What is Global Warming? (a simple explanation)

What is “global warming”?

We hear a lot about “global warming” or climate change. Right now, the United States is setting hundreds of new “coldest temperature” records. Doesn’t that mean global warming is wrong? It’s really hot in Australia right now. New high temperature records, they say. So does that mean global warming is right?

(I use global warming and not climate change because the theory is heat is building up on earth. This is believed to be causing changes in climate that are not “natural”.)

Colder temperatures do not disprove global warming. Hot temperatures do not prove it is true. Nor do wildfires, drought, or any other weather variation. Global warming is based on changes in the average temperature of the planet. What does that mean?

Average is what you get when you add a group of numbers together and divide by the number of numbers. Here are two examples:

1 3 5 2 9 summed(added together) equals 20 then divide by 5: 4

2 2 12 1 3 summed equals 20 then divide by 5: 4

5 0 5 5 5 summed equals 20 then divide by 5: 4

25 75 100 -10 30 summed equals 220 divide by 5: 44

15 85 50 0 70 summed equals 220 divide by 5: 44

5 95 20 50 50 summed equals 220 divide by 5: 44

If you look at the numbers closely, you will see the numbers are very different in each set, even though the averages are the same. Which means you can have really, really different numbers and all give the same average. Colder in the United States can be cancelled by hotter in Australia. There are thousands of temperatures involved. This means scientists really don’t know how temperature changes will happen in a particular place. To make this more complicated, scientists look at the changes from the average, not the average itself. All of this is quite complicated and based on math and models. In reality, things are far from certain, no one really can predict year and years into the future.

What does this all mean in real life? The warming predicted has leveled off. Over time, the warming could become cooling, but we don’t know this yet. We just do not know.

Are we having more hurricanes and storms? No, those things are predicted by the theory. They are not currently happening. In some places, these weather events have actually decreased.

Right now, all the global warming is in models and so forth. In reality, the temperatures have leveled off. Are the dire predictions that keep being made possible? Of course. It’s also possible that cooling could begin. No one, repeat no one, knows. To be afraid or start doing drastic things like trying to stop the use of fossil fuels is to not understand what science tells us.