By Dr. Roy Spencer:
By mid-week this week, newspaper and website stories will be reporting that climate experts (e.g. Al Gore, Bill Nye) have now blamed the historic snowstorm and unseasonable cold now descending on New England on climate change.
I suspect a few of these experts already have their tweets composed, just waiting for snow totals to exceed one foot.
Indeed, the latest GFS model forecast shows that by midday Wednesday some rather spectacular snow totals will have probably accumulated, from the DC area through Philadelphia, NYC (maybe 20 inches there), and Boston (graphic courtesy of Weatherbell.com):
The Nor’easter and cold temperatures will be blamed on the same climate change that caused the unusual warmth over the eastern U.S. over the past couple months.
Global warming theory is in fact so malleable that it predicts anything. More cold, less cold. More snow, less snow.
What a powerful theory.
And what’s even more amazing is that climate change can be averted by just increasing your taxes.
But what nobody ever reports on — because it would be boring — are the storms and severe weather events that haven’t happened. For example, U.S. tornado counts have been running below average, or even at record lows, in recent years.
Amazingly, the low tornado activity has been blamed on climate change. So, too, have actual tornado occurrences!
What a grand and gloriously useful theory global warming provides us.
Is it any wonder that the public tends to be skeptical of what the experts tell us, when those experts continually change the narrative as their forecasts turn out wrong?
Winters in the U.S. are notoriously variable. Typically, if it’s warm in the East, it’s cold in the West. This is exactly what has happened this winter, except for this brief reversal before winter’s end.
Normal people call it weather. More enlightened people, in contrast, call it climate change. Next winter it could be the opposite. No one knows.
Like death and taxes, though, what is certain is that anything “unusual” that happens will somehow be blamed on your SUV.