Monday, February 3, 2014

Science Is Hard: Global Warming Might Be Like, Global Weirding

Climate Change Might Just Be Driving the Historic Cold Snap

Climate change skeptics are pointing to the record cold weather as evidence that the globe isn't warming. But it could be that melting Arctic ice is making sudden cold snaps more likely—not less
It’s polar bear weather today for much of the Midwest. Temperatures are in the -20sº F (-28º C) and -30sº F (-35º C) in eastern Montana, North Dakota, northeast South Dakota, Minnesota and northern Iowa. With the stiff wind, it’s even worse—wind chills in the -40sº F (-40º C) and -50sº F (-45º C) are common across Minnesota and North Dakota, cold enough for exposed skin to suffer frostbite in just five minutes. By tonight, the freeze will reach the East Coast, where temperatures from Florida to Maine are expected to be 30º F to 40º F (16º C to 22º C) degrees below normal, extremes that haven’t been seen in decades. The National Weather Service isn’t kidding when it calls the cold “life-threatening.”
Unsurprisingly, the extreme cold has brought out the climate change skeptics, who point to the freeze and the recent snowstorms and say, essentially, “nyah-nyah.” Now this is where I would usually point to the fact that the occasional cold snap—even one as extreme as much of the U.S. is experiencing now—doesn’t change the overall trajectory of a warming planet. Weather is what happens in the atmosphere day to day; climate is how the atmosphere behaves over long periods of time. Winters in the U.S. have been warming steadily over the past century, and even faster in recent decades, so it would take more than a few sub-zero days to cancel that out.
But not only does the cold spell not disprove climate change, it may well be that global warming could be making the occasional bout of extreme cold weather in the U.S. even more likely.
Read more: Polar Vortex: Climate Change Could Be the Cause of Record Cold Weather | TIME.com http://science.time.com/2014/01/06/climate-change-driving-cold-weather/#ixzz2sJg8ix9Y

Often, throughout history, scientific fact has gone against what passed for common sense. Sometimes the debate about climate change brings to mind the undoubtedly interesting arguments that used to occur between flat earthers and learned peeps.

As early as the sixth century B.C., Pythagoras — and later Aristotle and Euclid — wrote about the Earth as a sphere. Ptolemy wrote “Geography” at the height of the Roman Empire, 1,300 years beforeColumbus sailed, and considered the idea of a round planet as fact.
“Geography” became a standard reference, and Columbus himselfowned a copy. For him, the big question was not the shape of the Earth but the size of the ocean he wanted to cross.
During the early Middle Ages, it is true that many Europeans succumbed to rumor and started believing that they lived on a flat Earth.

But Islamic countries knew better and preserved the Greek learning. By the late Middle Ages, Europe had caught up and in some cases surpassed the knowledge of ancient Greece and medieval Islam.