Global Weirding

Being my first year in Colorado, I have been told this winter has been quite mild.  However, as we near spring, freezing temperatures surround us, while back home the east is having historic snowstorms.  Its winters like these that make people believe global warming is a hoax. They ask themselves, how can the globe be warming when we are experiencing this kind of weather?  Can people take global warming seriously with weather like this?

Thomas L. Friedman an internationally renowned author, reporter, and columnist, challenges us by asking, is “global warming”, or “climate change” really the right expression to explain what is happening?   Instead he tells us to use the term “global weirding”, because that’s what happens.  Over the years we have been experiencing more violent storms, more intense floods, longer droughts, the hot climates getting hotter, and the wet climates getting wetter. 

The NOAA report shows 2010 tied with 2005 as the hottest year on record, this year’s past events, such as the Pakistan floods affecting 14 million people, and Russia’s worst drought in 130 years helps persuade us that the climate among the globe is getting “weird”.  It’s not the fact that it’s just weird; it’s the fact that our extremes are becoming more extreme and abnormal.  If these extremes are the consequences of the rise in average global temperatures, how much more abnormal should we expect these events to get, and how concerned should we be?  On the other hand, it’s not only weather events that are acting “weird”; we are seeing unusual trends in the animal kingdom.  Species are changing range and their timing of migrations has been altered in the past years. 

So ask yourself, is global warming the right word?  How about Climate Change, or is climate change just too bland and less freighting then “global weirding”?  What is the right phrase to describe what is going on with our climate?