Climate explainers are struggling trying to tell us why it is all our fault that bitter cold is gripping the USA this winter, our fault that winters have grown colder in Europe and the USA over the last 25 years.
Why So Cold? Climate Change May Be Part of the Answer
By HENRY FOUNTAINJAN. 3, 2018
As bitter cold continues to grip much of North America and helps spawn the fierce storm along the East Coast, the question arises: What’s the influence of climate change?
…
The reason a direct connection between cold weather and global warming is still up for debate, scientists say, is that there are many other factors involved. Ocean temperatures in the tropics, soil moisture, snow cover, even the long-term natural variability of large ocean systems all can influence the jet stream.
“I think everyone would agree that potentially the warming Arctic could have impacts on the lower latitudes,” said Rick Thoman, climate services manager with the National Weather Service in Fairbanks, Alaska. “But the exact connection on the climate scale is an area of active research.”
But scientists have been puzzled by data that at first seems counterintuitive: Despite an undeniable overall year-round warming trend, winters in North America and Europe have trended cooler over the past quarter-century.
“We’re trying to understand these dynamic processes that lead to cold winters,” Ms. Kretschmer said
She is the lead author of a study published last fall that looked at four decades of climate data and concluded that the jet stream — usually referred to as the polar vortex this time of year — is weakening more frequently and staying weaker for longer periods of time. That allows cold air to escape the Arctic and move to lower latitudes. But the study focused on Europe and Russia.
“The changes in very persistent weak states actually contributed to cold outbreaks in Eurasia,” Ms. Kretschmer said. “The bigger question is how this is related to climate change.”
…
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/03/climate/cold-climate-change.html
Settled science anyone?
My biggest problem with these in my opinion nonsensical explanations is that they require belief that we used to inhabit a perfect magic optimum.
This theory falls apart with any kind of close examination. Pre-industrial winters, especially during the Little Ice Age, were often brutally cold.
The current trend to colder winters could simply be a fluctuation of natural forcings. But if natural forcings can so easily overwhelm the alleged anthropogenic CO2 climate control knob, is the CO2 forcing really that powerful? Questions might be asked about whether the science really is as settled as proponents claim.
So climate explainers try to relate every unexpected temperature excursion back to our sinful industrial emissions.
If winters continue to cool, as they have cooled for the last 25 years, my guess is climate explainers will have to work ever harder to maintain the confidence of their dwindling audience of true believers.
Discover more from Watts Up With That?
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
Meanwhile – it’s getting even damn colder
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-42569425
please give me 10 billion $ and I will solve the problem! Sure – please trust me!
Aren’t we overdue for another ice age? So maybe these cold snaps are the first signs of it. After all, didn’t the Little Ice Age begin gradually in the 14th Century or slightly earlier, and didn’t that last until about 1850?Besides, haven’t scientists told us that cold periods last longer than warm ones on this planet anyway? Therefore, if excessive carbon emissions cause global temperatures to rise, shouldn’t we start using more fossil fuels to take the excess chill out of the cold? In fact, to be on the safe side I’ll do my bit and install a coal- burning furnace.
“My biggest problem with these in my opinion nonsensical explanations is that they require belief that we used to inhabit a perfect magic optimum.”
An optimum never defined, mentioned nor required as a reference point to anchor that which the globe has warmed from. A glaring omission aout emissions.
Does anyone know if there was also a similar trend of cold Winters before the Little Ice Age occurred?
Bob Clark
My son lives in North Dakota, he said that wind chills up there a few days ago hit 50 below, and then it warmed up to 34 below…
thrushjz – I think you mean became “more boiling” hot as it warmed up to 34 below. Just like seawater becomes “more acidic” as it move from ~8.10 pH to 8.08 pH. It is not acidic at 8.08, but it is “more acidic”. Your son is walking on/wading through snow that is “more boiling” hot.
Bottom line: Global warming predicts climate will look like it has in the past, as with weather. No new records anywhere, except perhaps as measured against human history.
Forget the wind-chill; actually they’ve had DIRECT temperatures of -40, record lows. It’s amazing how AGW’ers keep on claiming “THAT MEANS NOTHING,” when obviously RECORD lows means it’s getting colder overall as a general rule– not just in isolated exceptions.
It is called brain washing It has been used when you want to change your thinking used in all wars and it is being used today
I guess the Second Law of Thermodyamics is “denialist,” i.e. the claim that heat always flows to a cooler surface, and therefore warmer air ALWAYS results in higher temperatures rather than lower ones.
Just like the film “The Day After” thought that the upper atmosphere was colder due to lower temperature, rather than lower PRESSURE, and so the stratosphere froze the Earth’s surface by a “polar vortex” pulling it down to ground-level… because I guess Boyle’s Law is “denialist” too.
I am constantly aghast how Global Warming continually displays basic scientific literacy– starting with scientific METHOD being that the PROPONENT has the burden of proof; as well as the base concept of PRAGMATISM, whereby they have to do so by being able to REPRODUCE the claimed result.
Rather, AGW’ers show a dearth of the most fundamental premises of science, showing them to be simply a rabid cult-mob of junk-science.
CORRECTION TO ABOVE:
I guess AGW’ers think that the Second Law of Thermodyamics is “denialist,” too i.e. the Entropy-law that heat always flows to a cooler surface, and therefore warmer air ALWAYS results in higher temperatures rather than lower ones. As well as the FIRST law of Thermodyamics, that energy can neither be created nor destroyed, and therefore energy in one area cannot be reduced by having MORE energy in the system.
Just like the film “The Day After” thought that the upper atmosphere was colder due to lower temperature, rather than lower PRESSURE, and so the stratosphere froze the Earth’s surface by a “polar vortex” pulling it down to ground-level… because I guess Boyle’s Law is “denialist” too.
I am constantly aghast how Global Warming continually displays a complete lack of basic scientific literacy– starting with knowledge of the scientific METHOD being that the PROPONENT has the burden of proof; as well as the base concept of PRAGMATISM, whereby they have to do so by being able to REPRODUCE the claimed result.
Rather, AGW’ers show a dearth of the most fundamental premises of science, showing them to be simply a rabid cult-mob of junk-science.