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Weather and
Climate
These two things are related, and a lot of people get
confused about the difference.
Weather
Weather is the day to day atmospheric etc.
conditions. For example, today is
raining with a maximum temperature of 15 degrees C.
Climate
Climate is the average weather conditions over a long
period.
Climate
Change
We know that the weather will change from day to day,
but this does not mean the climate is changing.
Measurements have to be continued over a long time and carefully
calculated to determine if the climate of a locality is changing.
Global
Climate Change
Even if it can be shown that the climate of one place
is changing, for example getting hotter, this does not prove that the global
climate is changing.
One example of this concerns the often stated belief
that the global climate was warmer in the time of Geoffrey Chaucer. Chaucer was an English poet who lived in the
14th century ad. (About 1343-1400).
Chaucer mentions things like the growing of grapes in England. This certainly indicates the England was
warmer than in later centuries. However,
the assumption that the world was warmer is a dangerous one. Recent information suggests that there was
little difference in global temperatures
between the 14th century and the next few hundred years.
Forecasting
Weather and Climate
I recently heard a politian stating that because we
cannot accurately predict the weather a week ahead, he does not believe it is
possible to predict the climate decades ahead.
Predicting weather and climate are two different things. I regard his reasoning as flawed.
However, his wider scepticism may be more
justified. We do not know what will
happen in the future. All we can do is
act of the best information we have. I
would go a little further and suggest that we should act conservatively. We know that we have put large amounts of Carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gasses into the air. To me the conservative cause of action is to
reduce our output of these gasses until we understand more about the climate.
Sources
Geoffrey Chaucer:
http://www.luminarium.org/medlit/chaucer.htm
The Weather Makers:
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