“Natural forces causing climate change such as solar sunspots, earth’s orbit changes, ocean currents, volcanoes, etc. are considered unimportant during this period of increased fossil-fuel-produced carbon dioxide (mid-20th century to the present). This is a serious distortion of the simple meaning of the term climate change.”
On March 31, the New York Times featured an article by Justin Gillis “Panel’s Warning on Climate Risk: Worst is Yet to Come” that reported findings in the just released UN IPCC Working Group II report “Climate Change 2014: Impacts, Adaption, and Vulnerability”.
The 44-page Summary For Policymakers defines climate change as follows:
…Note that the Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), in its Article 1, defines climate change as: “a change of climate which is attributed directly or indirectly to human activity that alters the composition of the global atmosphere and which is in addition to natural climate variability observed over comparable time periods.”