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Comment by pimmen | Hacker News Reader

And in Nordic countries I’ve honestly heard people say that the fact that it’s pretty cold right now is evidence against global warming. That whole ”global” part really trips people up.

Does anyone know how to explain this nice and clear to people who aren’t that well versed in variances and means? I really struggle.

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It’s more complicated than it appears. Europe, for instance, may indeed get colder as a result of the warm ocean flows from the west being cut off by melting ice from the Arctic.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2001/jun/21/globalwa...

Hot and dry in Canberra today, and the smoke from the fires is insane.

I forget the correct name for the event, but there's good precedent.

At the end of the last ice age, during the large scale melting, there was a great North American lake formed of melt water, held back by glaciers. When that finally melted into the Atlantic, enough freshwater was dumped to turn off the thermo haline circulation (inc Gulf Stream). Europe tipped into another mini ice age, as the whole globe warmed.

"The Younger Dryas was the most recent and longest of several interruptions to the gradual warming of the Earth's climate since the severe LGM, about 27,000 to 24,000 years BP. The change was relatively sudden, taking place in decades, and it resulted in a decline of 2 to 6°C (3.6 to 10.8°F) and advances of glaciers and drier conditions, over much of the temperate Northern Hemisphere. It is thought to have been caused by a decline in the strength of the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation, which transports warm water from the Equator towards the North Pole, in turn thought to have been caused by an influx of fresh, cold water from North America to the Atlantic. "

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Younger_Dryas

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlantic_meridional_overturnin...

Thank you!

It might end up true on average, but my home country in central/eastern Europe (Slovakia) is definitely getting warmer. Long harsh winters of the childhood are gone (having snow 3 months in a row feels surreal these days), ticks and other creepers which were not present in the area I grew up are not very common (altitude cca 750m).

I think what most people have trouble realizing is that global warming indeed is a chaotic shift in many weather patterns and only overall average is rising. Ie it might just rain more during summer due to changed water circulation, which will take average yearly temperature down. Most people equate global warming with less snow during winter and heat waves in the summer and imagine it as a equal rise of say +2 all over the place, spread over whole year.

Farmers in Australia have been pointing out for a while now the higher temperatures isn't the worst aspect of global warming. They can plan for and work around higher temperatures by planting different crops, irrigation or whatever.

What they are finding hard to handle is the increasing variability. This was driven home to be when an interviewed farmer said they plant 3 crops now, whereas the used to bet on one - which ever one would handle the predicted conditions. Now they have no idea what the conditions will be, so the plant 3 crops in the hopes that one will do OK and crossed fingers - the others won't be a right off.

The "pretty cold right now" is the same thing at work. You had record high temps earlier this year. Now you are having an unusual cold snap. This about how the effects the poor bugger trying to grow something.

Not true. We used to have snow here in Finland at this time of the year, but nowadays we are mostly waiting to have snow for Chistmas at least.

It’s “climate change”, not just global warming.

Although this is 100% true, saying that does come across as shifting the goalposts.

Part of the problem is that a decade before I was born, enough newspapers breathlessly reported “scientists” “predicting” “a new ice age”. Despite the fact those headlines misrepresented the scientific consensus of the time so badly that it’s appropriate for me to put all those scare quotes in that sentence, the meme remains potent.

That seems to have been very specifically just in the US. The rest of the world did not breathlessly report a coming ice age. UK and Europe barely noticed. Here in the UK I can remember just two pieces about it, in the end of the news "silly stuff and wacky ideas" slot. Don't believe Horizon, Equinox or any of the others ever covered it, even though there was one or two episodes every series for outlier and controversial ideas, and I watched them religiously back then.

I had a remaindered paperback I bought around 1980 about the coming dawn of a new ice age. Firmly in the realm of wacky conspiracy theory next to Chariot of the Gods, even in the late 70s.

That’s ironic, given that I’m from the UK and it was my British teachers in my secondary school who first made me aware of the meme.

Interesting, I wonder what sources they were relying on.

I recall it as something of a silly minority idea of the time, that had its moment. And that it was just a moment -- far less of a moment than Chariot of the Gods that did get TV programmes and discussion off the back of its idiocy. I don't ever remember seeing it in the papers we got at home. Maybe it got exposure via the Daily Mail or similar lover of fake and dodgy news or outrage - never read those.

It was only much, much later I heard it was taken far more seriously in the US, with pieces in media that should perhaps have known better, or checked sources...

Call it global warming. If you call it climate change it means that you are admitting global warming is not real. Global warming is subset of climate change, it is perfectly ok to discuss global warming without discussing climate change.

It's actually global warming, because the globe is warming _as a whole_.

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