"There is a difference between climate and weather! Long term global trends are not the same as short term local events... It is FAR easier to predict long term global warming and its general effect than what the weather in chicago will be like a month from now."

Yes, but you missed my point- it is common for the media to suggest that some weather event is due to global warming- though in case of cold events they usually say due to ever increasing severe climate change, [which is claimed to due to Global Warming].
As we know now, and as we knew, global warming should not cause an increase in severe storms- such as freakish bad cold weather or hurricane- but this hasn't stopped the media from making these and other wild claims which they lay at doorstep of global warming.
Nor does Global warming cause heat waves but they *always* claim this, or animal extinction, sea level rises, or whole host other things blamed on Global warming. Global warming hasn't killed one ant, never mind a human, nor one cent of property damage.
But this obvious fact hasn't in the past deterred them from banging on their drum.

"You cannot say 'That hurricane was due to global warming', but you can say 'We can expect a trend towards more severe hurricanes'. It doesn't even mean that every year will have more storms than the year preceeding it..."

No you can't say this, unless you are determined to be an idiot.

"There is no doubt that 2005 was an incredible year for hurricane activity in the United States. The storms started early, ended late, and were more frequent and severe than anyone could ever have imagined. Climatologists will spend years examining the geophysical circumstances that produced the devastating events of that hurricane season. Global warming advocates will continue to waste no time and blame 2005 on the anthropogenic greenhouse effect. The Gore film (and many others) quickly associated the greenhouse gas buildup with warmer sea surface temperatures and with the development of extreme tropical cyclones. Never mind that the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has yet to predict more storms or more intense storms due to higher global temperatures.

As these latest articles in the peer-reviewed professional scientific literature illustrate, the story about global warming and hurricane activity is more complex than the greenhouse crusade would have you believe. The highest resolution numerical models of climate clearly predict fewer hurricanes globally in the future and empirical studies show no trend in the start date of the hurricane season. We have covered this story over and over, but new articles keep popping up all over the world, and we continue to bring you the news from the scientific literature."
http://www.worldclimatereport.com/index.php/2006/11/29/hurricane-update-again/

If anything, global warming should decrease hurricanes, but if you want to say it might decrease hurricane, or it's possible it increases hurricanes. This *might* be true. But you can't claim as fact that it does.

Global warming per "the theory" should not increase hurricanes, nor increase heatwaves, nor increase tropical climatic, nor drought, nor is it even possible in the short term to increase sea level.
Global warming "per the theory" should raise the frost line- it should reduce the number of coldest nights, it should increase water vapor [therefore increase rain- though it hasn't any indication of increased water vapor]. In other words it should mostly increase night time temperatures in the temperate regions and in general reduce temperature variation between day time and night.

Now the definition of the term "global warming" as I used it above refers to the common/lay definition which means:
anthropogenic causes which increase global temperature.

The scientific definition of global warming refer to a period time which is thousands of years. The cause of this long term warming is not CO2, nor any other greenhouse gas. This long term global warming has increased sea levels by hundreds of feet, it's main characteristic is glacier retreat and milder climate is generally considered a characteristic of this period of time.