Photo credit: laszlo-photo

As winter weather hits us again, many people confuse the current weather (cold) with the long-term direction of the climate (warmer).

Just because it is cold outside right now doesn’t mean that global warming isn’t real. Global warming has to do with the climate, with the long-term trend of the world’s average temperature. The short-term weather has to do with what is happening this week or next in the part of the world where we currently reside. The two are not identical, and colder weather does not contradict the fact that our climate is warming up.

Another reason the two related but not identical issues are confusing is that global climate change is not uniform across the globe. Just because it is colder where you live doesn’t mean it isn’t warmer, relatively, elsewhere. In fact, global warming is taking place much more at the northern latitudes than in the continental U.S.

This is the reason why, even though the U.S. is experiencing more severe winter weather, the Arctic summer ice is covering less and less of the Arctic water, opening the fabled Northern Passage. It is still very cold at the North Pole, but it is relatively warmer. Average temperatures have already increased in the northern latitudes by almost 4 degrees Fahrenheit, much more than at temperate latitudes.

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This week Nicholas Stern, the British top climate economist and academic who is probably most known for the Stern Review, endorsed 350 ppm as “a very sensible long-term target.”

350 ppm, as in parts per million, the level scientists have identified as the safe upper limit for CO2 in our atmosphere. We are currently at 390 ppm and, according to the science, we need to get back to 350 ppm as soon as possible to be able avoid runaway climate change.

In an interview with a German newspaper Stern endorsed the 350 ppm target saying he “think it’s a very sensible long-term target.” Bill McKibben, environmental writer and founder of 350.org, writes:

“I think it’s a very sensible long-term target.” He went on to explain: “People have to be aware that is a truly long-term target. We have already passed 350ppm, we are at 390 ppm of Co2 and at 435 ppm of Co2-equivalents right now. It is most important to stop the increase of flows of emissions short term and then start the decline of flows of annual emissions and get them down to levels which will move concentrations of CO2 back down towards 350ppm.

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Last week Australia essentially committed itself to Climate Genocide – but the term has not been used and indeed is largely excluded from any mention in public discourse in Australia. The extreme right wing, pro-coal, pro-war Rudd Labor Australian Government unveiled an Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) that in reality means that Australia’s world-leading annual per capita domestic and exported greenhouse gas (GHG) will fall from its present value of 54 tonnes per person per year to 44-49 by 2020 (see “Pro-coal Australian Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) devalues Australian lives, threatens Biosphere and ignores Science“).

This “business as usual” approach to the Climate Emergency by the Australian Government (and appallingly, supported by the Australian Conservation Foundation and the Australian Climate Institute) flies in the face of advice from top climate scientists – with many scientists saying that it is already too late to stop catastrophic climate change (e.g. see this recent UK Guardian report subtitled “Guardian poll reveals almost nine out of 10 climate experts do not believe current political efforts will keep warming below 2C” ; also see: http://copenhagenclimatecouncil.com/…/).

Climate Genocide has already begun in the non-European World in which 16 million people die avoidably every year from deprivation and deprivation-exacerbated disease. This Global Avoidable Mortality Holocaust is increasingly impacted by Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW; man-made global warming) – there are already hundreds of thousands of Climate Refugees in Darfur (Sudan), India, Bangladesh, Myanmar and the Pacific, with far worse to come, especially for states that are drought-prone, mega-deltaic or which are small islands (see “Climate Disruption, Climate Emergency, Climate Genocide & Penultimate Bengali Holocaust through Sea Level Rise”).

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