Buffalo Boy's Blog
Giving You More Than Just My Two Cents
Cold Weather does not Negate Global Warming
Just because its cold outside and the weather has been colder than normal does not mean that global warming is still not a concern.
Remember, it is GLOBAL warming so you need to take in the data from all over the globe. Just because Western New York had a cool finish to 2008 and a cold start to 2009 does not mean that the rest of the planet is doing the same thing.
In addition, weather, the stuff that is predicted over a seven day forecast is not climate. Climate is weather observed and recorded over an extremely long period of time, years, decades and centuries. The year 2008 was globally the 10th warmest on record since data started being collect in 1850 on a global scale.
Its still likely to get cold in the winter and think about it, when was the last time it has been this cold? Years? At least a few years. This early years colder weather is due to a persistent La Nina that has lasted longer than meteorologists had anticipated.
Its a complex thing our climate and weather is but the global warming data still stands up, its not to say you won't get cold events/weather over a given stretch of days.
Most of us are short sighted when it comes to the concept of global warming, we don't think outside of our own little world we live in on a day to day basis, so we strugge to grasp the concept of global warming being a truly global warming event. Right now the southern hemisphere is in the middle of their summer and Im sure that as cold as it is here, its just as hot there, when all the years data comes back, thats when we can compare it to the longer term models.
But remember, things ARE changing. More violent weather patterns have been recorded, as you say, "Globally". You can't deny that man is not influencing and accelerating things.
Actually, we have no clue if this period of global warming is influenced by man. Do you have scientific data from the last 10 million years? Truth be told, Mike, you state: "Most of us are short sighted when it comes to the concept of global warming" but actually the fear-mongering global-warming-ites are being "short-sighted" to think that 300 years worth of semi-scientific data is enough to make a conclusion about an Earth that's billions of years old.
Think about this, it's mind-boggling whether you agree with me or not.. all of the world's people could be put into 1,000 square foot apartments at 3 ppl/apt, and all of the worlds man-made infrastructure could all be put into an area the size of the state of Texas, and the rest of the earth would be barren of anything man-made or man-influenced, and that would amount to approximately 0.13% of the Earth's surface.
I would say it's more likely that this is a natural cycle of Earth climate change, than anything that man is influencing, considering that Mother Nature is controlling the other 99.87% of our planet. But we don't have the data to back up either argument, so I suggest the following...
We should recycle and do good things for the environment because we should do them, not because the left-wing paranoia mongers are telling us that man is causing global warming. Fact is, we don't know, so why not do things that can only help?