rod mclaughlin

You can't make it up XXXXVI - worldwide cold caused by global warming (08 jan 14)

All US states are experiencing below freezing temperatures

Europe is having massive winter storms

Icebreakers are stuck trying to free climatologists stuck in Antarctic summer ice

Guess what's causing it

Counterintuitively, the big freeze across the US could be a result of global warming, argues Andrew Freedman.

Arctic warming is altering the heat balance between the North Pole and the equator, which is what drives the strong current of upper level winds in the northern hemisphere commonly known as the jet stream. Some studies show that if that balance is altered then some types of extreme weather events become more likely to occur.

During the past week, while much of North America has seen frigid temperatures, weather maps show a strip of orange and red hues, indicating above-average temperatures, across parts of the Arctic, Scandinavia, Europe and Asia.

This fits with a theory known as "warm arctic, cold continents". "Such patterns bring comparatively mild conditions to the Arctic while places far to the south are thrown into a deep freeze," writes Freedman.

He also includes a very accessible explanation of why exactly it happened, writing that "a weaker polar vortex was moving around the Arctic like a slowing spinning top, eventually falling over and blowing open the door to the Arctic freezer".

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jan/07/us-polar-vortex-extreme-cold-weather-heads-to-east-coast-live

It's true that anthropogenic global warming could cause cold spells as a side effect. But ask yourself - what if the world was experiencing unusual warming, instead of unusual cooling? The climate change gurus would see it as conforming to their predictions. But the opposite has happened. And they still say it conforms to their predictions. A scientific theory makes specific predictions, not post-hoc rationalizations for whatever happens.

Back

Portland

London