Climate change: The ‘cold winter’ debate

As storms sent temperatures plunging from Chicago to Mexico, skeptics gleefully ridiculed the idea of a warming planet.

“If global warming is real, then why is it cold out?” said Scott Bixby in TheDailyBeast.com. That’s the mocking question posed by climate trolls whenever the thermometer drops—and especially during this frigid winter.As storms transformed Georgia into “IcePocalypseMageddon” and a “polar vortex” sent temperatures plunging from Chicago to Mexico, skeptics across the country gleefully ridiculed the idea of a warming planet. “This very expensive GLOBAL WARMING bulls--- has got to stop,” tweeted that great scientific mind, Donald Trump. “Our planet is freezing, record low temps, and our GW scientists are stuck in ice.” What the skeptics are forgetting, said Justin Gillis in NYTimes.com, is the “global” part of “global warming.” Yes, the American South has been colder than average this winter, but Alaska and parts of Russia have been “downright balmy,” and Australia has sizzled in temperatures of 113 degrees. Taken as a whole, “the world really is warming up.”

How can you be so sure? asked Larry Bell in Forbes.com. For years, many respected climate scientists predicted that due to sunspot cycles, the earth was about to enter a long-term cooling cycle—a “Little Ice Age.” Could that explain why the slight warming trend seen up to 1998 has gone into a perplexing “pause”—and why it recently snowed in Florida? The “Four-Alarm Fire Brigade” hysterics won’t even consider such a possibility. You have to give the alarmists credit, said Charles C.W. Cooke in NationalReview.com. By changing their branding from the ironclad prediction of “global warming” to the beautifully ambiguous “climate change,” the scaremongers can point to any weather event—from Hurricane Sandy to droughts to floods—to support their prediction of “the end times.”

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE
https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/flexiimages/jacafc5zvs1692883516.jpg

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up