Global Warming Is Over, Part Deux

When somebody says global warming ain't so, take this advice (right).>

Somebody is going to have to define "weather" and "climate" for the lovely people who are insisting that because we've had some snow this winter, global warming must either be over or all those scientists were wrong in the first place. A story in the NYTimes this a.m. (here) tells us that the anti camp is newly armed with strong evidence that there is no warming because we have gobs of snow in the East. The Virginia Republican Party has been all over this with a YouTube posting (here) for days now.

As The Times points out, however, "Most climate scientists respond that the ferocious storms are consistent with forecasts that a heating planet will produce more frequent and more intense weather events ... independent climate experts say the blizzards in the Northeast no more prove that the planet is cooling than the lack of snow in Vancouver or the downpours in Southern California prove that it is warming." The "most" in this case is a newspaper "most" like the newspaper "some critics say," which implies that somebody, sometime, somewhere might have made a stupid claim, so we'd better cover our butt with a disclaimer.