But is CO2 actually Changing The Climate? Think of the State in which you live and the Climate of that particular region.
Although there maybe fluctuations periodically, has "Global Warming" really changed it? When we think of Global Warming or Climate Change it appears temperature is the big issue. There's more to Climate than just temperature, and it would take more than just a spike in CO2 to change climate to any perilous extent.
Originally Posted by Mr MojoRisin
Climate is, by definition, the "average" weather for a region over a long period of time. That time period is generally accepted to be about 30 years. On top of that, it is a slow process. So unless you are approaching 90 years old, you likely aren't going to have seen a very significant change in the climate for your region. Even if you had, because of short term randomness, especially when looking at one specific region, it wouldn't really represent anything because it could be easily just natural variance.
We have to look at the system as a whole. And, yes, over the past 30 years, the average temperature across the US universally is up from the 1970s. There is no doubt that the climate is changing in the US. Most deniers have had to accept the reality that the earth is, in fact, changing and getting warmer. The new denials are no longer that the earth is changing, but that humans have nothing to do with it.
On top of that, if we wait until the climate starts to change drastically before we admit that the obviously changing climate is changing, it is going to be too late to stave off some of the most disastrous consequences. It might already
be too late.
The issue isn't right mostly in the present. We know this. The issue is that we know that what we have already done to the atmosphere is setting us up for problems in the future. We can't just flip off a switch and everything will go back to normal. If we were to continue with our current pace of burning fossil fuels until we ran out, it would be at least tens of thousands of years before the earth returned to "normal."