America’s Midwest is freezing. Mainstream media outlets had no option but to inform readers of the heavy snow and dangerous low temperatures.
Scientific American called the current cooling “life-threatening.” CNN reported the “Coldest air in a generation.” Those headlines were not hype.
Yesterday, nearly 40 percent of Americans woke up to wind chill warnings or advisories. Over the next few days, 72 percent of the continental US population will experience below freezing temperatures.
Snowstorms and cold winds blasted through the Midwest on Tuesday, causing widespread chaos. Some 1,700 flights were cancelled nationwide as of Wednesday morning. Many roads in the Midwest remained dangerous to drive. Postal service was disrupted in many states.
Chicago was hit hard. The National Weather Service issued a warning for Wednesday, asking citizens to exert utmost caution as temperatures remained in negative double digits, with wind chills making them feel 20 to 30 degrees colder yet. Exposed skin could experience frostbite in as little as two or three minutes.
Schools remained closed in Chicago, and Amtrak cancelled all trains to and from Chicago for Wednesday. Conditions became so dangerous that Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker issued a disaster proclamation.
The official release said, “The heart of the Arctic cold has arrived.” Daily record lows for Chicago and Rockford, IL were broken Wednesday, smashing the previous lows for 30th January set in 1966.
Minneapolis hit an all-time record low of minus 27 degrees, beating its 1966 record. As of Wednesday morning, Indianapolis officially tied its record low of minus 11 degrees, also set in 1966. And 1966, you might recall, came at the height of fears of global cooling.
Across the Atlantic, Britain also experienced severe cold from the Arctic air outbreak Wednesday. Schools in many parts were shut, many roads were unusable, and forecasters warned of more snow and ice as temperatures plunged across the Isles.
But isn’t global warming supposed to cause an increase in average temperature? Aren’t we supposed to experience milder winters? That is what we were told.
In the previous decade, climate alarmists made bold claims such as “snow will be a thing of the past” and the “Arctic will be completely gone.” But, time and again, their claims have failed to match reality.
Pressed by the need to sustain their narrative, they began rephrasing terminologies. Global warming became climate change. Any cold phase is coined a “weather event,” a phenomenon unassociated with long-term warming. Now, almost all climate doomsday theorists claim that severe winters do not disprove global warming.
The alarmist/doomsday logic is simple: When it’s warm, it’s because of “global warming”; when it’s cold, it’s just “weather.”
As a climate scientist myself, I find it embarrassing to be associated with such inconsistency.
What’s wrong with it?
While the current freeze is a “weather event,” it is also a part of the ongoing long-term climate events, namely the “global warming hiatus” and the “solar minimum.”
The earth has been on a 20-year global warming hiatus. Global temperatures failed to increase at the 1970–1999 rate.
One of the major reasons for this hiatus is the reduction in sunspot activity. This is referred to as a “solar minimum,” a factor that influences the temperature levels on earth significantly more than any other. The “Maunder minimum” brought on the Little Ice Age of the 16th century.
Contrary to popular belief, atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations are not the primary control knob of global temperature.
Despite the steady and exponential increase in carbon dioxide emissions during the past three decades, global temperature failed to rise significantly in the last two decades. Atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations have been out of sync with temperature in the last 70 years. Historical records show no evidence for carbon dioxide controlling global temperature.
The severe, long winter of 2017–2018 and the current historic cooling may be part of a global climate cool down—or they may not be. It is too early to conclude. Climatologists are waiting to see how the next sunspot cycle (solar cycle) will play out.
It is important to remember that the current cold phase (2018–2019) contradicts the climate doomsday theory, which had originally predicted milder winters. It also contrasts with claims of global temperatures rising to unprecedented levels.
There is no reason to trust the forecasts of global warming doomsday theorists. Neither is there any guarantee that they won’t reverse to warning of global cooling, and blaming human activity for that, as they did in the 1960s and early 1970s—before they warned of global warming, and blamed human activity for that, too.
To summarize the current climatic events, we need to ask two questions:
1. Are we experiencing dangerous man-made global warming and catastrophic climate change?
No.
2. Are we beginning to experience global cooling?
If we were ever to be doomed by climate change, it won’t be because of global warming but because of global cooling. Cold is much more dangerous than heat. One example among many: cold snaps kill ten times as many people per day as heat waves.
