Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
A study by Yale University concluded that the shift of terminology from 'global
warming' to 'climate change' has backfired; as it has a milquetoast connotation in the
associated with unusual, but not necessarily terrifying weather events.
With 'the pause' in temperature looming large, and with a passive response by the
public to the phrase 'climate change,' those who have an interest in pushing the issue tried
a new tactic; they tried to connect global warming to everyday weather events.
In September 2010, the White House declared that the phrase should now be 'global
climate disruption'. The phrase 'global climate disruption' was created out of thin air
by John Holdren, director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy
himself, as there were no studies or reports prior to the one he wrote in 2007 in which he
declared:
'Global warming' is now a phrase on everyone's lips—it has more than 50 million hits on Google. Its combination
with biodiversity—the variety of life on Earth—gets more than a million hits, barely 15 years since Peters and Lovejoy
convenedthefirstmeetingonthesubject.Thephraseisappealing,butseriouslymisleading.Earthisexperiencingarapid
global disruption to its climate, one of considerable physical complexity.
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This was further emphasised in a 2012 paper by Dr. James Hansen of NASA GISS (who
also was the keeper of the global temperature record plotted in Figure 1 and Figure 2) who
said:
Our analysis shows that it is no longer enough to say that global warming will increase the likelihood of extreme weather
and to repeat the caveat that no individual weather event can be directly linked to climate change. To the contrary, our
analysis shows that, for the extreme hot weather of the recent past, there is virtually no explanation other than climate
change. The deadly European heat wave of 2003, the fiery Russian heat wave of 2010 and catastrophic droughts in Texas
and Oklahoma last year can each be attributed to climate change. And once the data are gathered in a few weeks' time,
it's likely that the same will be true for the extremely hot summer the United States is suffering through right now.
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But this impression is untrue. These events and others like them almost certainly would
have occurred on their own (i.e. naturally). Climate change may have added a pinch of
additional heat, but it almost certainly did not create these events out of thin air.
Hansen pushes his impression with an analogy of 'climate dice.' The idea is that
anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions have 'loaded' the dice towards extreme warmth,
so now when Mother Nature rolls the dice for summer weather, there is better chance
of rolling a heat wave, or an overall hot summer—events discreet from events that were
contained on the unloaded dice.
But Hansen's hot summers are not new discrete events at all. Instead, they are the
naturally occurring hot summers with a few extra degrees added to them. The extra couple
