Regarding the first link, the UN has and always will be a joke. Their science panels are political entities first, scientific entities second. Climate change is exactly that -- variable change over (great spans) of time. The Earth as a whole is in a post-ice age warming cycle right now (possibly near a peak, but who knows). It may affect humans in certain areas -- some negatively, some positively. Just as it has affected humans when it has cooled. I recently read in a (I believe Nature) article that Britain was almost completely depopulated three times over the last million years due to ice ages. C'est la vie. Humans have some input into climate, but over a 100,000 year cycle I believe it would not even show up as statistical noise. It's only our hubris that makes us believe we can have a devastating effect on climate, or that we can control it. No more so than controlling the after-effects of an asteroid strike. We would look at these things more logically if we looked at them at planetary timescales versus our puny 100 year lifespans.
Regarding the second link, I wish news organizations would not constantly confuse weather with climate or localized events with global events. It could be argued that cooler Southern CA temps are related to larger events as they probably are. The Southern CA Bight is experiencing La Nina, creating cooler than normal water. That, coupled with the fact that the larger high pressure systems have all been trending to the East, is creating cooler conditions for us here. Those same East trending high pressure systems are creating the higher than normal temps on the East Coast. I just returned from business travel in Monterey CA last night. While LA was experiencing record cold, Monterey and San Francisco were experiencing unusual and near record heat as they are outside the influence of the Southern CA Bight.
