Jeez, there’s no excuse for this spectacular failure to understand one of most basic principles about the Earth’s weather and climate. From:
How to respond to people who say the cold weather disproves global warming | Grist
This helpful diagram taught in grade school science, is relevant. Note the proximity of Earth to the sun at the winter solstice and at perihelion -vs- the summer solstice and Aphelion:
Of course, they’ve deleted the sentence in red now. It reads now:
The author writes:
Update: This post originally included a line about the Earth’s distance from the Sun that was an intentional oversimplification, but a dumb one, as (lots of) people have pointed out. I removed it. Your comments about irony and hubris are welcome.
This of course illustrates why GRIST is such a well respected source for climate entertainment. Cold weather events don’t disprove global warming any more than hot weather events prove global warming. Let’s all remind GRIST of this fact come summer.
h/t to Tom Nelson
UPDATE: Must be something in the air today, more hilarity:
CNN Weatherman: Don’t Laugh! Cold Temps Come from Global Warming | NewsBusters
We were amused by this one. In the 1 pm hour, CNN meteorologist Chad Myers was talking about the frigid temperatures in the eastern United States. Guess the culprit? As always, global warming.
“So what’s causing all of this cold air? If I tell you and I look at you straight in the face and tell you global warming, you’re going to laugh at me. But in fact, it’s the case.”
PS: Years ago, Myers dared to be a bit more skeptical on this politically loaded issue.
MYERS: Because there’s no sea ice up in the Arctic, the Arctic is warmer than it should be. In fact, Quebec is colder than the Arctic. When this happens, when this kind of surface happens, there’s not cold air just pounded over here, right over Santa Claus, the jet stream is allowed to expand farther to the south. And because the jet stream is expanding farther to the south, the cold air that should be bottled up here, making more sea ice and it’s not, now expands into China, expands into Russia, and all the way down to the U.S. And that’s exactly the position we’re in right now.
There’s no sea ice up in the Arctic? Could have fooled me. From the WUWT Sea Ice reference page: http://wattsupwiththat.com/reference-pages/sea-ice-page/
It wasn’t an “oversimplification” as they say int heir update. It was WRONG!
Their explanation is still wrong. It’s not about the trivial difference in the distance from the sun, the change in seasons is due to the shorter or longer days we get due to axial tilt.
It seems their oversimplification had an oversimplification.
But they are STILL wrong! They are still saying that the seasons are regulated by distance of a hemisphere from the sun. Fail again! Even a farmer like me knows better than that!
Bloody hell!
So……if it was an intentional oversimplification….then there would be no need to delete it.
“Now give them a little pat on the head ….”
The condescension being instructed there is even more telling than is the poor science being taught.
OK, Grist is owned by the Onion, right? Right?
Oh…
Its the axis tilt, and the angle that the suns rays are striking the ground and the length of day between summer and winter that cause the temp differences obviously, the distance of sun from earth is minor player compared to the first mentioned effects.
It’s a decent diagram, but – ‘December 21th/22nd’ ?
Regardless, 97% of crappy web journalists agree that climate change is real.
Jeez. Basic stuff. It’s the angle of the planet in relation to the sun that decides how much energy heats the earth at any one point. It has nothing to do with the distance from the sun. Nothing. My physics teacher explained it simply to me some thirty years ago. I guess it takes a climate scientist to screw up something that simple.
There is a misprint on the picture. Aphelion is July 4, not June 4.
By the way, there’s a place called the southern hemisphere.. you may have heard of it. We’re waaay down here and it’s summer now. We’re (roughly) the same distance from the sun as you are so clearly that isn’t what causes the seasons, otherwise we wouldn’t have them at different times.
The best thing to do when you’ve said something dumb is to own up to it. Disappera the post and move on Grist. We’ll still disrespect you the same amount in the morning.
Wait, are they now admitting that the sun DOES play a part in how warm or cold the Earth gets?
The earth is furthest from the sun July 4th not June 4th (I believe June 4th should come before June 21s looking at the rotational arrowst!!). Is this an error in the helpful grade school diagram?
Ignorance IS Bliss !
Oh, this one is a true gem ! I bookmark it 🙂
BobN says:
Their explanation is still wrong. It’s not about the trivial difference in the distance from the sun, the change in seasons is due to the shorter or longer days we get due to axial tilt.
And the angle of incidence, with the same amount of sun having to heat a larger area.
Who would have thought it possible for them to make the “correction” even more wrong than the original error? But it is a pattern warmists seem to follow with the historic temperature record “corrections”.
You couldn’t make it up.
You know, this business of saying ‘snowy weather doesn’t prove global warming ain’t happening’ is a funny old thing. Across here in Scotland, people were moaning a few years ago about snow having disappeared in the winter (we have a few years with little snow to speak of around 2003-2006 or so). At that time I remember folks saying “eh, those nice crispy winters, where have they gone eh!”. Now that we’ve had a few years of snowy winters again you hear people saying “something’s up with the weather, remember those nice mild winters we used to have”…
And here’s one from the archives, one of many that people seem to forget:
http://www.outdoorsmagic.com/outdoors-news/no-snow-for-snowdon/4367.html
Now that the UK is carpeted in snow, they say we must get used to snow because of global warming. Human nature is a wonderful thing…
I still fail to see how the earth axis tilt justifies that cold weather is accounted for by global warming. But my head is spinning with so much fake reasoning.
Just to get it totally clear: isn’t it due to the differing amounts of surface area lit by the sun (due to the axial tilt) during the respective seasons. (And I’ve alway thought it cool that you can see the momentum of the system in the fact that hottest and coolest periods of the season lag the solstices)