Question

A top U.S. presidential economic adviser once gave a speech in Williamsburg, Virginia (USA), to representatives of governments from a number of countries. He told his audience not to worry about global warming because the average global temperature increases predicted by scientists were much less than the temperature increase he had experienced that day in traveling from Washington, D.C., to nearby Williamsburg. What was the flaw in his reasoning? Outline an argument you would use to counter his claim.

Answer 1

Global warming describes a gradual increase in the average temperature of the Earth's atmosphere and its oceans, a change that is believed to be permanently changing the Earth’s climate. As per the temperature analysis conducted by scientists at NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS), the average global temperature on Earth has increased by about 0.8° Celsius (1.4° Fahrenheit) since 1880. Two-thirds of the warming has occurred since 1975, at a rate of roughly 0.15-0.20°C per decade. Global Warming talks about the Average Temperature rather than the region specific temperature at a particular time. The temperature variance across the Globe is in such a way that there are certain regions with relatively higher temperature and other places with relatively lower Temperatures, but when talking about the average temperature of all the regions at a particular time, we have a single temperature that defines the Global temperature. The global temperature record represents an average over the entire surface of the planet. The temperatures we experience locally and in short periods can fluctuate significantly due to predictable cyclical events (night and day, summer and winter) and hard-to-predict wind and precipitation patterns.
The flaw in the U.S. presidential economic adviser’s reasoning is that he’s referring to the local temperatures (of two geographically separated regions), which is actually an absolute measure of temperature of a place and its difference rather than an average of the global temperature.
As discussed above, whenever we talk of the Global Warming and temperature associated, we refer to the overall or average temperature of all the geographically separated regions of Earth, rather than few. Increase in global temperature means an average Net increase in the temperature of the Earth as compared to its previous average temperature.