Why We Shouldn’t Trust Anyone On Global Warming, Part 2…

Less snow = global warming.

More snow = global warming?

Well, that is the argument coming out of the left wing intelligensia this week, as the east coast has suffered its harshest blizzard in memory.

Last week, I had a post questioning why we should trust anyone that calls themselves an expert on global warming.  After the scandals at East Anglia University, the United Nations and IPCC, and in measuring Himalayan glaciers, it is no wonder that the average world citizen is more skeptical of any claims about global warming.

But this?

It was just a few short years ago when we heard the left argue that less snow across the country was absolute, undeniable proof of anthropogenic global warming.  Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., thought to be one of the ‘leading thinkers’ of the movement, famously said this just about a year ago:

In Virginia, the weather also has changed dramatically. Recently arrived residents in the northern suburbs, accustomed to today’s anemic winters, might find it astonishing to learn that there were once ski runs on Ballantrae Hill in McLean, with a rope tow and local ski club. Snow is so scarce today that most Virginia children probably don’t own a sled. But neighbors came to our home at Hickory Hill nearly every winter weekend to ride saucers and Flexible Flyers.

That is the point, isn’t it?  None of these short term weather patterns means a damn thing.  I am not pointing to this blizzard and saying it is proof there is no global warming…others might, but they are wrong.  At the same time, when leftists claim a short term lack of snow is a sign of warming, the media applauds…they are fools as well.

This is the idiocy of this entire discussion.  Climate changes on a global scale are not measured in years, centuries, or even millenia.  They are measured in hundreds of thousands of years.  When we are discussing a scale of time that is so large it is greater than the entire existence of Homo sapiens on the face of the earth, getting legitimate research on the subject is difficult, at best.

And to prove that point, none other than Dr. Phil Jones, famously of the emails from East Anglia University.  In a stunning admission, Jones now states that the current warming trend very well may not be unprecedented…not in Earth’s history, mind you, but in the past millenium (a relative blink of the eye in earth history)… (you can see the entire interview here).

‘There is much debate over whether the Medieval Warm Period was global in extent or not. The MWP is most clearly expressed in parts of North America, the North Atlantic and Europe and parts of Asia.

‘For it to be global in extent, the MWP would need to be seen clearly in more records from the tropical regions and the Southern hemisphere. There are very few palaeoclimatic records for these latter two regions.

‘Of course, if the MWP was shown to be global in extent and as warm or warmer than today, then obviously the late 20th Century warmth would not be unprecedented. On the other hand, if the MWP was global, but was less warm than today, then the current warmth would be unprecedented.’

Maybe more interestingly, the man who first made the hockey stick graph showing rapid increases in recent temperatures now admit that that for the past 15 years there has been no ‘statistically significant’ warming. In other words, the current warming trend may not be unusual in the least.  The below chart (from Climate Audit) is useful to illustrate this:

This clearly shows the temperatures Jones is alluding to.  Now, the upper temperature graph was the one famously produced by East Anglia…and is now widely considered to be fraudulent.  Those scientists have proven unreliable, and the ‘hockey stick’ analogy is basically garbage.  The second graph is actual European data that was published in several United Nations IPCC reports, the most recent being 1995.   The only caveat with the second graph is it is purely from a European perspective…whether this coveys to temperatures across the globe cannot absolutely be proven.

It goes to show how weak the science is on true global warming that enthusiasts have to use both less snow and more snow to defend their argument…win-win scenario for them, a lose-lose proposition for the rest of us.