Climate Change in a Different Way

By Dave Ragazzo

Climate change, or global warming as it was once better known as, has been a huge issue in this country for decades. Because of the increased temperature that the world was seeing at one time, many people began to panic. There has been much done because of this, but what about the people who do not believe this is as big of an issue as it is made out to be? Where do they stand? There are many people who believe that global warming is a huge problem, but there is a small minority that does not believe this is the case.

After the recent winter that New Jersey and much of the northeast experienced, it is easy to argue against climate change. This winter, New Jersey was hit exceptionally hard with three snow storms that brought totals of almost 20 inches to certain parts of the state. Philadelphia and Baltimore got even more snow than that. These trends hint that the winter was consistently cold enough for it to snow heavily and would therefore work against many of the climate change theories. All of this is coming from someone who has lived in New Jersey for 22 years and witnessed possibly the craziest winter that he has ever seen.

But here are some facts to back up my point. According to the National Weather Service, several cities had record snow fall this past winter. Of these cities, Wilmington, Delaware and Baltimore, Maryland had already set records as of February 10, and the entire district of Washington had also set records. As of that date, Atlantic City and Philadelphia were both on pace to set records which they did after the next snow fall. The fact that many cities set records for snow fall indicates something.

But what exactly does that something mean? I am not saying that there is absolutely no truth to global warming, but I personally do not think it is as serious as once reported by former Vice-President Al Gore. I have another theory, which is that climate change is in fact real. The climate once changed, and New Jersey as well as most of the world were seeing different trends in the climate pattern. It was getting hotter, and people did not know why.

However, maybe climate change is for real, and people weren’t wrong about global warming. There may have been reasons for the increased temperatures, but now it is seeming that the climate works more in a cycle and we will always see hot and cold trends. Just because New Jersey saw a cold and record setting winter doesn’t necessarily mean that the summer won’t be record setting in a different way. If that is the case, the discussion about global warming and climate change will never end.