Science Forward

As many people noticed last Tuesday, the 18th of November, either by personal experience or through social media, the weather experienced in most, if not all, of the United States was far below the average for this time of year. Some cities received snowfall unseen in years (around the Great Lakes area) and some tropic states had temperatures below freezing (Hawaii for example). It comes as no surprise that people would claim “Global Warming is not happening.” Yet some people who commented on one social media site failed to note that in one of the images, the average temperatures in world was 0.35^oC warmer than the average of 1979-2000 temperatures.  So while North America is literally a cold block at this time, the rest of the world is far warmer so much so that the net difference is a warmer planet.

Temperature Deviation of October 18 to 1979-2000 average

Then there are the commenters with misconceptions of global warming, or in a more neutral term, climate change.  Take for example these two comments: “global warming is man-made, climate change is natural” and “climate change and global warming are completely separate things”.  Both comments were made by the same person, and both statements are flawed.  Climate change and global warming are not separate things; climate change includes global warming as well as global cooling.  And there is no anthropogenic distinction between global warming and climate change, humans can cause climate change just as nature can cause global warming.  Also, another misconception is that humans are causing climate change.  Humans are not causing climate change; climate does change due to macroscopic effects caused by changes in Earth’s properties: changes in orbital path, axial tilt (wobbling), and changes in the position of the poles.  But by no means does this mean humans aren’t having an effect.  Anthropogenic actions have increased the amount of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases that would have entered the atmosphere otherwise.  Carbon dioxide does not cause global warming either, but it does affect the amount of heat that is distributed on Earth.  Rather, the carbon dioxide exacerbates the warm period of the cycle that we are currently living in by trapping heat and distributing it globally.  Greater carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere means greater amounts of heat are trapped and distributed.  So humans are affecting the climate indirectly through our consumption of fossil fuel which causes the increase in carbon dioxide levels.  To state otherwise is to ignore the effects of carbon dioxide and the logical reasoning that follows: greater carbon dioxide levels lead to more heat being trapped on Earth which lead to increases in global temperatures.  Also for those that claim we are in a global cooling stage, its true that temperatures should be decreasing yet temperatures over the last hundred years have remained the same if not increased, which shows that there humans are playing a role in affecting climate change.