Extreme weather

Its June, the start of Summer, supposedly. And surprisingly, its sunny today (Tuesday). On Sunday I had three layers on when I went out for a walk, through the woods near to my house which had quite an autumnal feel (i.e. much rain and wind). Later my girlfriend and I were wrapped in blankets while watching a film. This is after an exceptionally hot and dry April, the time of year you'd usually expect to get soaked, when I was sitting out in the garden in shorts and t-shirt. And to look around the world, you can see how messed up the weather is globally. Yes, Gaia is very angry with us. The question is, is all this weather weirdness caused by man-made climate change?

I have tried to come up with a logic for dealing with the following dilemma: The weather conditions we see are either caused by man-made events (greenhouse gases) or are part of a natural cycle. But seeing as we can't actually prove either way, how do you persuade you average climate sceptic that we should reduce our emissions? Well, if what we are seeing is due to natural change, then whether we reduce our emissions or not won't make any difference, and the weather conditions may get worse, stay the same or get better accordingly. On the other hand, if what we are seeing is due to man-made events, then reducing emissions should stop the climate change, and eventually reverse it, while not reducing the emissions will make things worse. So it seems that even if we are not sure about the causes of climate change (and surely people cannot argue that the climate is changing at present - check out the link above, or look up changes in global temperature and CO2 levels since the start of the industrial revolution), then it seems better to do something about it, because if we are wrong we will certainly face extinction as a race, while the worst case scenario, we are wrong, reduce emissions but the weather gets worse anyway, was always unavoidable. Basically, by being pro-active we are cutting down on risk.

Of course, there is another possibility, that there are both natural and man-made components to climate change. Even so, changing our ways will surely help to improve matters. Not to mention that reducing consumption of resources can only surely be a good thing in the long run. Our economies our mostly fucked as it is - we might as well adapt now while there's still enough food and water to go round.