No

by Troy Eigenheer

Created on: June 15, 2011

Before we can intelligently decide if climate change is causing the wild weather this year, we must define climate change. That should be simple. Climate change is a change in climate. So, what is climate? Climate refers to the average weather conditions of an area over a long period of time. Weather, as we all know, changes constantly. If it did not, we wouldn’t need weathermen. The fact that weather changes and can be predicted, more or less, is why weathermen have jobs. The standard joke in much of the United States is that if you don’t like the weather, wait a minute and it will change. This is an old joke and not that far from the truth. The weather is constantly changing and this summer is not the same as last summer or the summer before. In fact, the weatherman will tell us when the highs and lows were for this date if we pay attention to the whole weather report. The recent disasters all get headlines because of the damage and death they bring. The tornado that hit Joplin, Missouri on May 22, 2011 is said to be the worst since 1936 and the deadliest since 1953. This, of course, refers only to U.S. tornadoes and depends on the news source referenced. It sounds like the U.S. has had some wild weather in the not so distance past.

Now we have two more questions that beg to be answered. Is this year’s weather really all that wild? Is the United States experiencing climate change? These questions can be answered simultaneously. Where I am, we have had some extreme weather. We had floods. We also had floods almost every other year since I have been here. Most of them were worse than this year’s. We had a few tornadoes. Again, we had fewer this year than in most of recorded history. I thought my memory was bad but evidently not as bad as others’. This does not sound much like “wild weather” to me.

Al Gore claims that we are experiencing climate change and he is getting richer by telling us about it and how to stop it. When I was in school, we had “Global Cooling” and stopped using hair spray to prevent it. I didn’t use hair spray anyway so it was no great sacrifice on my part. I did get tired of hearing from my teachers about the hole in the ozone layer, though. This hole was destroying the earth’s ability to keep itself warm by reducing the greenhouse effect. They had all kinds of data to back it up and we all believed it. Al Gore was still in Tennessee, I think. The global cooling scare went away and most people forgot about it. Recently, however, Al Gore found data that shows that the earth is getting warmer and we have “Global Warming”. I think that must have gone away already as well since we now have “Climate Change”.

Are climate changes causing the wild weather this year? Can we call our current weather “wild”? Is the climate really changing? Sadly, we keep adding to our list of questions and coming up with no definitive answers. Here is another one. Is there such a thing as cyclical climate change as some experts claim? These experts claim that earth’s climate is in a constant state of flux. The earth’s climate is constantly changing and there are some scientists that spend most of their lives tracking these changes. They owe their jobs to these changes, just like the weathermen. If the experts are right, we all owe our jobs and our lives to these patterns of change. These patterns are caused by the very nature of the planet which happens to be why we are alive and the dinosaurs are not.

After all the questions that were brought up and all the answers that were not, how would you like a few more? Is climate change really a bad thing? Do you really want the weather to be the same every day? Does it matter? Do you think Al Gore is qualified to decide what is best for the planet? Do you know anyone who is? As for me, I like the climate I live in and I always have. As for the weather, I can deal with it. Lastly, if you didn’t already figure it out, I will answer the original question and say that I do not believe that climate change is causing wild weather this year.

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