It’s been a bad year for global warming propagandists, but fear not: Here comes a polar vortex to make it worse for them.
The unrelenting Arctic blast arrived on Christmas Eve and it remains the holiday houseguest from Hell that won’t leave: Record-breaking cold and snowfall are tormenting the eastern half of the country, and it’s only going to get worse. Weather models predict Americans will ring in the New Year while shivering under the lowest temperatures in 70 years, and the first day of 2018 could set record lows everywhere east of the Rockies.
Folks are being warned about the health risks associated with sub-zero temperatures, which could last beyond the first week of the year and stretch as far south as east Texas. It’s even too cold for the most intrepid thrill-seekers: Cities are canceling the Polar Bear Plunge on New Year’s Day due to inhumane air and water temperatures.
It marks a frustrating end to a dreadful year for climate-change activists, who have been frozen out of the Trump Administration. After Trump’s election, environmentalists prophesied the end times, labeling the president and his advisors “anti-science” and bracing for catastrophe. Climate scientists and bureaucrats at scientific agencies reached out for counseling, seeking ways to cope with life under the Trump regime; many have resigned “in disgust.”
But for once, the climate crowd’s “dire” predictions came true. Our “Denier-in-Chief” wasted no time dismantling Obama’s climate change legacy by appointing climate skeptics to fill top cabinet posts, exiting the Paris Climate Accord, repealing the Clean Power Plan, scrubbing government websites of climate change references, and promoting American fossil-fuel use abroad. If this wasn’t bad enough for them, now the climate crowd is trying incoherently to explain to frigid Americans—who are muttering “global warming, my ass” under their double-wrapped scarves—how this frigid weather is actually caused by greenhouse gas emissions.
Never one to miss an opportunity to incite his foes, President Trump sent out this tweet Thursday night:
In the East, it could be the COLDEST New Year’s Eve on record. Perhaps we could use a little bit of that good old Global Warming that our Country, but not other countries, was going to pay TRILLIONS OF DOLLARS to protect against. Bundle up!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 29, 2017
(Meteorologist Ryan Maue compiled an amusing list of Trump tweets that mock global warming.)
Trump’s tweet—one of his most popular social-media missives of the year—did exactly what he wanted it to do: Torch the mob.
Reporters, politicians, and environmentalists exploded with rage, ridiculing Trump for not understanding the difference between “weather” and “climate.” Keep in mind, this doublespeak is from the same armchair climate experts who blamed every destructive weather event this year—from hurricanes to wildfires to droughts—on anthropogenic global warming. Now, they are hand-waving away the most brutal cold snap in decades as nothing more than a normal appearance by Old Man Winter.
On Friday morning, the Weather Channel posted a world map, purporting to show how North America is an anomaly in an otherwise toasty world, and trolled the president by claiming “there is a difference between weather and climate. Short-term cold snaps will continue to occur in a warming world.” (The map was widely shared on social media, yet failed to make a convincing case that warming is significantly and uniformly impacting the planet right now: in fact, the map showed virtually no temperature change in the southern hemisphere and the tropics, and steep temperature drops in North America. Far from the “global warming” climatologists have tried to convince us is happening.)
An accompanying article warned that “a single weather event like a heat wave cannot be linked to climate, but long-term trends are better indicators of a changing climate.” This is the same weather site that posted numerous articles linking 2017’s extreme weather events to climate change, including this article that claimed winters will become “shorter and warmer.”
The New York Times, which has an entire section devoted to climate change news and often searches for the thinnest reed to connect some human tragedy to manmade climate change, scoffed that Trump appears “unaware of the distinction between weather and climate.” Science blogger Phil Plait tweeted that Trump would “literally fail grade school science. He doesn’t know the difference between weather and climate.”
But the climate propagandists can’t quite get their spin together. Is the deep freeze just weather, or is it due to climate change?
The always-charming Chelsea Handler called Trump a “dumbass” and claimed “global warming doesn’t only mean extreme heat; it means extreme weather. Hot and cold.” One climate scientist quoted in USA Today said the frigidity proves climate change is real: “We can still expect periods of very cold temperatures, snowstorms, and even days of record low temperatures,” the University of California’s Zack Labe told the paper. “However, climate change continues to shift the odds towards more periods of warmer weather and less so for colder weather.” Huh?
The Environmental Defense Fund offered its explainer on how record snowfall is evidence of global warming. “It may seem counterintuitive, but more snowfall during winter storms is an expected outcome of climate change. That’s because a warmer planet is evaporating more water into the atmosphere. That added moisture means more precipitation in the form of heavy snowfall or downpours.”
Talk about covering all your bases. EDF also took the common route of climate propagandists: don’t believe your lying eyes. It only feels colder. “Winters in the U.S. have warmed a lot since the 1970s—making what used to be a typical winter feel even more frigid nowadays.” Just remember that when your eyelids are frozen shut next week.
This mess of unscientific, emotional rants by the climate change crowd is typical of how it responds to any challenge to its dogma: Detractors are belittled, goal posts are moved, reversals on previous views are accepted without question. The scientifically-illiterate media plays along, rarely stopping to examine evidence or challenge glaring hypocrisies.
There is also a chance this cold snap portends a global cooling period that some scientists now predict. If that happens, we might all be huddled near the furnace, wondering why we ever feared global warming in the first place.