So I just saw a conservative website’s story entitled (IIRC): “Global warming update: snow in 49 states.” The obvious implication is that if it’s cold, that means global warming is not happening.
This just advances the false (though admittedly with at least a little basis in “common sense”) perception that “global warming” means that everywhere on the planet will be hotter all the time. Do people who do this know it’s false, and are just advancing it anyway for their political agenda, or do they really don’t know?
I mean, there’s arguing (which I don’t necessarily mind, even on a subject like this) and arguing in bad faith, and I’m wondering how much of it is going on here…
If they are going to call it “global warming” then a warming trend should emerge. No such warming trend has emerged.
Now they are backpedaling and saying, “Oh, we meant global climate change.”
Okay. Why didn’t they state it that way when they proposed the hypothesis? I guess it was because they thought it was going to be warmer, right? And then, when that didn’t happen, they changed the terminology, so that any weird weather qualified as global warming.
I mean, really. If the whole world gets colder, you can’t really call that “warming” now, can you?
Let me guess, another victim of the right wing echo chamber eh?
Fact: Climate Change and Global warming have been used from way back, it was a right wing spinner that decided to make the Republicans insist on using only the term “climate change” as it was less scary than “Global Warming”
It worked so well that right wingers swallowed that silly argument of changing terms hook line and sinker.
“It was the 34th consecutive year that the global temperature was above average, according to the data center. The last below-average year was 1976.”
The concept, which, to paraphrase Shaw’s quote, a lot of people’s paychecks depend on their not understanding - it that climate and weather are not the same thing.
“Global Warming” does not mean it’ll be 72 in Anchorage in January.
Weather patterns change and weather is a complex beast.
Try reading a little. (For instance warmer air can hold more moisture, more moisture = more precipitation = more snow/rain…blizzards in the US in winter, floods in Australia in summer (which is our winter)).
I swear I read somewhere that winters themselves could actually become MORE intense, just from the more extreme changes in the weather patterns. Did I hear that from a bullshit cite?
Winters are bound to take less time, but it is silly from some deniers to say that scientists are saying that winters would disappear, far from it. More heath would increase the water vapor content in the atmosphere, that was predicted and it is happening. (Leading to more intense snow falls and rains.)
What has been uncertain is where exactly on earth the intense effects would affect humans the most. What is unfortunate is that many on the right are ignoring the science and deny that global warming is intensifying natural weather phenomenons.
The opening line is obviously a bullshit argument. But I think there exists reasonable doubt that GW has primarily anthropogenic causes. The earth has cycled through climate shifts and “ice ages” (which contrary to popular fiction do not actually cause the earth to resemble a ball of goddamn ice) in the past, before our species even existed.
So until AGW has been proven beyond a reasonable doubt to the majority of the population (alongside other gems such as the sun not going around the earth, and the earth not being flat), you’re not going to get a lot of people to care about it.
From a physical standpoint, it makes sense that global warming would be associated with more extreme weather events, because there is more energy being trapped in the system. That can manifest itself as major snowstorms as well as heat waves or hurricanes.
However… Global warming at the predicted rate would have virtually no effect in the short term. We’re talking about a temperature increase of less than one degree per decade from global warming, whereas the annual variation in temperature is, as I recall, around .3-.4 degrees. So an extreme weather event or even an abnormally hot year is not proof of global warming, and a calm or cool year is not proof that global warming does not exist.
Annual weather changes are dominated by other phenomenon, such as whether we’re in a period of El Niño or La Niña, volcanic activity, solar variation, or just pure randomness.
But predictable as rain, if we have a big hurricane or a heat wave, the global warming side will claim it’s proof of global warming, and if we have a cold snap the anti global warming side will claim it as proof that global warming isn’t happening.
What a nice straw men side that claims it’s proof of global warming. (No one in this thread that is a proponent has said that) The reality is that the anti global warming side is the one that needs to get their shit knock off.
There is no dispute that the earth is warming. Even serious global warming skeptics agree that the Earth is warming. The debate is over man’s contribution to warming, not whether it’s occurring at all.
That’s another reason why it’s so stupid to claim that a heat wave or an abnormally warm year is proof of global warming, or to claim that an abnormally cold year is proof that warming isn’t happening. That whole dialog misses the entire point of the debate.
I’ve spent a long time looking at the global warming debate from a skeptical viewpoint. I would like to believe that the AGW hypothesis is false. But I can’t do that. There’s just too much data supporting it. I’ve looked at all the arguments against, and even though I want to believe them I have to conclude that the preponderance of evidence is, at this time, supportive of the AGW hypothesis.
There are many other open questions about global warming when it comes to long term predictions, the proper policy options, and all the rest, but at this time I think anyone who respects science as a tool has to conclude that the AGW proponents have the data on their side. Is it absolutely conclusive? No, but that’s not how science works. You never close the books or declare something proved.
Perhaps new discoveries will cause us to re-interpret the data, or over time we will discover feedback mechanisms we didn’t understand that moderate or reverse the warming. But that’s just speculation. Today, the evidence suggests that man-made emissions of CO2 are contributing to the warming of the planet. The exact amount of warming isn’t known, and the error bars are pretty large, but it IS happening.
Anyway, weather = climate is stupid, but from what I’ve seen both the believers and the deniers can’t resist sticking in an “I told you so” when extreme heat or cold happens.
In my opinion, judging from their thinly veiled contempt, and personally talking with the people who are spoonfed Fox News and the rightie tightie spin (atomic wedgie)… They point to the cooling as ignorant meteorological misunderstanding of the concept of global warming. No, they do not understand the full syntax of their surroundings… they are easily misled with shortsighted demagogues.
All right. Would someone like to explain the difference between weather and climate?
Really the thing is that I do understand that when people pave dirt with asphalt and add a lot of cement and cars, it makes that place tend to be hotter than it was before. And I understand that when people move into a desert and plant lawns and install sprinkler systems, and then dam rivers to have enough water for these activities, it makes that place more humid than it was before. And I understand that these things happening can change the climate.
But the whole global warming thing has been fraught with people claiming they know the truth, and with people either fudging the data or skewing the interpretation (although I guess skewing the interpretation happens a lot–you see what you’re looking for). I’m not real scientific myself so a lot of the more technical stuff goes over my head, but I’ve read stuff from both sides, and they’re both pretty all or nothing.
I’m just pointing out that if one side had called it “global climate change” from the beginning, it would be helpful to people who think it can’t be global warming because it’s cold. But, ultimately, aren’t they talking about the average temperature of the whole world? So if it gets much colder than typical in a lot of places, that is going to bring the average down. They don’t just pick one day and say, “See? It’s hotter today!”
