SocraticGadfly: Weather is NOT the same as climate

December 23, 2006

Weather is NOT the same as climate

It never surprises me anymore when a big snowstorm hits the U.S. and global warming deniers trot this out as "proof" that global warming does not exist. Couple that with the release of "An Inconvenient Truth" by Al Gore and you have the doubters, as in a letter to the editor at the Arizona Republic, telling the former vice president to buy a shovel.

First, shorter-term weather patterns are not the same as longer-term changes in climate.

Second, climate scientists have repeatedly said the massive human-caused increases in atmospheric carbon dioxide levels will make weather more volatile until the atmospheric system reaches an equilibrium.

Third, the El Nino effect, which may have contributed to the Denver snowstorm, has been shown to be intensified in power, and made semi-permanent as an atmospheric and oceanic phenomenon, by global warming.

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