Ok, so I'm not trying to be the die hard liberal here at all. If you know me well, you know that I'm pretty moderate in most cases, but I do work for the State of Delaware, and a lot of my work focuses on climate change (and resulting sea level rise) mitigation and adaptation.
That being said, I am completely infuriated by people who continue to post things on facebook about how the two blizzards that happened in the past week, are indications that climate change/global warming doesn't exist (and I'm not posting this because you asked me about it babe:) lol). This is more in the response to someone who shall not me named, who lives at home with their parents and has held the same political views as them, for their entire like 30 years of life, or however old this said person is. Now, I'm not saying that I believe that those of you who disagree with climate change have no merit. There are plenty of people out there that have tried and continue to succeed at finding scientific evidence suggesting that climate change is just a natural cycle on the earth. These people are intelligent. They have scientific backgrounds, and they UNDERSTAND both sides of the argument, yet try to disprove the other. Also, I commend those people who agree with these scientists, or just don't believe in climate change but actually take the time to research the subject. If you look into both sides and decide for yourself that's what you want to believe, then go for it, good for you..
HOWEVER.... Don't post shitty things on your news feed, about how Al Gore sucks (I'm not a HUGE fan either, but that's beside the point), or tell me that I shouldn't be too upset if my fiance goes to war, and therefore want this war to come to a (quick, but also safe and appropriate) end because he 'chose to be in the army and so we can't be upset about deployment.'
Now that I've vented (and I'm sorry), let me give you some information to chew on. I wouldn't have a job, if it weren't for the people living on the coast, in Delaware (Bower's beach, for example), wanting to know and understand what they can do, to be ready for the increase of about 3ft of sea level rise in the next 100 years. Yes, 3 feet doesn't sound like a lot, and 'you' might not think its a big deal, or understand that it is, in fact, due to the increase in temperature of the water (due to climate change), which causes the expansion of water molecules, among other things. Their town will go under water. I'm not just saying that to be dramatic, we actually have inundation maps made with GIS, along with LiDAR elevation data to prove this. In addition, I'm not just unloading this because I'm an activist (I tend to not want to voice my political opinions because I hate arguing), I'm just sick of people who don't take the time to educate themselves on an issue, and then continue to publicly bash all issues that are considered 'liberal,' one being climate change.
Now, back to the issue at hand. Before you talk any kind of smack on these last 2 blizzards, and tell me that it disproves climate change, check out this article by Time Magazine, 'East Coast Blizzard Tied to Global Warming'
http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1962294,00.html
in case you don't want to take the time to read it, here are the high points:
"The 2009 U.S. Climate Impacts Report found that large-scale cold-weather storm systems have gradually tracked to the north in the U.S. over the past 50 years. While the frequency of storms in the middle latitudes has decreased as the climate has warmed, the intensity of those storms has increased. That's in part because of global warming — hotter air can hold more moisture, so when a storm gathers it can unleash massive amounts of snow. Colder air, by contrast, is drier; if we were in a truly vicious cold snap, like the one that occurred over much of the East Coast during parts of January, we would be unlikely to see heavy snowfall.But as far as winter storms go, shouldn't climate change make it too warm for snow to fall? Eventually that is likely to happen — but probably not for a while. In the meantime, warmer air could be supercharged with moisture and, as long as the temperature remains below 32°F, it will result in blizzards rather than drenching winter rainstorms."
And FINALLY, yet most importantly,
"It's a mistake to use any one storm — or even a season's worth of storms — to disprove climate change (or to prove it; some environmentalists have wrongly tied the lack of snow in Vancouver, the site of the Winter Olympic Games, which begin this week, to global warming). Weather is what will happen next weekend; climate is what will happen over the next decades and centuries. And while our ability to predict the former has become reasonably reliable, scientists are still a long way from being able to make accurate projections about the future of the global climate."
If you can refute these statements with some cited information of your own, go for it.
But basically, please everyone stop talking without backing yourselves up with some solid science! The people in the field of climate change adaptation will continue to do what they do to plan for something that may or may not happen, and the people, some of which who have never researched a scientific paper on climate change in their life, will continue to run their mouths discrediting science they don't even comprehend. Lastly, above it all, for those of us who do believe that the results of climate change will be devastating and actually want to do something about it, what really is the harm in playing it safe?
