Hi to everyone interested in this subject,
The important thing to recoginize about global climate change is the time scale. Weather is what happens on a daily, monthly, annual, or even multi-annual time scale. Climate change is what happens on scales of decades to centuries or millenia. Within the time scales of climate change there is a natural variation in global temperature as it rises and falls, but what is important is the long-term trend. That is precisely what climatologists are pointing out (see the highlighted text below).
Another important fact, that is generally overlooked in the popular press, is that rapid global climate change (which we are experiencing even as we speak) displaces climate patterns that have been entrenched for centuries or millenia. This causes chaotic (from the human temporal view), difficult to predict, erratic changes in weather patterns. Rapid global climate change also means that there will greater extremes of cold, heat, aridity, and rain that will not be evenly distributed throughout the world. Some areas will suffer from extremes and other areas will suffer little or no change in their climate.
One thing that is certain, is that global sea level is rising, and it won't take much of a rise to displace hundreds of millions of coastal dwellers around the world ( 75% of the earth's population lives within 60 kilometers of a coast). Any way you slice it, the human family is in for one hell of a rough ride in the near foreseeable future. Anyone who is under the age of 50 is going to see unbelievable climate induced changes to the world in their lifetimes.
When you guys read reports that tend to downplay the seriousness of the issue, try to look critically at the reports and understand the nuances of the language.
Gopher's comments (thanks, great post) are also well taken into consideration.
Cheers to all,
Alex (I am a geologist)
Researchers say the uncertainty in the observed value for any particular year is larger than these small temperature differences. What matters, they say, is the long-term upward trend.
Rises 'stalled'
La Nina and El Nino are two great natural Pacific currents whose effects are so huge they resonate round the world.
El Nino warms the planet when it happens; La Nina cools it. This year, the Pacific is in the grip of a powerful La Nina.
It has contributed to torrential rains in Australia and to some of the coldest temperatures in memory in snow-bound parts of China.
Mr Jarraud told the BBC that the effect was likely to continue into the summer, depressing temperatures globally by a fraction of a degree.
This would mean that temperatures have not risen globally since 1998 when El Nino warmed the world.
Watching trends
A minority of scientists question whether this means global warming has peaked and argue the Earth has proved more resilient to greenhouse gases than predicted.
Animation of El Nino and La Nina effects
But Mr Jarraud insisted this was not the case and noted that 2008 temperatures would still be well above average for the century.
"When you look at climate change you should not look at any particular year," he said. "You should look at trends over a pretty long period and the trend of temperature globally is still very much indicative of warming.