Fighting global warming by substituting diffuse, low-density, high-cost, low-reliability wind and solar for concentrated, high-density, low-cost, high-reliability fossil fuels won’t save us from warming, but it will make us unprepared for cooling if it comes.
Originally published on Townhall.com.
Editor’s Note: Minor changes have been made to change words like “today” to “yesterday” since this article was originally published on Jan. 30.
louis wachsmuth says
Why Is the Cold Weather So Extreme if the Earth Is Warming? New York Times By KENDRA PIERRE-LOUIS UPDATED JAN. 31, 2019 The answer lies the difference between local weather and climate. Climate refers to how the atmosphere acts over a long period of time, while weather describes what’s happening on a much shorter time scale. …. Some recent cold spells have been caused by a dreaded weather system called the polar vortex. There’s growing evidence to suggest that the polar vortex is appearing outside the Arctic more frequently, because of changes in the jet stream that are attributed to the warming atmosphere. These changes help frigid air escape from the Arctic and swoop southward. The United States government and hundreds of scientific organizations agree that human activities are primarily responsible for global warming. HEY CORNWALL, WHAT ARE YOUR FIELD RESEARCHERS FINDING IN THE FAR REACHES OF THE GLOBE? YOU GOT SUBS, AIRPLANES, SATELLITES?
Climate Lover says
NY Times is not a Peer-reviewed Scientific Journal. If Subs, Planes and Satellites are needed to make any claim, then what gives you the right to make claims? Do you have any of those? Where are you doing your field research? The city that I live in has no warming for 14 years. There is no warming in the majority of Japan for many decades. There is no abnormal and significant warming in Atmosphere for nearly two decades. Current warming began after little ice age in 16th century. There were two warm periods as warm as today’s levels in 1st century and 10th century. Unfortunately, these are not copy pasted snippets from other articles. Likewise, I encourage you to type your own comments out rather than plagiarising other articles. Also, hundreds of scientific organizations believe and trust in Empirical Scientific Methodology – a way of doing science where all established theories are put to continuous scrutiny and challenge. If you believe you have cracked the science fully, you’d be most mistaken. Again, how many subs, planes, and satellites do you own? Many of us do read news, so do me a favor and stop republishing news snippets from NY times, Guardian and other wonderful ‘independent’ news agencies
louis wachsmuth says
So, these guys are all wrong, lying like crazy, darn socialists?
New York Times, Feb 6 2019
John Schwartz
@jswatz
I’ve experienced a week of wide-ranging weather. In New Jersey on Thursday, I woke up to 0 degrees Fahrenheit, roughly minus 23 Celsius, for my morning run. By Sunday, it was 50 Fahrenheit and I could grill outside in shorts. Now, I’m in Utah for a reporting trip and it’s snowing again.
Occasional bitter cold snaps don’t change the fact that the planet is warming over all. NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration have announced that 2018 was the fourth-warmest year in the history of accurate measurement, which goes back more than a century. The last five years have been the warmest five years, all part of a trend that is unmistakable, said Gavin A. Schmidt of NASA. “We’re no longer talking about a situation where global warming is something in the future,” he told me. “It’s here. It’s now.”
The changes are all around us, of course. You can see how your own city fared in 2018 with this feature; about 83 percent of the 3,800 cities measured experienced years that were warmer than normal. Then check out this piece from our colleague Nadja Popovich that shows what’s happening to northern lakes that used to reliably freeze in winter.
In other ice news, NASA found a big hole in the Thwaites Glacier in Antarctica about two-thirds as big as Manhattan and 1,000 feet tall. It could lead to more rapid melting of the glacier, which is about the size of Florida. Also, glaciers in the Himalayas are melting, with serious future consequences for those who depend on the current levels of melt for their water. (If you missed it, please feast your eyes on Henry Fountain’s close look at those issues from the dwindling glaciers of Kazakhstan.)
In Australia, such torrential rainfall and flooding hit Queensland that residents reported snakes and crocodiles in the streets. In Europe, students have been demonstrating over climate issues. And in other news, Kendra Pierre-Louis wrote about what’s killing off the sea stars. (Spoiler: Climate change is involved.) It’s all part of another busy week at Team Climate.