"Everybody talks about the weather, but nobody ever does anything about it." (Generally attributed to Mark Twain, 1905.) Well, people have definitely talked about the weather in recent decades. A coming "ice age," "global warming," and "climate change" have been greatly debated. Of course, the latter term (change) refers to differing climate patterns from average global warming, and the prior term (warming) refers to the trend of rising temperatures.

Global temperature change is due to many possible factors — volcanoes, extreme storms, wild fires, solar activity, deforestation, fossil fuels, travel, Earth's tectonic plate shifts, global tilt, gadgets, and so forth. (Zeke Hausfather, "Analysis: Why Scientists Think 100% of Global Warming Is Due to Humans," carbonbrief.org, 2017.) Individuals can change some of the smaller factors by minimizing gadget use, travel, meat consumption, and general energy usage, but bigger political and technological limits mean some causes, like volcanoes, storms, wild fires and deforestation, really are immutable. Of all the causes, however, human fossil fuel usage is one thing that can be controlled, even though it may or may not represent a large percentage of climate's problems. (Dr. Bob Thomas, Environmental Communication Seminar, Loyola University, 2010.) Continue reading >