Real Snow, Unreal Paradox

The storms of snow and ice that blanketed much of the U.S. this week became another disinformation occasion for professional Climate Crisis denialists. The cold and snow proves that global heating is untrue, they say. Of course, when intense summer heat waves sweep across the nation with largely unreported death tolls, or kill people by the thousands in Europe and other parts of the world, they deny this is evidence that the globe is heating. They charge that climate scientists are trying to have it both ways, when they are clearly trying to have it both ways.

But people with more of an open mind and actual curiosity rather than fear-based prejudice are learning that the apparent paradox is not much of one. Everyone who has lived in a place that gets cold in the winter, and has paid any attention to the world outside their cars and buildings, has reason to know that when it gets really really cold, it's usually "too cold to snow," as the saying goes. That's folk wisdom, and informed common sense.

The science is also pretty clear in relation to the Climate Crisis, and consistent with models that predict more precipitation, some in the form of snow. So it's been the occasion for explanations, such as this one in England, this one from December which is more complicated but seeks to explain the relationship of global heating to extreme cold with a real world focus, and most recently this one applied to the latest U.S. winter storms.

Since Al Gore went on Bill O'Reilly in the brave but futile attempt to get past the ignoramus mocking and talk about the science in regard to snow and cold and climate change, the charge has been made that while Gore says this is consistent with what climate scientists have predicted for years, there's nothing about it in Gore's Inconvenient Truth. Granted that since pretty much the whole picture was new to much of the American public, this wasn't as emphasized as polar ice melting, sea level rise, or the relationship to bigger and more frequent hurricanes and storms like the one that just devastated a chunk of Australia. But snow is mentioned in the book as a form of precipitation that is likely to increase in some places, particular in big one-time events that leads to flooding (in the book, the section on precip and storms begins at page 92 and continues to 121.)

That these storms are so widespread, that Dallas is so cold, that these snowstorms in the U.S. are happening at the same time as heavy rain and flooding plus a huge storm in Australia, none of it alone proves anything. But in the pattern of extreme weather over time, it's evidence of climate instability (as meteorologist Jeff Masters says), and together with all the other data, it adds mightily to the reality of the Climate Crisis. But even if it alone doesn't prove the Climate Crisis is upon us, it sure doesn't prove the opposite.