Saturday, February 13, 2010

A Minor Point That No One Who Needs To Hear Will Actually Listen To

"Global warming" does not mean "it will be as hot as a warm summer day forever where I am, and never ever be cold again." It means that the average temperature of the globe -- remember, the big round thing? -- will go up a few degrees, and so, thus, on average, places that tended to be about 36° F in mid-February will tend to be about 38° F in mid-February. But there will still be warmer days and cooler days, as well as seasonal variations.

So the fact that it snows in the winter does not mean anything at all about whether human activity is causing global climate change. Saying that it does just makes you look even stupider.

Or, to be more educational: look up "climate" and "weather." Read until you can actually understand the difference. You might also want to look into what the climate-change models say about increases in extreme weather events in general -- storms, precipitation, temperature swings. Then come back and we can talk about how Al Gore is wrong because you had to shovel twice this week.
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Listening to: Cruiserweight - Burst The Bubble
via FoxyTunes .

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Dr. Jeff Masters blogged earlier this week about how global warming *is expected to* result in an increase in the severity of snowstorms in the NE US. Higher air temperatures => higher sea-surface temperatures => more evaporation => more moisture available for storms of all kinds. I guess D.C. needs to invest in some plows.

Bill Peschel said...

You must be talking about Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who used the lack of snow in Virginia and D.C. a few years back to bang the gong for the climate change theory.

Then there's that climate denier Phil Jones, who claims that there's been no ‘statistically significant’ warming for 15 years. What a fraud!

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