Weather vs. climate

[didymus]

Interesting video that makes a valid point.

But the trendline in the video is not the only one possible given the variations shown, and it does not address how far back the trend (with its own cycles?) goes.

Got this from a very cool blog, Flowing Data, presents all sorts of stuff in visual form.

[Calliso]

I am confused is it basically saying that the weather is trending hotter along with the climate? Which would make sense I just havent seen someone do a graph of it like that.

[svid2]

Obviously, we're heading for the dog days of summer.

[Iron Donkey]

Originally Posted by Calliso

I am confused is it basically saying that the weather is trending hotter along with the climate? Which would make sense I just havent seen someone do a graph of it like that.

In global warming terms, this would say that an extremely cold year does not disprove global warming, (and, of course, an extremely hot year does not prove it). Someone using this sort of thing in favor of global would say that things are getting warmer in general, but that there will be lots of variation and the increase in temperature is slow enough so that a casual glance at a small selection of temperature data may or may not be enough to notice.

Or, if you prefer, "the climate" (a sort of average of what could be going on) is tending hotter, and the "weather" (the stuff we actually experience) is likely to be within a certain range of that average climate thing. So the minimum and maximum likely temperature would be seen as increasing, but whether or not the actual temperature does - so long as it's (mostly) within those bounds - would be random at any given point.

I'm not actually saying that this is going on (I tend to save my worrying for other things), but that is what he's saying, more or less.

[Calliso]

Originally Posted by Iron Donkey

In global warming terms, this would say that an extremely cold year does not disprove global warming, (and, of course, an extremely hot year does not prove it). Someone using this sort of thing in favor of global would say that things are getting warmer in general, but that there will be lots of variation and the increase in temperature is slow enough so that a casual glance at a small selection of temperature data may or may not be enough to notice.

Or, if you prefer, "the climate" (a sort of average of what could be going on) is tending hotter, and the "weather" (the stuff we actually experience) is likely to be within a certain range of that average climate thing. So the minimum and maximum likely temperature would be seen as increasing, but whether or not the actual temperature does - so long as it's (mostly) within those bounds - would be random at any given point.

I'm not actually saying that this is going on (I tend to save my worrying for other things), but that is what he's saying, more or less.

Ahh ok I get it I accept global warming I just haven;t seen one do a graph of weather against climate like this.

[lynnvinc]

Another way I like to discuss it is that the 1970s atlas we got from a garage sale it still pretty useful -- it shows climate, and that has changed but not a whole lot (tho the seed companies are having to redraw their zones a bit to reflect global warming).

Whereas weathermen can hardly predict a few days in advance.....

Or from the social sciences: Durkheim, a father of sociology, noted that even though it is hard to predict individual suicides (and there may be many factors and types of factors involved, so each suicide is unique), suicide rates didn't change much year to year.

He came up with an explanation for why such rates were higher in Protestant than Catholic countries, among men than women, and among the rich than among the poor, and also why they were increasing.

Likewise there are somewhat simpler factors that impact climate (the statistical aggregate of weather) than those that impact the particular weather configuration in Podunk, USA on April 9, 2012.