Remember all the fuss this winter about snow? You know, it’s snowing in the winter, therefore there is no global warming? What always strikes me as funny is that unusually warm weather in winter never attract the notice of climate change deniers. Like when it’s 50 degrees in December and torrential rains are flooding your streets. But if it snows…
This winter was worse because of the extremely low temperatures experienced by many, including myself. I have to say, it was like the winters I remember growing up. Snow falling, not melting, more snow falling…and temperatures that make you cringe. I found out I didn’t miss it nearly so much as I had thought.
But here’s the thing: because it’s snowing where I am doesn’t mean there is no global warming, any more than because it’s raining where I am means there is. What matters is what is taking place globally and globally, the planet is getting hotter, and continues to get hotter, this very cold winter notwithstanding. Climate change deniers had a field day with the weather. The reaction is typified by South Carolina Tea Partier Nancy Mace, who, reported Right Wing Watch, “claimed that a recent freeze disproved the fact that climate change exists.” Snow in Georgia means no climate change, right?
Wrong.
But it turns out that according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), this January was the warmest since 2007 and the fourth warmest January on record. It was also the 38th January in a row that boasted temperatures above the average for the 20th century: temperatures were 1.17 degrees above average globally.
You have to go all the way back to 1976 – the year Paul McCartney and Wings made it to #1 with “Silly Love Songs” and Elton John and Kiki Dee followed close on their heels with #2’s Don’t Go Breaking My Heart, to find a below average temperature for January.
Think about it: If February’s temperatures are also above average, we will have seen 29 years since the last month of below average temperatures.
And global warming deniers never once mentioned California’s drought. It was as though it was not even happening. But these extremes of weather are predicted by the scientific model. Instead of intelligent discourse, we had Todd Akin (R-MO) claiming back in 2009 that regulating CO2 will make the seasons stop,” showing he knows no more about climate science than he does about biology. That same year we saw Rep. Joe Barton (R-TX) say that because CO2 is in Coca Cola that it is safe and should not be regulated. More recently, we get Tony Perkins asserting there is more evidence that God is behind “hurricanes and storms” than there is for climate change. We get David Barton saying last October that abortion is really to blame for climate change. And we get Glenn Beck claiming those who deny climate change will shortly be sent to internment camps.
In other words, you are not going to get an intelligent debate on climate change from Republicans. And Beck, who is a genre unto himself? Nice a fantasy as this is, it’s not going to happen.
What is going to happen to everyone is going to be much worse than internment if something isn’t done. The melting of the Antarctic ice sheet would mean sea levels rising more than 200 feet. If you want to know what the world will look like then, go to National Geographic and take a look.
Keith Brekhus reported here in January that “the Australian based Centre of Excellence for Climate System Science has released a new study arguing that climate models have underestimated the extent to which the doubling of carbon dioxide will affect global surface temperatures.” What we get in response is the Exxon-funded Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change telling us that CO2 is actually good for us, and that global warming will be beneficial, and that anyway, the fact that the planet is warming and that CO2 emissions are increasing, is not evidence of causation.
When Rep. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN), vice chair of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, says that CO2 is good for plants it is because that is what Exxon and other fossil fuel giants are paying her to say. As ThinkProgress reported in January, when the Energy and Commerce Committee voted to deny that climate change was taking place,
Twenty-four E&C members — all Republicans — voted against the amendment. Among them was E&C Chair Rep. Fred Upton (R-MI), who has said before that he doesn’t think climate change is caused by human activity, and Joe Barton (R-TX), who also questions humans’ role in climate change. In total, the Republicans who voted to deny climate change have accepted about $9.3 million in career contributions from the oil, gas and coal industries, according to analysis by the CAP Action War Room.
If you’re at the point now that you simply want to throw up your arms in despair, or perhaps break down crying, think about the fact that a survey by the National Science Foundation reveals that 1 out of every 4 Americans do not believe the earth revolves around the sun. This level of ignorance might be why the fossil fuel industry has such an easy time sowing doubt about climate change. Think about it: vast sums of money and a gullible audience. Keep telling yourself that as you prepare your family for a move to higher ground. It won’t be time wasted.
- Resistance Leader Maxine Waters Receives Standing Ovation at MTV Movie Awards - Mon, May 8th, 2017
- A Desperate Trump Lashes Out As Sally Yates Prepares to Testify - Mon, May 8th, 2017
- Idaho Republican Claims ‘Nobody Dies Because They Don’t Have Access to Health Care’ - Mon, May 8th, 2017
