The follow paragraph is quoted from page eighteen (end of Chapter One) of Thomas Kostigen's You Are Here, which I'm currently working my way through. For the idiots among you, I've bolded the last two sentences:
Weather is the current state of the atmosphere with respect to heat or cold, wetness or dryness, calm or storm, clearness or cloudiness. Climate is the average course or condition of the weather over a period of years. Weather is specific, whereas climate is more general. This means that in some places global warming, which is somewhat of an ill defined term...may indeed mean hotter temperatures. But in other places it may mean cold. The Earth tries mightily to balance extremes. On average, of course, the world's temperatures are rising due to climate change. In other words, snow on a mountaintop lasting to May doesn't mean that global warming isn't real.
...So, yeah. We are kind of more than a little fucked, even if some of the data's been exaggerated and some of it's been understated.
Also, new news: palm oil is terrible for East Indies rainforests. Unfortunately, it comes under the generic heading of 'vegetable oil,' so it's really hard to find--and it's in everything.
I used to always post my booklists in November when I started a new one, but reading non-fiction more these days makes me wonder if I should just keep a running thing here; a fair amount of it is recently published. On the other hand, a) Twitter and b) book reviews! (The constantly updated one is on Facebook, for the all of you reading this who came from there.)
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