Well bah humbug to you too, we say to The Atlantic for having the gall to serve up stale leftovers for Christmas, in the form of a piece saying “Winter Is Cooked”. It’s bad enough having turkey yet again. [emphasis, links added]
Must we get this reheated tripe? What’s next, the imminent end of Arctic ice? (Alas, yes from Euronews.green: “The Arctic could be ice-free by summer 2027: What it means for weather, shipping and polar bears”. And from Scientific Communism: “The Arctic Could Be Functionally Ice-Free in Just a Few Years”.)
Ten years to save the planet? With all due respect, and we don’t mean it in a good way, we’d rather have last year’s fruitcake than this warmed-over nothing.
The piece begins with a lovely evocative piece of ignorance:
“Bing Crosby’s performance of ‘White Christmas’ has, in recent years, sounded to me like an elegy. Some people might still get white Christmases, but where I live, in New York City, 2002 is the last time any snowflakes fell on Christmas Day. That is not a statistic of climatalogical significance, really. It’s more like an omen.”
Um look, lady, you’re in the middle of the biggest urban heat island in North America so don’t expect the snows of yesteryear. And the reason Bing was dreaming of a White Christmas back in 1942 is [because] he wasn’t having one.
Probably because he had moved to California, not realizing climate change would make it uninhabitable by 2024, though the 39 million people living there by then would somehow fail to notice.
Also, if you’re going to get rid of winter, or get rid of the economy in an ataxic bid to save it, or get rid of both, you might want to have statistics of “climatological significance” rather than anecdotes or supernatural intimations. However, when she looks up from the Ouija board, she just sees ectoplasm anyway.
For instance, we’re meant to believe that:
“The places with the most dramatic warming are also some of the country’s classic winter wonderlands: In Albany, New York, winter is 6.8 degrees (Fahrenheit) warmer on average than it was some 50 years ago, according to an analysis by the nonprofit research group Climate Central. Winters in Concord, New Hampshire, and in Green Bay, Wisconsin, are each 7 degrees warmer, and winter in Burlington, Vermont, is more than 8 degrees warmer.”
We know, we know, everywhere is warming faster than the average. Also as original as mince pie, and as appealing.
And yes, the Telegraph whined in October that “European ski resorts ‘risk being wiped out within decades’/Slopes below 1,500m to lose snow cover by 2060 amid warming temperatures.”
But if, as the Atlantic writer insists, the whole planet has warmed by 2.45°F (1.36°C) since “the late 19th-century (1850-1900) preindustrial average” as NASA has the gall to claim, and if you believe they knew how warm it was in 1877 to two decimal places you’ll probably also believe 1900 was “preindustrial”, despite by then the United States producing 10 million metric tons of steel a year and U.S. Steel in 1901 becoming the world’s first billion-dollar corporation, then how can it be that Albany has warmed by nearly three times as much in less than a quarter of the time, and Burlington more than three times?
Not siting our thermometers in the middle of urban heat islands, are we? Or in the oven next to that turkey?
It gets worse. The author, their go-to chef for alarmist dishes, proceeds to serve the numbers without even cooking them.
She says, “Snow will still fall for many years to come, sometimes in great quantities”, so the apparent prediction of no snow can’t be tested whereas in normal science, as in life, the proof of the pudding is in the eating.
Here we have grave doubts about the quantity of flour because she goes on:
“But both the extent of snow cover in North America and the length of the season that would support it have been gradually shrinking.”
Yes, that’s her hyperlink, and she must have assumed no one would click on it because this is the chart to which it points (the EPA itself using data from the Rutgers University Global Snow Lab):
Yes, that’s right, their star climate writer looks at that chart and sees a downward trend. And no editor thought otherwise… if they even still have editors.
Even NASA, while cherry-picking 1972 to start the trend, also said:
“Decreases in snow cover have largely occurred in spring and summer, whereas winter snow cover has remained fairly steady over the time period studied and fall snow cover has increased (see Figure 2).”
So in fall and winter, the seasons within which Christmas sits smack dab in the middle, there has been either no change or a slight increase in North American snow cover even if you pick a tendentious starting point, according to the chart she points to as proof of a decrease. Awkward.
But since we must panic, they squeeze in:
“Spring and summer snow cover can have a particularly important influence on water supplies.”
Summer snow cover? In Albany? We think not.
Oddly, Heatmap Daily emailed us in late November, with the usual lack of links, that:
“With a cold front sweeping across the U.S. this weekend, it’s a great time to cozy up with a good book – such as Auden Schendler’s Terrible Beauty, out this week, which urges its readers to become more engaged citizens. I found it to be an especially vital read given the new context of climate policy in America.”
Well, she would, wouldn’t she? But what’s this with cold fronts (just weather, mind you, not climate) and cozying up with a book? Just like the kind we used to have? Say it ain’t so.
As for The Atlantic writer who served up this mess, do not let them near your kitchen. If they can’t read a chart they probably can’t read a recipe, and if this is their idea of breaking news they might well proudly unveil an empty dish and call it dinner.
Read rest at CDN
