Weather and climate.(misinterpretation of climatic events to support global warming)

In the debate over climate change, there is an understandable tendency to use recent weather events to draw conclusions about global warming. However, weather and climate are not the same--climate is far more complex.

While we all know what weather is, most of us are less clear about climate. A region's climate is defined as the prevailing behavior of its weather, including variability. Several decades of weather must ordinarily be considered to establish the average conditions and variability of climate.

Thus, the recent record cold weather in the Northeast U.S. does not indicate a cooling climate, just as last year's record summer heat in Europe does not confirm a warming world.

Geological evidence indicates that Earth's climate has varied continuously, warming and cooling due to changes on and beyond Earth. Factors as diverse as variations in sunlight and Earth's magnetic field, asteroid impacts, Sun-Moon-Earth orbital interactions, cosmic ray fluxes, continental drift, fluctuations in sea level, volcanic eruptions, changes in the biosphere, and massive ebbs and flows of continental glaciers, have significantly influenced climate.

Changes in one feature can affect others. During recent ice ages, another factor, greenhouse gas concentrations, changed for reasons that remain unclear. Evidence suggests that shifts in the flow of dust and nutrients from lands to oceans may have significantly altered the exchange of carbon dioxide between the air and oceans.

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