The Weather.

[miasmum]

Wow Weka you obviously downplay it too much which is why I hadnt picked up on it

[Suff]

Just to add a little bit to what WM has said.

Global means Global and it's the part that never really gets recognition in the press. Whilst we bask in a mild autumn, someone else is in serious drought, or massive storms or super warm Arctic (this year), or massive fires (California), or the huge territorial fights going on over the Colorado Basin water rights, or lack of water rights as it will soon become (almost never covered in the UK press).

El Nino in the US may mean drought and fire and hot temperatures on the West coast, but it will also mean cold and wet and stormy on the east coast, 3,000 miles away. Our press chooses to focus on what they want us to hear.

The Horn of Africa, remember Band Aid in the 80's? That was a 10 year drought which Global Warming made worse. Since then it has become the 5 year drought, the 2 year drought and the 18month drought. More than 2 Million people are currently displaced in the Horn of Africa because their homelands are now desert.

China loses 140 villages per year to Desert encroachment. Nothing they can do about it but move the villages. It is one of the reasons they are finally waking up about the climatic impacts of global warming.

Never mind the cataclysmic changes in the ice shelves holding back the Greenland and Antarctic glaciers. Or the loss of land based glaciers.

Even in Britain the Skiing season in Scotland is massively curtailed and accidents are starting to happen. The season is so short and so extreme that the equipment gets twice the usage in a short amount of time and half the maintenance. Causing accidents. Of course they are recorded as accidents and not a result of Global Warming.

Today, if you need to know the impacts of Global Warming, you need to go and research it all yourself on a foundation of knowledge that you have had to ferret out yourself. You also have to learn to read the press and understand what they are not saying about events and incidents. Also when they choose to just "cut off" a story because it's no longer "news". It doesn't mean it's not happening, it just means that they won't make enough money out of going on about it.

The sad fact is this. Every Single Extreme Weather event is now climate related. There is no longer any getting away from it. We have altered the climate (and continue to do so year on year) and the end result is more extreme weather. Hot or cold, wet or dry, it is now being overwhelmed by the changes we have made in the climate.

Every year more of the heat from the sun is held In the planet by the 120ppm extra CO2 we have in the atmosphere over the norm for the last 800,000 years. Every year we now average just over 2ppm CO2 (decadal average, 2014 was 2.5), in addition to that we have already put up there. Every year that heat increases. It's a big system and it moves around. But there is no getting away from it. The planet will continue to warm every single year for the next 100 to 1,000 years if we stop every car, every factory and every power station tomorrow.

That heat changes the climate. Climate determines our weather events.

This is all without factoring in the 30 year heat cycle in the oceans or the fact that the current Super El Nino is being created from heat sequestered in the mid 1980's at CO2 levels only 65ppm over pre industrial.

Think 98 in 2028 at 96ppm and massive heat wave.
Think 2015 in 2045 with 2014 and 2015 both being warmer than 1998 and both being hottest years on record globally and both being around 120ppm over the pre industrial average.

Almost nobody wants to say this out loud, least of all the scientists who don't want to be blamed for something they are not in control of (shoot the messenger), but it is, nevertheless, true.

Think is sounds impossible? Think it sounds too horrible to be true? Think that in 2045 we will be over 460ppm CO2, nearly 200ppm over the per industrial average of 280ppm, or heading on for a doubling of CO2 forcing.... Think that without CO2 our planet would be -10c all year round and that with too much CO2 it will be like the times of the primeval swamps.

All locked in. All in the system today. No reprieve and no escape. All the climate conferences in the world are discussing is how to not make it "much worse" than it already is.

I'll take my optimism and try and drown it in a dram now......