Scotland's snow cover is an indicator of what's happening in this planet
It’s a slow and gradual process which means we can actively make progress against it.
https://www.haaretz.com/science-and-health/climate-change/20...
I'm basically saying, change in itself is not a terrible occurrence - there are pros and cons. Stasis or no change, is arguably worse, imo. Must we keep things the same, or can we develop our adaptability? With all our tech, we should be able to manage things better than ever, if we want.
Change is not a disaster.
We can't grow more food when one food growing area is innundated or torn up by hurricanes while another is crushed by drought.
Thanks for this perspective; otherwise I hadn't previously understood why the weather was expected to become more severe with global warming!
Have you seen… the desert?
Climate change will make a lot of places less habitable while making some places more so. Great, it balances out, right? Except most people live in the places that are habitable now, and if the habitable areas change overnight (in relative terms), billions of people are going to suddenly be living in the wrong places. Natural climate change over tens of thousands of years would give populations plenty of time to migrate, as has happened in the past. Human driven climate change over 100 years will not.
But have you seen anything that resembles a rapid change?
Putting aside the media alarmists, I have seen nothing that can't be explained as change. The beaches of my childhood are still there at the same height etc. Yes there have been fires (that I put down to forest mismanagement) and floods which will occur if you build on flood plains and if you cut down trees.
So, I don't see rapid change.
You should re watch al gore's original inconvenient truth film and see how well that has aged. He sounds like the proverbial boy who shouting fire in the cinema. Given his eco-investments, his actions are really better explained as a marketing exercise to will line his pockets.
Another directly-observable-by-laymen example is the start of cherry blossom season: https://www.sciencealert.com/japan-s-cherry-blossoms-burst-i...
It means severe water shortages, mass migration of climate refugees, xenophobia and the resulting political turmoil, huge increases in lung cancer from wildfire smoke, frequent flooding, destruction of infrastructure to the tune of billions of dollars, mass extinction of species, etc.
We don't even know what happens when certain feedback loops get triggered and a flywheel accelerant effect begins.
As far as the planet goes, the global troposphere's temperature has increased by only about 0.52C over the last forty years, as measured by satellite.[0]
We are still coming out of both a major ice age, from 15,000 years ago, and a minor ice age, from 250 years ago, so some warming is expected. These changes are largely due to the Earth's orbit and inclination, and possibly to changes in the Sun's activity. The Earth is currently in a cold period compared to the historical record, though at times in the remote past the oceans have frozen almost completely.[1]
There is always regional climate change. Deserts become wetter, then drier. The North Pole warms more rapidly than the South Pole, and then the opposite occurs.
[0] https://www.drroyspencer.com/2022/10/uah-global-temperature-...
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenhouse_and_icehouse_Earth#...
Climate change refers to the climate moving in to a new state, not the usual oscillation between ice-ages and interglacials which is a state the climate has been in during the whole period humans existed (actually upright apes of all kinds, modern humans haven't been around that long anyway).
Your first link is a well known climate denialist who also believes in other bunk such as intelligent design.
If you read his work, you'll find out that he is a climate "luke-warmer" (like me): he believes that the global climate is gradually warming, but it's not yet clear how much of a part we humans actually play, or that the observed warming is detrimental.
Spencer is responsible for making actual satellite temperature measurements:
Before becoming a Principal Research Scientist at the University of Alabama in Huntsville in 2001, he was a Senior Scientist for Climate Studies at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center, where he and Dr. John Christy received NASA’s Exceptional Scientific Achievement Medal for their global temperature monitoring work with satellites. Dr. Spencer’s work with NASA continues as the U.S. Science Team leader for the Advanced Microwave Scanning Radiometer flying on NASA’s Aqua satellite.
"Climate Change" has been the new term for "Global Warming" for some time now. It is used because it's more flexible - most any change can be reported in an alarmist way. If you want to discuss the greening of the Sahara, that's local climate change. If you want to discuss the global warming of the troposphere, possibly due to increased global levels of CO2, that's "Global Warming", but "Lets call that Climate Change now". All the international concern and science activity is about the latter, not local climate change.
I'm pointing out that the Global Warming forecasts are based on a large number of computer models, not on measurements of actual global reality. You'll notice that the IPCC is gradually abandoning its most extreme models, since their predictions have not actually occurred. It appears that the computer models and reality will converge at around a 1.3C per century increase, starting from 1980.