Climate Change: What Can’t It Do?
How is this acceptable?
(John Hinderaker) Global warming morphed into climate change so that liberals could complain about any inconvenient weather and blame it on free enterprise. Thus, we have the absurd situation where liberals claim that “climate change” causes both excessive heat and excessive cold, whichever happens to be occurring at the moment.
This makes no sense. Saying that climate change causes warmer (or colder) weather is circular. It is like saying that my weight change caused me to get heavier. Blaming both heat and cold on climate change is like saying that my weight change caused me to get both heavier and lighter, at different times.
In any event, it isn’t true. Both extreme heat and extreme cold in the U.S. have become less frequent, not more frequent:
In the United States, which is the focus of the [New York Times] article, the picture is even less supportive of the “both hot and cold” claim. As meteorologist Chris Martz notes in his X thread posted here, extreme heat and extreme cold have both declined since the early twentieth century. As shown in the graphs he created (seen below) the blistering heat of the 1930s and 1950s still stands out as the hottest peak periods on record, while cold waves dropped sharply after the late 1980s. Comparing the 30-year periods 1901–1930 and 1996–2025 using GHCN-Daily station data, Martz finds cold waves decreased by about 31 percent and heat waves by about 20 percent.
These trends are consistent with the fact that extreme weather events have been getting less frequent. If human CO2 emissions are responsible for recent climate trends in the U.S., we should be grateful to our fossil fuel industries.
A final note: a few days ago, the Washington Post reportedly laid off 14 of its 19 “climate journalists”–an amazing number! That can only be a good thing. If every publication laid off all of its “climate journalists,” there would be much less misinformation in the world.
How is this acceptable?
(John Hinderaker) Global warming morphed into climate change so that liberals could complain about any inconvenient weather and blame it on free enterprise. Thus, we have the absurd situation where liberals claim that “climate change” causes both excessive heat and excessive cold, whichever happens to be occurring at the moment.
This makes no sense. Saying that climate change causes warmer (or colder) weather is circular. It is like saying that my weight change caused me to get heavier. Blaming both heat and cold on climate change is like saying that my weight change caused me to get both heavier and lighter, at different times.
In any event, it isn’t true. Both extreme heat and extreme cold in the U.S. have become less frequent, not more frequent:
In the United States, which is the focus of the [New York Times] article, the picture is even less supportive of the “both hot and cold” claim. As meteorologist Chris Martz notes in his X thread posted here, extreme heat and extreme cold have both declined since the early twentieth century. As shown in the graphs he created (seen below) the blistering heat of the 1930s and 1950s still stands out as the hottest peak periods on record, while cold waves dropped sharply after the late 1980s. Comparing the 30-year periods 1901–1930 and 1996–2025 using GHCN-Daily station data, Martz finds cold waves decreased by about 31 percent and heat waves by about 20 percent.
These trends are consistent with the fact that extreme weather events have been getting less frequent. If human CO2 emissions are responsible for recent climate trends in the U.S., we should be grateful to our fossil fuel industries.
A final note: a few days ago, the Washington Post reportedly laid off 14 of its 19 “climate journalists”–an amazing number! That can only be a good thing. If every publication laid off all of its “climate journalists,” there would be much less misinformation in the world.
Climate Change: What Can’t It Do?
How is this acceptable?
(John Hinderaker) Global warming morphed into climate change so that liberals could complain about any inconvenient weather and blame it on free enterprise. Thus, we have the absurd situation where liberals claim that “climate change” causes both excessive heat and excessive cold, whichever happens to be occurring at the moment.
This makes no sense. Saying that climate change causes warmer (or colder) weather is circular. It is like saying that my weight change caused me to get heavier. Blaming both heat and cold on climate change is like saying that my weight change caused me to get both heavier and lighter, at different times.
In any event, it isn’t true. Both extreme heat and extreme cold in the U.S. have become less frequent, not more frequent:
In the United States, which is the focus of the [New York Times] article, the picture is even less supportive of the “both hot and cold” claim. As meteorologist Chris Martz notes in his X thread posted here, extreme heat and extreme cold have both declined since the early twentieth century. As shown in the graphs he created (seen below) the blistering heat of the 1930s and 1950s still stands out as the hottest peak periods on record, while cold waves dropped sharply after the late 1980s. Comparing the 30-year periods 1901–1930 and 1996–2025 using GHCN-Daily station data, Martz finds cold waves decreased by about 31 percent and heat waves by about 20 percent.
These trends are consistent with the fact that extreme weather events have been getting less frequent. If human CO2 emissions are responsible for recent climate trends in the U.S., we should be grateful to our fossil fuel industries.
A final note: a few days ago, the Washington Post reportedly laid off 14 of its 19 “climate journalists”–an amazing number! That can only be a good thing. If every publication laid off all of its “climate journalists,” there would be much less misinformation in the world.
