Weather and Climate

"Whatever happened to global warming?" -- Mocker in Chief Donald Trump, commenting on a cold snap in America.

   Regardless of what some people may claim, weather and climate are not the same.
   They are not interchangeable terms because they refer to different time frames. Weather deals with daily changes, while climate refers to seasonal or yearly weather conditions.
   For example, temperatures in Florida rarely dip below freezing, while in Maine, that level is common in winter months. For that matter, Florida does not have a winter, while most parts of the North have four seasons. Other parts of the world have just two -- rainy and dry -- and some have only one climate, when it is hot and dry all year.
   Meanwhile, there are many folks alive today who can remember when temperatures of zero degrees Fahrenheit  or below were common. Now, the average temperature in many regions of America is well above what it was  50 years ago.
   And that is the point of climate change. The average seasonal temperature has reason substantially over the years, as documented by those who monitor such things.
   They're called scientists, and they document things that many of us already know -- in this case, the reality that average temperatures over time have risen, that there are differences in rain and snow levels, and that this means the climate is changing.
   In Northern New Jersey in 1960, for example, there were about seven days when the temperature reached 90 degrees or above. Now, the region experiences some eleven days yearly of such not weather.
    So the issue is not whether climates worldwide are changing, but why. Climate is a yearly pattern, that pattern is changing, and the evidence points to the activities of  "civilized" man.