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What signs of 'global warming' have you witnessed for yourself?

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wildbill8336-40, M
Any greenies out there want to explain what ended the last ice age? I'm no climatologist, but I'm pretty sure it wasn't cave man coal plants... 馃
@wildbill83 lolz 馃ぃ
pennynoodles56-60, F
Good point.@wildbill83
ArishMell70-79, M
@wildbill83 No, of course not; and that may not have been the end of "the Ice Age". That was part of a natural cycle and we are still in THE Ice Age (a cycle of cold and warm phases with periods of hundreds of thousands of years).

Whether we are in another interglacial or at the end of the entire oscillation is another matter.

Obviously we can do nothing about those.

The difficulty is that whatever the natural warming rate should be at the moment, only 10 000 to 12 000 years after the last glaciation is considered to have ended, human activities have greatly increased that rate.

There are those who question that, some from genuine scientific concerns but most from political and/or commercial interests; but the scientific consensus world-wide does agree the human effect.

Whether extreme events like the droughts and heat-waves that encouraged the recent fires in California or Australia, or more vague changes like less distinct seasons in temperate regions like the British Isles, really are due to climate change is a moot point. However, they are [i]weather[/i] changes, and could well be due to [i]climate[/i] change.

What counts though are mean atmospheric conditions and ocean temperatures; and their context against reliable, detailed weather data collected since the 19C when they became possible. (More anecdotal accounts going back centuries are useful too but these lack detail such as actual temperatures.)

It's important to realise the significance when scientists talk of a mean temperature rise in the air or seas of what seems a tiny 1 or 2 degrees Celsius (the scale formerly called "Centigrade"). To gain that rise in [i]temperature [/i], shows the atmosphere and oceans have absorbed a gigantic amount of extra[i]heat [/i]energy to drive the [i]climate[/i] according largely to latitude, and from that, the regional [i]weather[/i].
SW-User
@wildbill83 you made the point actually, thanks
MagentaF
@wildbill83 馃槃 Haha, indeed.