Fight Back Blog: Climate:Weather as Tide:Wave
02.09.2010 Posted By: Brian Young
As predictable as swallows returning to Capistrano, a major winter weather event brings the denialists out of ... well, it's not like they're hidden. But it brings out the denials fast and furious, that's for sure.
As I'm sure you know, those of us in the DC Metro area have been getting pounded with snow. After a record-breaking snowstorm in December, I thought we had seen the worst of the winter. Well, last weekend, we had an even bigger storm. Then, with the roads still snarled and the federal government still closed from that storm, flakes are falling outside the window here, the beginning of ANOTHER major winter storm.
And, of course, this causes denialists to believe that this is "proof" that climate change isn't happening. Here's Jim Demint's tweet today, "It's going to keep snowing in DC until Al Gore cries 'uncle.'" Um, ok ...
Climate is not weather. Sure, climate affects weather, but it's not the same thing. It's a little like waves and the tide. Just because a big wave washes up on the shore doesn't mean that the tide isn't going out. It's just that the next wave will be lower, and the one beyond that still lower. The overall trend is in one direction, while the individual events can have all kinds of different profiles.
Of course, it's an inexact metaphor. Climate change effects all kinds of different locations differently. Some will be wetter, some drier, most warmer, but a few colder. The main constant is change. Everything we thought about the weather in a place is no longer stable, no longer true. Crops won't be able to grow where they always have grown, or coastland that used to be one way will suddenly be another. The entire Earth will be destabilized, with populations suddenly living in a place that's different than what the society is built for.
In way, here in DC, we have gotten a little glimpse of what that future could hold. I'll leave you with a picture I snapped last evening in the produce aisle of the local supermarket, a very large supermarket always gleaming with fresh food:
