Climate crisis: ‘Weather,’ ‘climate’ aren’t interchangeable - The Seattle Times
Climate crisis: ‘Weather,’ ‘climate’ aren’t interchangeable | The Seattle Times
Re: “ We should politicize the weather” [July 19, Opinion]:
Please, politicians, columnists and everyone, understand that the words weather and climate are not interchangeable. Weather is what is happening today — hot/cold, wet/dry, cloudy/sunny, windy or not, etc. Climate is the averaging of weather over time.
I assume because columnist Paul Krugman talks about Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis saying that he “ … rejected the politicization of the weather” is why Krugman also ends his column that way to say we should politicize it. But it is climate, and more specifically climate change, that needs to be a major part of political conversation as an existential threat to our life on Earth.
An old-time saying is that “nobody can change the weather,” and that is true. What humans have the opportunity is to make differences in the future of the climate, and that is what we should not just be discussing but should be taking serious action to promote changes to it.
Richard Osen, Bellingham
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