Global What-ing?

In reading an article from the New York Times titled Climate-Change Debate Is Heating Up In Deep Freeze. This article debates the effect that global warming has had on our planet. This debate was brought back into attention because of the record amounts of snowfall that hit the east coast in the last couple of weeks. Anti-Global Warmingists say that because of the record amount of snowfall on the east coast global warming is not occuring. My problem with this statement is that snowfall in a certain region of the planet does not prove that global warming isnt occuring, it just proves that there is record snow fall on the east coast. From what i know, global warming is that the average temperature planet has risen faster and to a higher degree than it normally would.

Reading the article Climate-Change Is Heating Up In Deep Freeze I came across a common problem that I notice amoung my fellow peers. The term global warming is just that, global. It seems that the idea of global warming has become a very local phenomena. Many people now believe that if there is a heat wave, or a large snowfall it is or is not because of global warming. However, global warming deals with the average rise in temperature throughout history around the world, not just in one particular area or one particular blizzard, per say. This confusion has caused me to have many arguments with friends and family, and i dont think that the distinction between global warming and local, maybe somewhat extreme weather, is made clearly enough.