Our problem is uncontrolled
anthropogenic climate change.
The global temperature is a measure of the
change, but it is not the change we care about. We care about what
happens on the ground at one place and another as the temperature
changes.
"Global warming" is like the fever; climate disruption is the
disease.
You can eliminate a fever with an ice bath, but you'll just
stress the patient. While someone with an abnormal body temperature is
probably sick, having a normal body temperature does not prove that
someone is well.
A lot of analogies are easily strained but this one is pretty good. We're obsessing over a number, sometimes even to the exclusion of the patient's health.
Shifting goalposts? Maybe for you. I said this before the hiatus and I am saying it now that the hiatus is disappearing into the puff of smoke that it was.
"Global warming" is just a symptom.
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ReplyDeleteI recall you saying this a long time ago, but I don't recall when. So, instead of 'shifting goal posts', a word choice that incorrectly implies you're playing a game, I'd say you issued a correction as soon as you recognized the need for one.
ReplyDeleteAn anonymous commenter asks:
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Would you say we have a problem here:
https://www.climate.gov/news-features/climate-qa/whats-difference-between-global-warming-and-climate-change
Given that it's funded by taxpayer money and it's a site that's meant to be authoritative & to help inform, how do we find out what's gone wrong in NOAA's communications dept, and what tools can be used to help find out, that don't thereby become cudgels to be wielded against scientists who are operating in good faith?
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I would say the article is fine, and I would have written it similarly.