Big Snow, Cold Planet
by digby
I know the weather on the East coast is frightful and evidently many of our leaders are convinced that means that global warming is is a hoax. But what are they going to say about this inconvenient truth?
I've been having fun recently mocking the normally weather-obsessed Matt Drudge, as well as the rest of the right-wing media, for having refused to acknowledge the big pre-Winter Olympics story out of Vancouver: The Canadian outpost has a shortage of snow thanks to an historic January heat wave [emphasis added]:
it comes as little surprise that this January will go down as the warmest in Vancouver history. The 44.8-degree 31-day average easily eclipsed the previous mark of 43.3, set in 2006. Since record-keeping began in 1937, the January average had been 37.9.
But of course, that's bad news for Drudge and his anti-reason friends at Fox, because this winter's meme has been that, OMG, it's been snowing a lot (in some place) in January and February, which means (duh!) global warming, or climate change, must be bunk, right? Because if it's snowing today, that means the atmosphere won't warm decades from now, right? (Makes perfect sense.)
Vancouver. Isn't that in some foreign country? What does that have to do with us anyway? Let them fix their own weather.
Update: Oh my goodness. I've really got to stop posting anything the least bit snarky.
I'm not saying that Vancouver proves that global warming is real. (I'm no climate scientist, but I did see An Inconvenient Truth twice and even bought the Melissa Etheridge CD with the theme song on it.) I'm merely wondering, with amusement, how the flat-earthers who insist that record snow on the east coast proves climate change is a hoax will deal with the fact that while it's very cold in DC right now, it's unusually warm in Canada.
h/t to bb