Warming of the Global kind, pt. 2

This is a follow-up to my earlier post, Warming of the Global kind. A few of my readers have submitted questions, so here are my responses.

• Why is it now called "climate change" and not "global warming?" Did they realize they were wrong? No. "Global warming" refers specifically to the changein the air temperature of the Earth. The phrase "climate change" encompasses more, such as the change in water temperatures. Personally, I think the phrase "global warming" makes it seem like the whole world is turning into a giant desert, it's going to stop snowing all of a sudden, and before you know it, Greenland will become the new Florida. A lot of people thought that "global warming" meant massive, visible changes like a decrease in the amount of snow or a sudden increase in the number of hurricanes. In reality, there are and will always be cold winters and mild winters, hot summers and cooler summers, etc. Although many glaciers are melting at rapid places, there still are ice floes and glaciers with little to no change. We may not even see changes in those areas for several years due to their location.
  
• I still don't think humans caused it. That means we have to stop all this "sustainability" nonsense and get back to the days when it didn't matter how much gas your car guzzled and you could buy whatever appliances you wanted. My response: even if you don't think humans caused it, there still is a change in the climate (with data to back it). Fossil fuels are still limited. Water resources are still scarce. Population growth is still occuring and bringing with it all sorts of dilemmas relating to disease, starvation, and waste. Regardless of who cuased it, it's a major problem, and we need to change our lifestyle or else our grandkids are going to grow up in a giant ball of brown goo.
  
• I believe that humans coexisted with dinosaurs. Since we were responsible for their extinct- Let's not even go there now.
  
• Have you seen An Inconvient Truth? Do you worship Al Gore? 1) I once saw An Inconvenient Truth on TV, became incredibly bored, and changed the channel after a few minutes. It was on again at a later time and I tried to watch it all the way through. I was still extremely bored. 2) Absolutely not. Sure, he's raised a lot of awareness about environmental problems. However, I disagree with a lot of his methods and feel that he does a great job of preaching to the choir while alienating critics.
  
• Recommendations for learning more? Too many to name (maybe a later post). I recently saw Food, Inc., a documentary about the food industry. Aside from the typical montages of chickens on conveyor belts and pigs in slaughterhouses, it provides a look at some of the unsafe and unsustainable practices that the food industry takes. I especially enjoyed their mention (albeit brief) of the effects that corn subsidies have on America, including both its health and environmental effects.

Stay tuned for my 3rd installment of the series. By request, I will be doing an entire post dedicated to the "hockey stick" graph. I just downloaded the original paper by Mann, Bradley, and Hughes and will read it once finals are over.

Thanks for reading...