Some people are suggesting that this cold long snowy winter runs contrary to the possibility of global warming. If its getting warmer because of human activity, why then is this Winter worse?
Well, the problem here isn't with the weather, but with the thinking. For example, people with an agenda and an already given point of view will takes whatever facts are at hand and make them fit their theory - that is their thinking is reasoning to a foregone conclusion. Most people don't think carefully about this problem anyway. Politicians like to have opinions, and anyone can find a scientist to support their ideology (as long as we keep in mind an ideology is a fixed system of ideas that looks to find facts consistent with it, much the same way people can find in the Bible just about anything to support totally different points of view.
Here's some help. Climate is a consequence of a very complex system of interrelated natural phenomena, including what human beings do that might effect it. If we just study the generally observable laws of complex systems themselves, we find that they have a tendency to a steady state, but on occasion will change to a new steady state. When they do undergo such a change, the whole system often oscillates wildly for a time, before the new steady state emerges.
What this means is that climate change isn't going to happen in a nice linear fashion, getting steadily warmer every year, but rather it appears as if human activity has so stressed the whole system that it has reached the point where it has to make an adjustment to compensate for the effect of our activity. Making this balancing adjustment, means all kinds of parts of the whole have to find a new harmonic relationship with each other, and so we get the wild oscillations. Weather gets more and more weird because the out of balance condition doesn't go immediately to a new steady state - there are too many individual adjustments that have to be made as part of the process.
So a cold winter that seems to press the extremes is just a part of the necessary wild oscillations the whole system has to go through on its way to a new steady state. All the recent weather phenomena really only tell us is that the interim period of wild oscillations is at hand, but it doesn't tell us where the new steady state is going to end up. The same is true about the excessive warming. Its just another wild oscillation. We could just as much be approaching a new (hopefully small) ice age, as we could have melting polar ice raising sea levels and drowning all kinds of cities at the coasts.
It ought to be clear, however, that human activity is affecting the system, and that we need to be far wiser about that then we presently are. If history tells us anything, however, it tells us that civilizations don't bother to be wise, for too many of those in power (making macro-decisions) only care about their more immediate short term goals. What this means is that ordinary people who want to survive or be a part of a community that wants to survive whatever the new steady state is, had better start thinking about that survival, and not expect an institution to take care of us. That's the lesson of Katrina - we are on our own, and its time to wake up and do what is necessary as individuals and small groups.
Trying to push Washington into action is really a waste of effort. Might was well try to move the Grand Canyon and the Colorado River to Atlanta for the water. In fact, and tragically, we can't save everyone, because a lot of ordinary people are just as short sighted as people in power. Actually, if one looks around carefully, you can already see a lot of people taking care of business on this level. Civilization is sinking into chaos folks, time to make the right kind of plans to ride it out.
