Hannity & Other Science Deniers Make Fools Of Themselves Over East Coast Storm

By now, you've heard their sniping at Al Gore and their assertions that the snow storm on the East Coast proves that global warming isn't real.

In fact, the storm proves global warming is VERY real.

Global warming means a rise in sea temperatures and a rise in sea levels. That means violent storms with lots and lots of precipitation. In the USA, the moisture comes up from the Gulf of Mexico and heads north. If that moisture and atmospheric energy occurs in the summer, then you get a hurricane, like Katrina, which hit LA in August, headed up through the midsection of the country at hurricane speeds until it hit MO, and whose effects could be felt as far north as the Great Lakes as heavy rains and wind.

If the same Gulf effect happens in the WINTER, the cold air coming down from the arctic collides with the moisture and turns the moisture into snow, rather than rain.

From the Weather Channel:

A pair of jet streams influence the nation's weather in winter. The southern, or subtropical, branch jet supplies moisture and energy. This southern branch jet stream gets a "turbo-boost" in winters with a moderate to strong El Nino. "Dips" in the jet stream gently lift the atmosphere, producing clouds and precipitation.

Next, you need sufficiently cold, or more accurately, subfreezing air. The Nor'easter and Midwest winter storm, while not directly affecting much of the Deep South, has pulled down cold air in advance of the "disturbance". Squeeze out precipitation into that cold air and, voila!

Simple, no?

At least they've illustrated a simple litmus test to identify teh stoopid.

Sid

Ugh...

and I haven't found anything about Fox News and the others when we had overwhelming record high temps, and storms last summer. What is up with all that. Guess cause it was helping to prove the case they kept mum...hardly ever keep their mouths shut...one time they did.

I was just going to say "boneheaded flat-Earthers."

:hi:

Yes it's simple to someone who has the mental ability to understand basic science and a bit of climatology. But I dare say a fair number of worshipers of the rwing media do not have critical thinking skills.

Of Beck's pretend tears.

No snow in Vancouver and no outlook for any..Maybe they could bring that igloo that Inhofe's relatives built to Vancouver and make their jokes about Al Gore.....Where I live just up the coast a ways from Vancouver, we are having one of the mildest winters on record...

90% of them will just nod in agreement, thinking, "yeah, he's right"

The unusually large amounts of snow are not evidence that global warming is not happening. But they are not really evidence that it is happening either.

WEATHER is not CLIMATE, and if you use an event like this as evidence of global warming, then you don't really have a leg to stand on when someone claims that unusually cool weather is evidence against it. Right? If this amount of snowfall is proof that global warming is real, then when this kind of snowfall doesn't happen next year, is that proof that global warming is not real? Remember the fiasco with the hurricane predicitions?

Weather, by its nature, is unpredictable and anomlous weather in one area is not evidence of any larger trend.

But climate change does exhibit itself in the short term as well. So, I'd have to agree with your point, which is the same point that Bill Nye made on Rachel last night.

Besides, "global warming" is just the layman's shorthand for what scientists call "global climate change," but good luck getting that more-accurate moniker into the mainstream.

As a moniker, it is *less clear* than "global warming" and if anything makes people even more skeptical.

After all, the climate has always changed. It will always change. Suddenly this is a global crisis? Intuitively, that doesn't make sense. The issue really is "warming" overall. Right? That's the whole point of curbing greenhouse gasses, to prevent *warming.* This is only a problem when the media paint unusually warm *weather* as proof of "global warming." If that's true, then unusually cool weather *must* be proof against global warming, otherwise it's not science.

It would be far better to continue to call the problem "global warming," since that's what it is, and be consistent about calling out media who attribute *weather* to global warming OR lack thereof for their lack of scientific accuracy.

He can't mention global warming without making a disparaging remark about Al Gore.

I've pointed out to him that climate change is nothing new on this planet, that it's been going on for billions of years. The Earth was once so hot that people would have evaporated in the atmosphere. A day was 6 hours long. We've been through numerous ice ages, etc.

The only difference now is that this is the FIRST climate change that man has been through where he has a knowledge set to realize it isn't happening because the gods are angry, where the gradual creep of the warming can be projected and measured, and where man is in a position to do something about it if man is partly or entirely to blame for it. If man isn't part of the cause, then, we have no power to change it, and we may as well make peace with what's coming, perhaps buy property in PA so we can leave our heirs a nice ocean beachfront.

But even if one could prove global warming is not man induced, that doesn't stop global warming. It will continue. The deniers and the RWers think if they can discredit the idea that man is responsible, global warming goes away. False problem solved! They don't realize that scientists look at what is ACTUALLY happening to the climate and then look for possible REASONS as to why it is happening.

Scientists see man having a part in THIS particular warming trend. If we can alter the human behaviors and enterprises that are contributing to the warming, we can affect it. One would think it would be the smart thing to do to proceed from this perspective unless and until the science issues a corrective and avers that man does not have a hand in it.

But that's asking science deniers to do something smart.

And the reality, as the New York Times explained this morning, is that the heavy snowstorms on the East Coast in fact perfectly fit into the model of climate change being predicated by scientists:

Jeff Masters, a meteorologist who writes on the Weather Underground blog, said that the recent snows do not, by themselves, demonstrate anything about the long-term trajectory of the planet. Climate is, by definition, a measure of decades and centuries, not months or years.

But Dr. Masters also said that government and academic studies had consistently predicted an increasing frequency of just these kinds of record-setting storms, because warmer air carries more moisture.

“Of course,” he wrote on his blog Wednesday as new snows produced white-out conditions in much of the Eastern half of the country, “both climate-change contrarians and climate-change scientists agree that no single weather event can be blamed on climate change.

“However,” he continued, “one can ‘load the dice’ in favor of events that used to be rare — or unheard of — if the climate is changing to a new state.”

A federal government report issued last year, intended to be the authoritative statement of known climate trends in the United States, pointed to the likelihood of more frequent snowstorms in the Northeast and less frequent snow in the South and Southeast as a result of long-term temperature and precipitation patterns. The Climate Impacts report, from the multiagency United States Global Change Research Program, also projected more intense drought in the Southwest and more powerful Gulf Coast hurricanes because of warming.

In other words, if the government scientists are correct, look for more snow.

http://crooksandliars.com/

They have developed it into an art form.


:rofl:

While here in Columbus area, we got socked with snow and frigid
temps--other places on the planet were hot and some in drought
conditions.

The Hannitys of the world forget the word GLOBAL CLIMATE CHANGE.

Global Warming brings about extremes in temperature and weather
events. Warmth increases energy in atmosphere stirring things
up and creating werid weather patterns.


Global Climate Change Global Climate Change Global Climate Change.