Kyoyo

[Valleysboy1978]

but surely global warming would be felt in localised effects such as erratic weather patterns?

[yrwyddfa]

but surely global warming would be felt in localised effects such as erratic weather patterns?

The world has always had localised weather patterns. We have to be careful, now that the locus of attention is on man's influence on our climate, not to erroneously correlate macro (or even micro) weather patterns to climate. Climate, after all, is a measure of averages over very long period's of change.

A common misconception is the current NOAA predictions of another active hurricane season; especially after last year. Many media commentators attribute such predictions, and indeed last year's observations, to climate change. This is an incorrect view. According to what we know of the paleo-climate record hurricane frequency and intensity reduces in warmer periods, and increases in cooler periods. Does this mean we are heading towards a cooler period? Perhaps (although I do not subscribe to this view) but it is incredibly difficult to measure climate the other way; remember that all things relating to atmosphere, and oceanic coupling is non-linear. This can make things very difficult to correlate one way let alone both ways.

[Shaggy Hiker]

The change will show up in small events, but it will be impossible to say which small events are related to larger patterns, and which are simply localized maxima.

[nemaroller]

You'll all die from a gamma explosion before global warming even makes you uncomfortable.

http://www.cnn.com/TECH/space/9805/06/space.explosion/

Or, 'unknown' cosmic explosions... (the latter only 440 million light years away)
http://www.physorg.com/news11219.html