a week or so to skate and now the thaw has come and the ice is gone.
Ice-skating on the canals in the coutryside is the most amazing thing: the closest thing to flying without aid that I know of. But I guess in the United States with so few canals simply there is simply little space for skating. That is only one of the reasons I could never live there!
However, we are on a downward slope of the graph and it is a bit steeper that you'd expect, so if it turns out that it won't come up again as you'd expect, then you'd have some serious data to feed the global warming discussion.
I personally do believe global warming is a reality, but I don't base that opinion off of weak data like the recent lack of skating on canals, rivers, streams and lakes. Where people get the idea that it's just canals is beyond me. Perhaps they're confusing the Netherlands (a country) with Amsterdam (a city) as, I'm sorry to say, Americans are wont to do.
There's some real magic to ice skating on natural ice though. I highly recommend you try it if there's some serious ice out there, or at least take a hike over rivers and lakes, it's magical being out there in a transformed world, which you don't normally get to see from that side. It's not as similar to boating as you might think. Skating beats hiking for speed and freedom though. The kind of flow, speed and presence you can achieve on good skates is unlike anything. Perhaps somewhat similar to riding a motorcycle vs. driving a car.
They saw that global temperature averages started dropping between 2000-2005 and they realized that their religion would be losing adherents quickly when they cries of "Global Warming" were met with, "haven't you been reading the news? It's been getting colder this last decade."
So they changed the call to "climate change".
Diabolical - now any change demonstrates their theory.
It gets hotter - climate change.
It gets colder - climate change.
It rains more - climate change.
It's drier - climate change.
This people need to get a life.
The Fossil Fuel age is drawing to a quick conclusion, and release of sequestered CO2 is going to be very low on the priority list in a few years when we can't feed everybody using draft horses.
And will you guys please leave Hans Brinker out of it? He never existed
(1) Those who simply haven’t seen or read the facts.
(2) Those who don’t want to face the truth because they somehow feel ‘guilty’ for having been born in North America and unconsciously a bigger part of the cause than someone from Ghana.
you doofus......have you ever been to a third world nation that is an emerging industrial nation (south american countries, india, china etc)and watched the stacks of paper mills, powerplants, steel mills? they don't abide by EPA air emission standards that we do. i've spent my entire life working in US industry and the traveling I did to foreign countries shocked me, as I then realized it isn't the US that leads the charge for pollution. wake up, America!
"according to the International Herald Tribune, climate change and pollution have turned Holland’s annual canal-freeze into a rarity. Holland’s canals have frozen for the first time in twelve years this month"
http://www.winnipegfreepress.com/breakingnews/Skating_trail_opens_to_Omands_Creek.html
And the temperature today is -7 C (19 F)
Please stop exhaling it!
I take lessons at my university and I never thought I'd be jumping after just one season of a serious attempt to learn to skate better. I learned a waltz jump last week. It's a trip!