Here we go again: Weather is not climate

Though many of us know better, these snow storms provide ammo to global warming deniers. Should we reschedule climate protests for the spring?

Mon, Mar 02 2009 at 9:23 AM

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Weather & Climate, Coal, Clean Coal

Photo credit: Flickr user shioshvili

Talk about bad timing.

Snowstorms are pounding the east coast today and threaten to put a damper on the big protest against coal in Washington, D.C., today. The pro-coal nutjobs have never been afraid to let facts get in their way and will leverage it for every Drudge headline possible.

Might I suggest a moratorium on holding global warming protests during the winter? It's too easy for the pro-coal lobby to undermine the message with hysterical shrieks about the snow and how it means global warming has been called off.

I've said it a lot, I'll say it again — weather is not climate, climate is not weather. Weather is what is happening outside today. It's snowing. Climate is what the weather is like for the entire planet over periods of decades.

It's snowing today, but the planet is still warming and coal is still the enemy of mankind. Now go shovel your driveway. Better yet, come shovel mine.

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Comments: 4

Guest Mar 03 2009 at 10:25 PM

The U. S. is just a small fraction of the earth’s surface and temperatures for the last 90 days are too short to make much difference for climate changes. Nevertheless, for the last 90 days, temperatures in the U.S. have averaged above normal. http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/tanal/90day/mean/20090301.90day.me... Cold weather in the Great Lakes and northern plains has been more than offset by above normal temperatures in the west and southern states. As for global warming / climate change

.... More

as a whole, the following organizations state that: 1) Global warming / climate change is real. 2) Human activities are by far the largest causative factor. 3) Global warming is continuing. NASAhttp://www.nasa.gov/worldbook/global_warming_worldbook.htmlhttp://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/GlobalWarmingQandA/http://data.giss.nasa.gov/gistemp/graphs/Fig.A2.lrg.gif (The graph) National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration National Climatic Data Centerhttp://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/climate/globalwarming.html World Meteorological Organization (WMO)http://www.wmo.ch/pages/about/wmo50/e/world/climate_pages/global_warming... American Meteorological Societyhttp://www.ametsoc.org/policy/2007climatechange.html National Center for Atmospheric Research “How do we know Earth is warming now?”http://www.ncar.ucar.edu/research/climate/now.php Earth System Research Laboratory - Global Monitoring Division “Climate Forcing”http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/about/climate.html University Corporation for Atmospheric Researchhttp://www.ucar.edu/research/climate/warming.jsp American Geophysical Union (world's largest scientific society of Earth and space scientists) “Human Impacts on Climate”http://www.agu.org/sci_soc/policy/climate_change_position.html Massachusetts Institute of Technology “Report: Human activity fuels global warming”http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2007/climate.html California Institute of Technology “How We Know Global Warming is Real” “The science behind human-induced climate change”http://www.gps.caltech.edu/~tapio/papers/skeptic_2008.pdf Atmospheric Sciences - University of Illinois - Champaign “Evidence continues to mount that human activities are altering the Earth’s climate on a global scale.”http://www.atmos.uiuc.edu/research/01climate.html Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution “Global Warming”http://www.whoi.edu/page.do?pid=12457 The UK’s Met Office Hadley Centrehttp://www.metoffice.gov.uk/climatechange/guide/ The UK’s Royal Society “Climate change controversies: a simple guide”http://royalsociety.org/page.asp?id=6229 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (Based in Switzerland) “Climate Change 2007: Synthesis Report”http://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/assessment-report/ar4/syr/ar4_syr_spm.pdf National Geographic Magazinehttp://environment.nationalgeographic.com/environment/global-warming/ Scientific American Magazinehttp://www.sciam.com/topic.cfm?id=global-warming-and-climate-change Posted by Bill Butlerhttp://www.durangobill.com/Swindle_Swindle.html

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Guest Mar 02 2009 at 9:13 PM

You seem to be fairly certain that climate change is occurring, yet what facts do you have? The IPCC? Al Gore? What source do you have that isn't trying to prove global warming to get its grubby mitts on a pile of cash?