Tuesday, December 23, 2008

"Weather" or "Climate": It's NOT Rocket Science!

Yeah, baby it's cold out side. And snowing! Throw another chair on the fire, and let’s put this Rightard/Fundie/anti-science shibboleth--that "more local snow means there’s no global climate change"--out of its misery, once and for all, shall we? "Weather" is not "climate."

Fact-check:
Fact: Average, distributed global temperatures are increasing. Check!
Fact: Rising average temperature does NOT mean that cold weather goes away. Check!
Fact: A warmer climate, world-wide DOES means more evaporation. Check!
Fact: More evaporation means more precipitation. Check!
Fact: Precipitation doesn’t care if it falls as rain or snow; but, if it’s cold where the precipitation happens, there will be snow. (Duh!)
So: The current extreme "winter weather" storm situation is the result of standard mounts of cold winter air engulfing greater than usual amounts of (global) evaporataion, with consequent increase in precipitation which, because it is winter, and cold here in the Northern Hemisphere, means more SNOW!
Rocket science, it's not, I know. But I wasn’t home-schooled, so I get it...

2 comments:

Ruth said...

I know the pups love it, anyway. Stay snug, who needs chairs anyway?

Woody (Tokin Librul/Rogue Scholar/ Helluvafella!) said...

No snow here yet...mebbe later in the day, but mostly it's falling up north and west of here...

We had a king-hell blizzard here in '06, one that had a lot of oldsters recalling fondly such storms of the distant past...

and the pups DID love it...