"Global Warming" for Dummies/Republicans

[Mugsy]

Understanding "Global Warming" in 30 Seconds

I wrote a short little Op/Ed this week in response to two weeks of wild Winter weather: floods, tornadoes and blizzards, all effects of Global Warming, yet the media has remained nearly mum on the issue. I can't decide if it is because they’re starting to understand that one (Winter) doesn’t necessarily negate the other (Global Warming), or if it’s because they’ve come to a private consensus that the threat of “Global Warming” is over-blown, “long debunked” following two years of "Snowmaggedon" Winter storms?

Here is a simple 30 second "elevator speech" explaining how the terms "Global Warming" and "Climate Change" are not interchangeable terms:

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First, as I note on top, “Where do you think all that moisture came from?” Snow is “moisture”. It evaporated from somewhere. While it is Winter here, it is Summer below the equator. Record heat = record evaporation. That moisture turns to snow when it reaches the North and falls in the form of a record amount of snow. ThinkProgress reported last week that 2010… the hottest year on record… saw a record number of “killer climate disasters”. From a string of Winter tornadoes in Missouri, Arkansas, and now Illinois, to torrential rain in Australia flooding an area the size of Texas.

Deniers love to conflate “Global Warming” with “Summer in the Wintertime”. No, “Global Warming” means exactly that: this big ball of dirt we call “Earth” is actually “warming”… a fraction of a degree on average (from 7-8 degrees at the poles to less than one degree at the equator), but enough to affect the planet’s ability to regulate temperatures from season-to-season… so that we don’t have 113′ Autumn’s in Los Angeles followed by massive snowfall on the East Coast that Winter (you may have noticed that both are becoming more common. “Hellooo!”) The planet’s inability to regulate temperatures from season-to-season means a change in global weather patterns. That’s “Climate Change”.

It is sorely tempting to point to a single weather anomaly like last weeks’ blizzard and “blame Global Warming”. But there is a difference between “Climate” and “Weather”. We all know Miami has a warm climate, and if it snows in Miami one Christmas, no one is going to start claiming Miami has a “cold climate”. However, if it starts snowing in Miami every Xmas, THAT is “probably” a sign Florida’s climate is changing due to Global Warming. Get it?

And it’s that word: “probably”, that causes Climate Scientists so much trouble. There really is no way to “prove” a “predictable” change in weather is “proof” of “Climate Change” any more than you can argue finding a man standing over a dead body with a bloody knife is “proof” they committed the murder. If that were the case, we wouldn’t need trials. But the likelihood the two events are connected is about as close to 100% as anyone’s going to get. And any “Denier” demanding “100% absolute proof” has no business being taken seriously on ANYTHING because there are few things in life as complicated as Climate Science that can be “proven 100%” to where even Rush Limbaugh can’t deny it.

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Read the full brief Op/Ed on MugsysRapSheet.com