As informed citizens, we need to be careful about conflating weather, climate change and natural disasters.
Weather (i.e. the extreme cold
we’re having in Texas this spring) is weather. Climate is the
measurement of long-term weather data over broad areas (i.e. global
temperatures over a 50 year period). For most people, these are pretty
easy distinctions to make.
But the issue becomes more complicated when it comes to natural disasters, such as hurricanes, floods, droughts and tornadoes.
About 18 months ago the much-maligned IPCC released a report that
takes a pretty balanced view of climate and natural disasters,
concluding that weather extremes are probably affected by climate
change, but generally stops short of saying global warming is the main
driver.
READ MORE: http://blog.chron.com/sciguy/2013/05/tornado-spike-in-2011-attributed-to-climate-change-so-what-to-make-of-this-years-tornado-drought/
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