A proposal: let’s bring back the distinction between climate and weather. Climate regards patterns across hundreds if not thousands of years. Check out the graph of global mean temperatures for the last 500,000 years, which resembles an ECG. With a periodicity of approximately 100,000 years, the planet’s mean temperature has steadily dropped to about 5˚C (41˚F), then swooped up to between 10˚C (50˚F) and 12˚C (53.6˚F), rising on virtually identical gradients each time (without the help of a single coal-fired power plant). We’re now atop another 20,000-year upward swoop — thankfully, since my forehand would be really crap if I had to chase the ball on a glacier. Industrialized modernity since 1880 takes up so little space on this graph that it’s indiscernible. That is “climate.” Accordingly, I even dismiss climate skeptics’ observation that, according to satellite readings, warming has nearly flatlined for the past 20 years, because in climate terms 20 years is meaningless
Lionel used to review for me. She is one of the sharpest cookies on the planet.
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