Global Warming Quiz

The Commons Blog: There's a challenge in this: not insuperable to tose of us who do believe global warming is a fact, but it is good to engage with our detractors. I think that the answer to this is that the 'little ice age' in north western Europe was a local phenomenon caused by, probably, changes associated with the Gulf stream. A single piece of data like this doesn't disprove that global warming takes place, only that we live in a complext climate system where local factors can over-ride global trends at particular times and in particular places. Of course this complexity can produce paradoxes whereby some times and places experience reversals of the warming trend as weather patterns shift. There is still little doubt that the overall trend in climate has been to increase temprature as carbon that was sequestered during the carboniferous [when temperatures assisted by that same carbon, presumably] period has been released back into the modern atmosphere.. These attempts to use the local and exceptional do not in fact disprove the rule; they are part of the the rule but at a greater level of complexity than is being allowed for.