Complexity in a Time of Climate Change

An excellent example of why explaining climate change is complex and not well understood by people who have not yet grasped the basic tenets of science.

What makes the greenup map especially important is that it shows that global warming is not some simple, all-or-nothing thing. It’s always tempting to use an easy shorthand and say that the Earth is ablaze, as if global warming were a switch that was turned on or off.

Climate change denialists sometimes try to exploit this yes-or-no way of thinking by finding one bit of data that defies the trend. A single cold year, or a single place where the temperature has not risen, is not proof that global warming is a hoax.