One of the most common misconceptions about climate change is that it does not exist because there are still substantial snow storms, cold fronts, blizzards, and extreme winters in general. The problem with this type of rationalization to disprove global warming is that it is terribly short sighted. The advocates of these types of ideas are guilty of confusing weather with climate. As we learned in class, weather is the short term and more variable description, while climate is an overall trend that encompasses a much more comprehensive amount of time. Therefore climate change will be much more gradual than weather change. Many times our climate threats have been compared to the threat associated with smoking as there are variations that both carry inherently. Some smokers live short, unhealthy lives and some live inexplicably longer than they should given their lifestyle. “We’re kind of like the smoker who hasn’t smoked too many cigarettes a day for too many years yet,” Dr. Sobel says in the article. I think the biggest emphasis in this quote should be on the final word: yet. That’s the most critical word because it implies (correctly) that if we continue on the same path, that, like the smoker, we will certainly die from the effects at some point. The odds increase directly as time goes on without cleaning up our emissions. The main takeaway from this article is that just because there are cold days (even if they are colder than normal) there are much more implicit threats when one analyzes the climate changes over a longer period of time as opposed to day by day comparison; long term thinking and consideration of future generations is the only approach that will solve the entire problem.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/03/science/even-in-a-warming-world-it-will-still-snow-somewhere.html?rref=collection%2Fsectioncollection%2Fscience&action=click&contentCollection=science&region=rank&module=package&version=highlights&contentPlacement=2&pgtype=sectionfront