Global Warming

Short-term weather events and long-range climate change are not the same thing, of course, but it’s hard to separate them in the public’s mind.But it’s even harder these days to convincingly argue that climate change is a reality.IPCC under the gun“The IPCC clearly has suffered a loss in public confidence,” Stanford University climate scientist Chris Field, who chairs one of the IPCC’s four main research groups, told the Associated Press on Saturday. “And one of the things that I think the world deserves is a clear understanding of what aspects the IPCC does well and what aspects of the IPCC can be improved.”Meanwhile, action in Congress on climate change has essentially stalled. The cap-and-trade approach approved by the US House of Representatives is likely to be jettisoned, reports the Washington Post, as key senators look for a new way to tackle carbon emissions.The heavy snowfalls this month have been used as fodder for ridicule by those who argue that global warming is a myth, yet scientists have long pointed out that warmer global temperatures have been increasing the rate of evaporation from the oceans, putting significantly more moisture into the atmosphere – thus causing heavier downfalls of both rain and snow in particular regions, including the Northeastern United States. Just as it’s important not to miss the forest for the trees, neither should we miss the climate for the snowstorm.