Let’s start by stating an incontrovertible fact: climate change is real, and has been happening on earth since, well, there was an earth. Now let’s don’t confuse climate change with weather. People often do. You’ve probably heard “this summer heat is a result of climate change” or “I guess all this snow in (name any place) is because of climate change.” No, it’s not. Weather is, as a general rule, the temporal state of the earth’s atmosphere, and more specifically, the troposphere just below the stratosphere. Temperature changes (hot or cold), precipitation (wet or dry), cloud conditions (windy, calm or stormy) all refer to day to day changes and patterns. The difference in weather and climate change is, as you might imagine, time. Weather and weather patterns happen daily, weekly or monthly but climate change is noticeable only through averages of measurements through decades and even centuries. Since the average human life expectancy is plus/minus 80-85 years, climate change itself will be something that affects future generations to a far greater degree than it will anyone that happens to be reading this today - or even tomorrow or the day after.