Also took me a second to realize its seriousness (or lack there of). It could have been an Onion article. :lol:
But.....it does hit to a point that I harp on constantly in my classes, (just ask my students!). Global climate change, the much more accurate term than "global warming", does not mean every place on Earth will get warmer throughout all the seasons. Overall, our planet will get warmer, but a warmer world's major problem we'll have to deal with, at least in the short run, is more heat=more energy=more extremes. Hotter summers and in some locations, colder winters, bigger floods and hurricanes and tornado outbreaks, but also bigger droughts, bigger snow storms (remember, to create snow you need heat), and in some instances, colder outbreaks. Some interesting scenarios also predict a warming northern hemisphere will "force" the next ice advance in our "current" ice age (some climatologists believe we're still in the Plasticine, just a brief, warm inter-glacial period!). Look at the research on how glacial melt, primarily from Greenland, could shut down the heat flow of the North Atlantic Drift and plunge Europe and perhaps the world into the next ice advance.
Even without a changing climate, the overall climate over the past ten thousand years on Earth has been comparatively mild and constant. As this is the time when we moved from paleolithic hunters and gathers to farmers and urban dwellers, and our entire recorded history falls within this period, so most humans tend to think this is the way it will always be. I think we're in for some pretty interesting extremes.
Lecture is over, and yes, this will be on the exam. :affraid:
Natch
