Yes, climate really does change, running hot and cold with mainstream media news cycles. Just one week after the New York Times showcased a Feb. 21 hatchet piece on Dr. Willie Soon, a man-made climate alarm doubter at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics “who claims that variations in the sun’s energy can largely explain recent global warming”, its front page Feb. 27 piece was far more chilling.
Headlined “28 Days on Ice” and illustrated with dramatic ice and snow scenes, the later feature indicates that Dr. Soon along with other skeptical scientists may have very good reasons to doubt that any crisis exists after all. As the subtitle states, “From the Hudson to La Guardia Airport, this February may be New York’s coldest since 1934, the National Weather Service Says.”
Before I go any further with this, let me be very clear that neither I nor anyone I know doubts that climate changes. This has been going on throughout our planet’s history — beginning long before the Industrial Revolution introduced smokestacks and SUVs.
Let’s also recognize a big difference between local and ever-changing short-term weather events and regional/global climate shifts characterized over at least a three decade long period. Accordingly, weather changes occurring during a single season or even over a few years in one region don’t validate global climate trending one way or another, much less any measurable human influences.
Consider, for example, that Icelandic Vikings raised livestock in grasslands on Greenland’s southwestern coast as recently as 1,000 years ago. These Norse settlements were then abandoned by about 1350 — after temperatures dropped. Temperatures dropped dramatically again in the middle of the 16th century. The end of this time witnessed brutal winter temperatures suffered by Washington’s troops at Valley Forge in 1777-78, and Napoleon’s bitterly cold retreat from Russia in 1812.
Although temperatures and weather conditions have been generally mild over about the past 150 years, the past century has witnessed two periods of warming. The first occurred between 1910 and 1945 when CO2 levels were relatively low, compared with now.
The second warming which followed a full climate cycle cool-down began in 1975. Global mean temperatures rose at quite a constant rate until 1998, a strong Pacific Ocean El Niño year. Satellite records show that since then, and despite rising atmospheric CO2 levels, temperatures have been statistically flat over the past 18 years and counting.
Consider that less than a half-climate cycle after the planet had experienced a full cooling cycle, the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and Al Gore’s minions already determined that human fossil-fueled CO2 emissions had put the world at tipping point crisis. Then, after Mother Nature intervened to suggest otherwise, the story changed. Global warming not only became re-termed climate change — now it even caused global cooling. And yes, as a matter of fact, U.S. winters have been getting colder over the past 20 years.
Still, according to the IPCC, “Milder winter temperatures will decrease heavy snowstorms.” As recently as last month, Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Gina McCarthy teamed with the Aspen Skiing Co. and a pair of Olympic snowboarders at the "X Games" to put out the message that reduced snow due to climate change would ruin the ski industry. Yet according to a snow report website, “Current snowpack levels are at 165 percent of average” for Aspen.
On the other hand, haven’t global warming activists been warning us that since warmer air adds more moisture, snow storms will become worse? As the Center for American Progress headed by former Obama White House adviser/Clean Power Plan proponent John Podesta claimed, “climate change may have affected the [recent Boston] snow storm — may have made it more likely, may have made it worse than it would have been without so much greenhouse gas in the atmosphere.” Incidentally, this very same John Podesta will most likely head Hillary’s 2016 presidential campaign.
Besides, given that U.S. winter temperatures are actually colder, how does this warmist argument explain record snow and ice? At the same time that Connecticut experienced the coldest February in recorded history, nearby Boston amassed a near record 101.8 inches of snow.
Meanwhile, ice breakers had to open pathways through the Hudson River to keep ships moving. New England lobster boats became frozen in ports for weeks. And on Jan. 27, Canadian adventurer Will Gadd, using ice picks, became the first person ever to scale Niagara Falls which had frozen solid.
So if some of us have come to suspect that we’re witnessing a feverish snow job, does this really qualify us as climate change deniers? Golly, this is all so confusing. It’s enough to give anyone attempting to keep track of the changing story cold sweats.
Larry Bell is an endowed professor of space architecture at the University of Houston where he founded the Sasakawa International Center for Space Architecture (SICSA) and the graduate program in space architecture. He is author of “Climate of Corruption: Politics and Power Behind the Global Warming Hoax,” and his professional aerospace work has been featured on the History Channel and the Discovery Channel-Canada. Read more of his reports — Click Here Now.