Day of Arcane Light, 9th of Hagwinter, 525 M.E. (Betelgeuse): Hurricane Melissa, the "Storm of the Century," the strongest hurricane to hit Jamaica since 1851 or the strongest hurricane to ever hit Jamaica, depending on which news story you read, has made landfall with 185-mph winds. 

Holy shit.

Climate change, global warming, or what ever you want to call it, didn't cause Melissa. Melissa is weather - i.e., current events - and change of any kind, climate or otherwise, is about the difference in events over time. It's the slope, not the value. Climate change doesn't cause any storm, but the increase in the strength and intensity of storms over time as the oceans and mean atmospheric temperatures rise due to increased CO₂ and other greenhouse gases in the atmosphere is called "climate change."      

The high temperature in Atlanta yesterday was 54°F, seventeen degrees below normal. Skeptics and climate deniers cherry pick data like that and ask, "If the world's getting hotter, than why is Atlanta 17 degrees cooler than normal today?" Those people typically can't be convinced otherwise, and in my experience, no amount of explanation will ever change their minds. 

But the Earth's global climate is a complex and dynamic system, with many, many things going on simultaneously, and while it might be cooler right here right now than usual, on the average, as a whole, the mean global temperature is increasing. Summers are getting hotter, winters are getting milder, and even though it might be cooler where you live right now, there's overwhelming statistical data to show that the average temperature around the world over the past several years is indisputably increasing. And 185-mph hurricanes are smashing into Jamaica.    

BTW, we had 2.07 inches of rain in Atlanta yesterday, which was 85.5% of all rain that's fallen here since September 1. The cloud cover deflected away much of the sun's warmth, which combined with a cold front passing through that brought the rain is the reason it was cooler yesterday, not because climate change is some Chinese hoax.