Explanation of what is meant by climate change and global warmimg?

Question

Explanation of what is meant by climate change and global warmimg?

Answer 1

Local climate is below normal here, Global temperatures are down, Nation wide temperatures are are down, but record snows and rain. Look up the word climate in your dictionary. a fine line between weather and climate

Answer 2

When the earth is heating up they use the term global warming because it is more appropriate.   When it is not, then climate change is used;  that way they can blame any weather pattern on the rise of co2 in the atmosphere.

Answer 3

Simply put, global warming is an increase in temperature of the Earth's atmosphere.  This temperature change, when significant, contributes to the changes in global climate. Currently, we are experiencing  a noticeable warming (as experienced in our mild four seasons) due to an increase in the greenhouse effect caused by greenhouse gases, produced by human industry and agriculture.  The outlook is grim, indeed.  Increased sea levels and flooding caused by melting glaciers are just some of the fun things that we can look forward to.

Answer 4

They are the same thing.  It used to be "Global Warming" back in the 1990's when the Sun was more active and the temperatures of the Earth were increasing, however after 1998, the climate stopped getting warmer as it became stable.

The people decrying "Global Warming" started to look foolish.  After all, the climate stopped warming.  They needed something else to make sure people would feel guilty about s******g up the environment.

So they changed the name to "Climate Change", because the climate always changes.  There is no such thing as a static climate.  

Now no matter what happens, if it gets warmer or colder that can claim that they are right, the climate is changing, and convince you that people are the cause.

It makes no difference that the climate changes wildly on it's own, if you believe you caused it, then you will accept higher taxes to fix it.

Answer 5

First, the earth is not in equilibrium.  That is utter nonsense from a previous answer.  As a geologist, I understand better than most that the climate always changes.  Sea levels always rise and fall.  Climate change is a phrase was adopted by the warming alarmists so that anything that changed could be blamed on man.  Their insistence on blaming things on man stems from their political philosophy but they invariably claim it is based on science.  If it were based on science, they would recognize the many benefits of warming.  I wouldn't deny that humans might be responsible for some warming but I would deny that there is any reasonable evidence that there is or will be any significant harmful warming from human emissions of CO2.

Answer 6

Global Warming and Global Climate Change are considered the same thing, however Global Warming is a oversimplified term and more a buzzword that doesn't give an adequate description of the process of Global Climate Change.

Overall, Global Climate Change is the process where the global average temperature is increasing at a rapid and accellerating rate.  There is little debate that the climate is changing - the debate is over the amount of impact humans have had on climate change, the total costs / benefits of this climate change, and the ability of humans to affect the changes.  

Climate Change has almost nothing to do with weather in any particular place or at any particular time.  Unseasonable weather is not usually part of Global Climate Change and neither proves or disproves anything. Rather, Climate Change is concerned with the large scale systems that make up the world's climate.  Changes like increased / decreased rainfall or snowfall, higher / lower temperatures, or more extreme weather conditions are the results of Climate Change.

When people debate Climate Change, they normally aren't debating the fact that there has been an increase in average global temperatures.  They are debating the cause of this change, and they are debating if this change is simply a statistical anomoly caused by insufficent data or natural cycles or if this is caused by humans and the waste products of our civilization.    

Although I am not a climatologist, I realize there is a universal consensus among experts in the field that Global Climate Change is the result of mankind and that the impacts of Climate Change will be largely negative for humankind.  I also realize that the earth is (or was) a system largely at equilibrium, and it can take very little change to throw a system out of equilibrium.  Finally, I realize that 10 billion human beings and the byproducts of our civilization can have huge effects and do more to the earth in a century then thousands or million years of natural processes.  After all, there isn't a corner of the earth that you can't find multiple traces of human civilization.

Answer 7

A good reason to get federal funding for insane research. Or money imbezlement...

Answer 8

The current global warming is causing climate change, this isn't a difficult concept, it has happened in the past many times and for a number of different natural reasons but this time we are the cause and regardless of what is posted here the majority of the world climate scientists agree on this, including all the major scientific organisations that they are members of. Including the National Academies of Science of all the G8 nations as well as China, India and Brazil. The denier movement can post all the retorts they want but they can't post a link to any genuine site that sides with them. Although many of there genuine evidence seem to lead back to sites like "the Heartland Instwit"  which has no credibility at all.

Answer 9

OK, Climate has nothing to do with weather or temperature now....  What in the world are these people freakin talking about?

CAN SOMEONE WITH A CLUE FIGURE OUT WHAT THEIR PROBLEM REALLY IS?

THE ONLY THING THAT THEY CAN AGREE ON IS THAT HUMANS ARE EFFECTING, (WHAT IT IS, THEY HAVE NO CLUE!!!)  

GLOBAL WARMING NOW HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH TEMPERATURE...  SO PLEASE FIGURE OUT WHAT THE PROBLEM REALLY IS (in your minds) SO THAT WE CAN CONTINUE TO MAKE FUN OF YOU.

Answer 10

In brief, climate is the average of weather over a 30 year period. So climate change means a slow long term change in the average weather.  Global warming is one type climate change, but is specifically refers to warming of the average temperature over the entire globe (all land and ocean surfaces).

Recent global warming (as opposed to historic changes in climate) is understood by the vast majority of climate scientists to be caused by the rapid increase of Carbon-Dioxide in the atmosphere caused by humans burning fossil fuels and land use (deforestation).