Holy *%$&! its snowing in Austin, Texas! What do I do? Can I still drive? Do I have to go to work? Should I put on big boots and go buy as much bottled water and creamed corn as I can fit into a stolen borrowed shopping cart? Or just jump on the global warming denier train ASAP?
Terrified victims of SNOWMAGGEDON tremble in fear outside the Public Citizen office
That’s right folks, those fluffy flaky beauties may be lovely to our amazed southern eyes, but to climate deniers they are cold hard proof that global warming is fake. Because its cold outside, so how can the globe possibly be warming?!?! Hah! “Fact” your way out of that truthiness!
***Sigh*** Some folks have a lot of fun busting up climate deniers, but I just don’t have the stomach for it. Far from laughing in glee at those fools who can’t tell the difference between “weather” and “climate”, it just makes me sad. So I’ll let the president do my dirty work for me. Check out this video of Obama addressing the crowd at a town hall meeting in Nevada. He actually does a really good job of explaining the science of “global boiling”, as Brad Johnson at the Wonk Room notes:
…we just got five feet of snow in Washington and so everybody’s like-a lot of the people who are opponents of climate change, they say, “See, look at that. There’s all this snow on the ground, you know, this doesn’t mean anything.” I want to just be clear that the science of climate change doesn’t mean that every place is getting warmer. It means the planet as a whole is getting warmer. But what it may mean is, for example, Vancouver which supposed to be getting snow during the Olympics, suddenly is at 55 degrees and Dallas suddenly is getting seven inches of snow. The idea is that as the planet as a whole gets warmer, you start seeing changing weather patterns and that creates more violent storm systems, more unpredictable weather. So any single place might end up being warmer. Another place might end up being a little bit cooler. There might end up being more precipitation in the air…
So there you have it, folks. Global warming doesn’t mean it is simply getting hotter. It doesn’t mean there will never be snow again. It means that global temperatures overall are going up, and that’s going to make weather all over the place get a little wonky. Like stronger hurricanes along the Gulf Coast, extreme drought in south Texas, or even snow right here in Austin.
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Climate change is real. It’s been going on since the Earth even had a Climate. Climate Change is the most natural thing in the world.
The problem is when Climate Change DENIALISTS like Penn State Professor Michael Mann, and politician AlGore try to DENY that the Climate didn’t change prior to the industrial Revolution (or was it before George W Bush took office?). The hockey stick is a fraud.
Climate is always changing. It always has and it always will. There is nothing about our current climate that falls outside of natural variability. Deal with it.
PS let me know how those wind mills and that Big Brother Smart Grid work out for you.
“Like stronger hurricanes along the Gulf Coast, extreme drought in South Texas…”
LOL that ‘s hilarious (she says while dodging the semi permanent mud puddles and constant rain in South Texas).
Meresa–
Are you seriously calling into doubt the fact that Texas has been faced with extreme drought as of late? Following the events of this year, when most of South Texas was in either “extreme” or “exceptional” drought — the two highest designations according to the US Drought Monitor? This year, when cattle were dying in the fields, ranchers were selling off cattle younger and thinner than usual, and even selling off the mature females that sustain their herds because they were just going to die otherwise anyway? When Bastrop County alone lost 12,000 cattle due to lack of water and high heat? When rice farmers were told there wasn’t enough water in the river to pull for their second crop? When “drought losses” were deemed “worst ever” — even worse than the conditions of the dust bowl and the terrible drought of the ’50s? When the the Guadalupe River was down by 85-90 percent from normal levels overall and totally dry in some segments? Following this terrible, historic year of drought that has been all over the news and abundantly clear to anyone with eyes to see and ears to hear?
I think you just threw all your credibility out the window, hon. Clearly, folks, she ain’t from around these parts…
It’s a shame the commenters here are so wholly ignorant of science and devoid of the ability to process logic. Sadly, the decades-long Republican War on Science is working, but it cannot ultimately win. Most kids today are smarter than the TX state school board, and most can see and discern with their own eyes what’s really going on.
Y’all keep up the good work in fighting the Know-Nothings! It’s trench warfare without end, a thankless task, but unfortunately it must be done.
Meresa:
I never fail to be astounded by these accusations from denialists like you who accuse the world’s climatologists and global warming researchers (and even Al Gore) of denying that the world’s climate has changed in the past. This has never happened. No scientist has EVER claimed that the Earth’s climate hasn’t changed before. If I am wrong then please find an example and post the cite here for all to see. Like all folks who subscribe to denialism you need to learn that simply claiming something doesn’t make it so.
What they do say is that the present forcing of global temperatures by man made emissions of carbon dioxide is having a dramatic effect over a (geologically speaking) short amount of time. This will continue to get worse if we do nothing to address those emissions. None of them deny the plethora of “natural” forcing mechanisms on global climate and temperature (like the Sun). Those “natural” mechanisms cannot account for current global warming – only the addition of man-made global warming gases can.
In your second post you seem to be suggesting that you live in south Texas and are “dodging the semi permanent mud puddles and constant rain in South Texas.” Whether or not either of these statements is true is beside the point, what I find astounding is that you, again, are comparing WEATHER to CLIMATE. Are you denying that many parts of Texas (not just the south) suffered one of the worst droughts in history this summer? A drought we have still not fully recovered from DESPITE recent heavy rain fall (in some parts)? Have you seen the highland lakes? Have you talked to rice farmers who were not able to grow a second crop this year?
Your points are pointless, your facts fictitious, and your logic is completely lacking. Stop listening to talk radio and Fox News – it’s where this nonsense comes from.
