So you know global warming....

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Well what exactly does it mean

It's a reference to the Earth 'warming up'/ the increase in the average temperature of the Earth, especially a sustained increase that would qualify as climate change.

'Greenhouse gases' are often pointed to as the culprit for causing the Earth's atmosphere to retain such gases and thus cause temperature increases.

The increases in temperature are generally measured to be relatively small, and measured over a long period of time such as a century, but if such trends were to continue, there may be damaging effects that could occur to the planet and its general stability.

So do they work out an average then because it's definitely not warmer here where I am

The world is hotter today than it was 150 years ago by...ONE degree centigrade!

That may not seem like a lot, but...when the temperature was only six degrees colder than now (12 thousand years ago)what is now New York City was buried under a mile of ice.

That's pretty incredible actually

Maybe it's the winter that's getting warmer then because the summer sure as hell isn't...well not in my opinion anyway

There's no reason to suppose it would cause every single location to get warmer.

A warmer planet will have changes to air and sea currents, leading to changes in weather patterns. A breakdown of one of these systems can cause an area warmed by them to become cooler despite the global average being warmer.

If the Gulf stream turns off we could enter a new ice age in the UK.

There are some paradoxes. In North America some of the wind patterns in Canada because of warming that kept the Arctic air contained up in the Arctic have broken down- so here in the states we get more blasts of Arctic wind than before.

Also in some winters we get more snow fall than before. Some say thats evidence against global warming, but its actually the opposite. Its evidence that the atmosphere contains more moisture than before - to supply more percipitation. And the most likely explanation for the increased capacity of the air to contain water is ...increase in world air temperature. Warm air holds more water than does cold air (ie has more "absolute humidity"). Global warming causes both more rain and more snow to fall. If the world were getting colder there would be less of both rain and snow. But there would less meltage of the snow that does fall. London England gets more snowfall every year than Greenland does in ten years. But London is not buried in ice the way Greenland is because the snow Greenland gets fails to melt in the spring.

The term 'global warming' has been more or less retired because of exactly what bb observess - the fact that the average temperature of the earth is rising doesn't mean that we all experience warmer temperatures.

The preferred term now is 'climate change' but that's not great either because it doesn't really communicate how terrible things are likely to get if the current predictions are correct.

We're more likely to see increasingly frequent 'extreme' weather events than just 'it's getting warmer'. It's very hard to predict when and where will get what sort of extreme weather but more destructive winds, more floods and more wildfires are already being observed globally.

Rossall is also correct about the Atlantic conveyer system which is already slowing down and could, theoretically, stop entirely. This would mean the gulf stream that currently protects us and gives us a much milder climate than our latitude would normally get (we're at the same level as Canada and Russia remember), could disappear and yes, that would mean an ice age for the UK and a lot of Europe.

The real problems, in our lifetime, are likely to come from not from the weather events themselves, but from massive numbers of people moving because the area they used to live in can no longer support them, due to water contamination and crop failures.

Large numbers of people trying to move is going to lead to wars, especially if fresh water and food are at a premium.

I'm personally pretty pessimistic about the situation. It's very hard for people who aren't being directly affected by climate change right now to understand the necessity of behaviour change right now. Humans just aren't wired for making massive changes that won't benefit them for decades to come (and if they make the changes, they'll never notice the benefit). We can come up with endless justifications for not changing anything.

We also have systems of governance that are profoundly incapable of making the changes on the scale and at the speed required - any democratic government acting with the appropriate level of urgency will be pretty swiftly kicked out of office, meanwhile any autocratic or dictatorial regimes aren't generally known for doing anything other than enriching themselves and their friends.

Many climate scientist say that its probably too late to mitigate against a lot of the impacts we're likely to see. That doesn't mean we shouldn't try.

Where I live (Mid-Atlantic US) winters have gotten warmer but summers have gotten wetter.

Perhaps naively, I sort of hope maybe the Gulf Stream will break down, because Ice Ages are survivable, at least geological history seems to suggest so.

The big dispute comes down to the idea of human influenced global warming. Pretty much everyone will admit that the climate changes, it's done so since the beginning of the planet, but how much is human activity impacting it? I'd say not much as Mars is experiencing the same measure of warming that Earth is.

Interesting, gotta source?

Hmm... search on Utube regarding ice core samples dug so deep, that they are saying they can figure out
eons of environmental changes the Earth has gone through... And Global warming and ice age changes have happened over and over again on this planet, from the Supposed scientists , doing the ice Core samplings from incredibly deep depth in the Artic . But have seen info on ice core samplings for environmental changes several times over the years.
(Would not throw out your Winter coat yet?)

I'd trust this guy.

MY HERO...... Marvin the Martian , has a prominent place on the window frame above my kitchen sink.
but in miniature . And his twin aiming a raygun ! !

The Sole representative from another known of Actual Planet ...That I grew up knowing ...
Almost as believable as alot of the other stuff, I am expected to trust and believe in