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SALT LAKE CITY -- Certainly strange weather we're having, and the longer it stays strange, the more people start wondering if it has anything to do with long-term climate change.
Across the world, weather conditions are a matter of higher-than-normal interest, according to the data accumulated by Google on the frequency of internet search terms. And a scan of recent news stories reveals more people are connecting the dots, or trying to. As one may expect, those who think it's important to sound the alarm on climate change are pointing to a scary spate of tornadoes and historic flooding as real world evidence.
Scientists tend to look beyond anecdotes for real data, and caution that no single event proves a pattern; that statistical evidence needs to accumulate over decades, at least. A climatologist in California says that weird weather is simply weird weather. "So don't confuse it too much with global warming."
But one meteorologist is circulating an argument that specifically relates recent weather patterns to long-term change.
Those who frame it as a political issue probably ought to stay out of the discussion. When heavy snow fell all winter on the east coast, Sen. Jim DeMint of South Carolina joked in a tweet, "It's going to keep snowing until Al Gore cries ‘uncle.'"
It would not be intellectually honest to imply a snowy winter is enough to debunk global warming, and then turn around and say historic floods and tornadoes aren't evidence of climate change.
The strange spring of 2011 may someday be seen as a harbinger of changing climate patterns, or not. What's your opinion? Feel free to weigh in on our poll.
Email: cpsarras@ksl.com