[...] SNOWMAGEDDON may have stricken Austin, Texas — but don’t let that cold, hard evidence convince you that global warming ain’t real. Let Citizen Sarah (with a little help from President Obama) break it down for you at Texas Vox. [...]
[...] SNOWMAGEDDON may have stricken Austin, Texas — but don’t let that cold, hard evidence convince you that global warming ain’t real. Let Citizen Sarah (with a little help from President Obama) break it down for you at Texas Vox. [...]
FYI, Grist and RealClimate.org both have excellent information and links to the science, though RC gets pretty deep into the science. Look for “How to talk to a climate skeptic” and other ammunition such as the new iPod application.
There are always deniers that troll any climate science post, almost to the point that I think they’re on the Manufactured Doubt payroll. Its amazing how effectively they blanket the web with disinformation and refuted data reported as fact. The politicizing of it was brilliant strategy. If they had done that with cigarettes (Reagan prefers Marboros) they’d still be everywhere.
And, as an aside, I got my web alias because I like trees, not because I’m an enviro activist, per se. I defend AGW because the science is true and the battle against ignorance is never ending. Argue the conclusions and predictions and fixes, but to argue the science is just so much Swift Boating.
[...] Technorati to read the full story about Bangladesh. Go to Texas.org to read to the full story about snow in [...]
I am a scientist (PhD in Nuclear/Health Physics) so I am well versed in the scientific method (as well as epidemiology, where you look at multiple factors causing a condition).
By looking at raw evidence, (satellite data, CO2 absorption spectra, historical CO2 and temperature data, solar cycles, sunspot activity, etc.) and applying basic analysis techniques (particularly Argument from First Principles), I do not see any real evidence that CO2 (particularly Human produced CO2) is causing any significant climate change.
My main objections to the CO2 will cause catastrophic Climate Change are as follows:
1. CO2 lags rather than leads global temperatures over the long term.
2. In the near term, CO2 levels to not correlate at all with temperatures, (but temperatures correlate very strongly with sunspot activity, particularly in the last century)
3. CO2 absorbs a very narrow window of the solar spectrum, which is only capable of raising the equilibrium global temperature a few degrees.
No one has ever been able to address any of these concerns.
I have yet to see any cogent evidence that human produced CO2 is altering the climate in any significant way. All that I have seen are:
1. Ad Hominem attacks (AGW sceptical scientists are accused of being “paid off by oil companies”, compared to Big tobacco, equated with Flat Earthers, etc.)
2. Arguments from authority (all those “peer reviewed” papers can’t be wrong, only “climate” scientists can understand, etc. )
3. Computer models.
No physical/testable/falsifiable evidence has ever been produced that I have seen. None whatsoever.
Also I have yet to see any evidence that the current climate is in any way outside of natural variability. Much less that there is any evidence of any crisis. More reporting of bad events but no statistical evidence that they are increasing.
There are so many factors that influence climate, but the sole focus seems to be on CO2. All proposed “Solutions” to the so called climate “crisis” involve unprecedented consolidation of government power, surveillance, and monitoring of more and more of our lives. All in the name of reducing one’s “carbon footprint”.
It doesn’t look to be anything at all about the environment. It’s looks to me to be all about control.
Sorry, not buying.
Folks, this lady doesn’t believe that the facts from the past two years of weather in Texas were strong enough to make a case to call it “drought”. Because you know, an extended lack of rainfall and an extreme lack water when there’s usually enough to serve environmental and economic purposes, that’s just not proof enough for her.
Scientist? Maybe. Credible? Doubtful. If what’s plain for the world to see as drought is not enough to prove it in her mind, no one is ever, ever going to explain away to her the science of climate change.
For those of you who haven’t heard the term “troll” before, this is probably a prime example.
Of course there was a recent drought!!. I never said that there wasn’t. Thing is we have had droughts before. I have been in Texas off and on since 1982, and we typically have 3-4 years of drought for every 1-3 years of wet.
This is nothing new. Look at the historical record.
Methinks you are “confusing climate with weather”…
As for the current drought being a record breaker. One point does not make a trend.
All this aberrant weather has been caused by a stronger than ever El Nin’o, which is a warming of the eastern Pacific Ocean waters. This warming is caused by a warming of the atmosphere due to heat being trapped by too much CO2, produced by Man. As time goes on the cycle will increase in intensity and weather patterns will continue to shift from what we have become accustomed to, with violent weather becoming more and more frequent and more intense.
Glaciers and continental ice sheets that have taken millennia to form are melting and receding at an alarmingly increasing rate. This will cause catastrophic problems for Man.
[...] Snowmageddon may have struck Austin — but don’t let that cold, hard evidence convince you that global warming ain’t real. Let Citizen Sarah (with a little help from President Obama) break it down for you at Texas Vox. [...]
Melissa:
One isolated period of drought is weather. Changes in drought conditions and increasing severity of droughts over time is indicative of climate.
No one can use any one isolated weather event to either disprove or prove global warming (the blizzard in DC this year, or the corresponding warm weather during the Olympics in Canada, or one period of drought in Texas). But when you take all these factors into account and look at them globally, the pattern is clear. The earth is warming and the effects scientists predicted would occur as a result are happening.
http://www.quadrant.org.au/blogs/doomed-planet/2010/03/six-myths-about-deniers
[...] equate weather to climate (as many global warming deniers tried to do this past winter with their Snowpocalypse propaganda). Though weather can be affected by climate they are certainly not the same, and [...]
[...] SNOWMAGEDDON may have stricken Austin, Texas — but don’t let that cold, hard evidence convince you that global warming ain’t real. Let Citizen Sarah (with a little help from President Obama) break it down for you at Texas Vox. [...]