PC LOAD LETTER: Is this man made? I really don't give a crap. It's here and it's real. And it's going to fark us up. Plan and adapt, or die.

Chris Hayes summed it up yesterday.

Whether climate changed "caused" Sandy isn't the point. The point is a) carbon emissions are producing a climate with more extreme weather

- Christopher Hayes (@chrislhayes) October 30, 2012

b) with more extreme weather will come more extreme weather events *like Sandy* c) extreme weather events will disrupt our lives

- Christopher Hayes (@chrislhayes) October 30, 2012

<con't> and cause tremendous economic damage, death and human misery. We are presently doing essentially nothing to prepare for this

- Christopher Hayes (@chrislhayes) October 30, 2012

The scale of what needs to change is mind-boggling: a) re-engineering infrastructure b) revolutionizing our energy sources and transmission

- Christopher Hayes (@chrislhayes) October 30, 2012

And yet our elites and the beltway are *obsessed* with the nation's budget projections for 2050 (!) and say almost nothing about this threat

- Christopher Hayes (@chrislhayes) October 30, 2012

*sigh*

Weather isn't climate. Just because we have a few weird storms now and then doesn't mean a thing. "Frankenstorm" Sandy means nothing--during the depths of the Little Ice Age they had record heat waves and killer droughts, one of which set up the Great Fire of London. Sandy was a strange confluence of a tropical storm and a cold nor'easter coming together. That's weather.

Climate is different. Climate is what makes weather. As the climate changes globally, it may or may not impact the weather locally--but what it does do is change things long-term. There MAY be more intense storms, or there may not; but what there will be for sure is things like shorter growing seasons, or extended periods of drought or rain, or decades where winters are a couple of degrees colder than they have been. Those are things we need to worry about, not occasional bad storms or more tornadoes than usual. One or two very cold winters are not bad; a couple of Cat 5 hurricanes are not bad. What IS bad is ten years in a row when the snow pack melts in mid-January instead of mid-February, and then the runoff is gone in May instead of June; then there's no water for irrigation by August and farmers lose the third wheat crop; then food prices go up. THAT is why climate change is a problem. Or if the permafrost in Canada starts to thaw, and we get a huge influx of mosquitoes, and we start seeing West Nile virus moving north.

Not these storms. Weather isn't a problem Climate is.

JohnAnnArbor: Um, odd weather events like this are rare. But not unprecedented.

In 1703, a hurricane hit the UK full-force.

The "little ice age" was still going on. We don't have a perfect understanding of these things and how they work. We're getting better, but saying that these things are a result of Man's Evil Capitalist Ways is pretty much the same as the reactions in 1703 (we have offended the Lord). There's no calculation to point to, just a feeling.

^^^^^^A Major Part of the Problem^^^^^

Um, odd weather events like this are rare. But not unprecedented.

In 1703, a hurricane hit the UK full-force.

The "little ice age" was still going on. We don't have a perfect understanding of these things and how they work. We're getting better, but saying that these things are a result of Man's Evil Capitalist Ways is pretty much the same as the reactions in 1703 (we have offended the Lord). There's no calculation to point to, just a feeling.

[HERO]

JohnAnnArbor: ...or the sunspots disappear for a century starting five years from now and we have to worry about cold. The point is: we don't know. The Earth is complex. So is the Sun. We're getting a LOT better at figuring them out, but we've got a long way to go with both.

Except there's no serious scientific evidence to suggest that's going on at all. You may as well blame it on gamma ray bursts. We understand the climate enough to understand that it's getting warmer AND that it's our fault. I might agree that we can't know beyond that just what it means, precisely how the environment will react and for how long it will change, but change it will.

And we're pretty comfortable with what we've got now. To pretend otherwise is just an attempt to justify doing nothing.

Is this man made? I really don't give a crap. It's here and it's real. And it's going to fark us up. Plan and adapt, or die.