The topic of climate change is, naturally enough, a hot one right now. But most people who are not climate scientists have a hard time grasping even the meaning of the word climate, let alone the implications of climate change. In conversations with friends and acquaintances, climate is invariably confused with weather (one of my favorite sayings when the temperature outside is too cold for my liking: “Where is global warming when you need it?”)

Climate and weather are very, very, very weakly related. Here is my favorite analogy: The weather is like how much change is in your pocket. The climate is like how much money you will earn in a life time. Of course these two quantities must be related in some way, since I did earn the money that’s in my pocket. But on any given day there is essentially no correlation between the two. And if I want to estimate my future earning potential, I won’t go counting the change in my pocket for clues. So let’s wise up and stop asking the weather man for his opinion on climate change, and don’t even bother asking the climate scientist if he thinks it will be a hot one this weekend. Besides, I live in Austin, so I already know the answer to that question.