Tuesday 7 January 2014

Baby It's Cold Outside, and Might Be Even Worse without Climate Change

A fascinating analysis from the Washington Post about the current cold wave across North America.  Isn't the first time, and won't be the last time, but it has nothing to do with climate change. 

Jason Samenow writes: "Were  it not for the build-up of manmade greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, I’d posit the extreme cold events we witness now would be even colder. In other words, take these same cold air outbreaks and project them on the climate of the 1800s, and they’d be more severe. We’d need a model to test that, but it’s an educated guess.)

The truth is that increasing greenhouse gases act to warm the globe and, on average over time, should take an edge off the cold.  But the planet is a really big, complicated place and the weather changes fast and randomly.  Conversely, the climate changes very gradually. Taking all of this together, cold shouldn’t come as a shock, nor should it have anyone second-guessing the reality of climate warming."

No comments: