So before this year I was always a skeptic of climate change, never having seen its affects. I mean, the winter of 2010-11 was one of the coldest in the history of my town, so I never really thought all that rabble about too much CO2 in our atmosphere had that much merit. Of course I had read about it and all, but I had never seen the effects so I was never convinced. This year has definitely changed that. My area of the United States usually gets a ton of snow every winter, but this year we barely got a quarter of an inch. In fact, the only time it's snowed since the 10-11 winter was a freak snowstorm that blew out power for a few days in October.

What do you think about climate change? Have you seen its effects where you live? Have you changed your lifestyle at all to be more 'green'?

We had the same kind of winter here. Warmest on record. And this summer has been breaking records so far too, it's not the hottest it's ever been but this drought we're in at the moment, here at least, is the worst I've ever seen here. But I'm not that old so I'm sure there were worse events in the past.

Is it due to climate change? I don't think so, at least not yet. If it keeps happening then I might agree.

Not much of a climate change over here, pretty much the usual.

I can't say I'm being more green than I've used to. I'm not actively trying to be green either.

Still seeing Texas weather, It does feel like it is 2001 around the time it flooded around here .
Haven't been burning tires as much as we used to due to the pityful garden being made in the backyard over the waste pit.

Yeah, I wanted to write this summer off as a coincidence, but I read in time that climatologists have anolyzed the data of this summer and figured the record temperatures to have a 1 in 1.6 million chance of being random and completely unrelated to climate change.

Obviously I take it with a grain of salt, but it still got me thinking.

Texas weather of 2011 was [censored]. Very warm most of the time. Plus - with the very concept of 'Climate Change' you gotta realize what that concept is and what it means.

It means a change over time whose effects will be felt by later generations, one can assume that effects can occur from stuff like the ice being melted in the Atlantic ocean creatin very cold winters and then in the summer we have even hotter summers. One can also go into various arguments as to how our education tries to do a [censored] 'every side deserves a chance!' when it's to not blame the monopolies.

In all honesty if one needed to, one could do their own research over the planet's climate over a period of time.

Hell this is why it's called 'Climate Change' rather than 'Global Warming'.

Honestly, the fact that this is even debatable is just puzzling to me. Of course we're going through climate change, and it's getting progressively worse each year.

Down in Florida, the climate change is drastic. Hot winters, cold/rainy summers, it's madness!

I'm just hoping that we can stop climate change and halt the amount of CO2 we're adding to our atmosphere. Hopefully within the next 30 years, alternative energy will claim at least 30-40% of the energy market. It's a really optimistic statement but if it happened, we could hopefully stop it.

I'm confused as to the reason why magnetic suspension hasn't been yet implemented in vehicles like cars. In Florida, most of the monorail systems in the cities are magnetically suspended, meaning they use magnets to move them around. I suppose it would take a lot of time and money to create a giant metal grid to supply metal for magnetically suspended vehicles, but still. The transportation would be completely clean.

CO2 levels are a lagging, not leading, factor in temperature changes. Higher temps can cause higher CO2. Higher CO2 does not cause higher temps.

Hi. I'm the planet Earth. I've been here for millions upon millions of years. I've seen countless ice ages. I've seen hot spells beyond mention.

Tell me more of these buzzwords like "climate change" and "global warming" and how it's all the fault of some of my youngest inhabitants.

So far we had a very mild summer here, it's like the real summer decided to take a vacation and we got into fall right away Lots of rain too, been some serious flooding going on in this area this month, but fortunately it seems like the worst is over in that regard.

Anyway, the climate very much changed here over the past few decades I've been alive, especially the winters (but the summers too). Back in the 80s we always had long cold winters and lots of snow for months. In the past ~15 years we barely had any snow at all except in february, with the exception of winter 2010 which for some reason was extremely cold and very snowy. Felt like going back to the 80s in a time machine

A-[censored]-men to that. We could drop a hundred nuclear warheads and it still wouldn't be nearly as bad as the Earth's volcanic history. I recently heard someone say something that made so much sense, it blew my mind: We, as humans, are not concerned about the world, we're just concerned about our world. We don't want things to be any different so long as we exist, because we've grown comfortable with our current climate. Well, too [censored] bad, because we aren't going to stop it from changing.

Climate change for me has just become synonymous with the usual talking heads who peddle AGW theories. What I'd like to see is actual care for the environment at a local level, which often seems to be sorely lacking, as well as some serious investment into nuclear power, which is also seriously lacking here in the UK. What I'm fed up with is the useless and counterproductive politicisation of the subject.

Same here, especially with nuclear energy. It's a completely untapped potential that is continuously squandered and hamstrung by politicians. And the technology has improved, problem is, there is no way in hell today it can be used, so we're all stuck using 1970s tech.

It's an El Ni?o year. That messes up climates and increases floods and makes everything hotter.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_dioxide_in_Earth

Are you going to tell me that a winter without any snow in New England is just a 'buzzword'?

SubTonic, I liked your answer. I've thought about that before. Yeah, we really don't want the world we've built to collapse around us. But I think that we could still stop it from changing because of us.

Tandiman1, El Nino does not come into play when discussing the winter of 11-12.

I thought you meant the second part of winter in 12, my bad, as that could have affected some of it, I also did not know about new england, this is mainly a problem in the west and the south.

I think i heard one volcanic eruption outputs more greenhouse gasses than whole human industry since the industrial revolution put together So no, not a supporter of the human caused climate change theory either. Still, that's no reason not to go "green".

As for here, very rainy, that in some part caused flooding that hasn't happened in decades. Earth is just pissed, i suppose

We've had a very hot summer this year. No, I don't think it's because of global warming. We had a very mild one last year.

Sometimes people forget that weather is not a constant. They also forget that global climate changes over time, and that it's not all our fault. Any effect we have is going to be gradual, and isn't going to make us go from mild to record high in a year. Nor will natural climate change. That's chance.

The winter here was practically non-existent. There was very little snow, and when there was, it didn't last on the ground for more than a day. So far, summer is hot, though not really hotter than it has ever been in the past.

I wouldn't know because I'm pretty sure my town hasn't invented the Sun yet so it just rains all the time.

This winter has been very strange as well. Theres been very little snow, temperatures during the day havent been falling below 15 degrees celsius and the sun's been shining most days. Climate change is a cruel beast


In all seriousness, I feel as though 8-Bit Legend hit the nail squarely on the head.

Not true:

http://hvo.wr.usgs.gov/volcanowatch/archive/2007/07_02_15.html