Cold Winter Does Not Mean No Warming

Weather Underground is quick to jump on the comments of radio personality Rush Limbaugh.

The "climate change" people argue that the planet is still warming, although, they reluctantly admit, far less than what would be expected based on all of the models.

The reason might be that the heat and CO2 are being absorbed by the ocean.  Or it might be something else.  Space monkeys.  

Here is the key statement:

Why this is happening is something climate scientists still are trying to figure out.

No kidding?  We are supposed to shutdown coal-fired power plants and let electric rates "skyrocket" and people possibly freeze to death or die of heat stroke in the summer while climate scientists try to "figure out" why their models are junk.

I also note that WU, while dismissing cold weather as proof of global cooling, wants to point out that -- in summer -- Australia is experiencing record heat.  It is hot in the southern hemisphere.  I am shocked.  I'll bet it is hot here around the Fourth of July going into August.  Can I get a government grant?  You can't have it both ways, boys.  Average means average -- sometimes up, sometimes down, overall, it averages.

We also know for a fact, from the East Anglia email leaks back in 2009, for example, that "respected" climate scientists, like Michael Mann, engaged in deceptive and misleading practices in order to sustain their narrative of man-made global warming.

The rule is that if you lie to me about one thing, pardon me if I suspect you of being a liar and doubt everything you tell me.  If you are too stupid to understand that, you might be a Democrat.   

As far as the "polar vortex" being a new term, I accept the fact that it has long been used as a meteorological term for the jet stream-level anti-cyclone or high pressure system that circulates around the Arctic.  The question is why the media decided to start using that particular term.  This kind of high pressure system has moved south before.  I was living in the Dallas area back in 1989 when a late February/early March system settled over us with extremely high barometric pressure and record low temperatures -- just the kind of arctic system that has hit recently.  I don't recall the use of the term "polar vortex".  It was "arctic high pressure".  I am less prone to believe in a conspiracy and more likely to believe that some journalist heard it and thought it sounded new, catastrophic, and "scientific".  It's the same way that "gravitas" or "nuance" were the political in-words at one point.

Nobody doubts the climate on Earth changes.  The climate on Mars changes.  What we "deniers" doubt is that the "experts" have a clue as to why it changes, and we also doubt that an ineffective green-house gas like CO2 has much to do with it -- especially knowing that CO2 increases historically trail warm periods.  We also doubt that making dramatic changes in lifestyles and energy use are a good idea in the absence of evidence that those changes would have any impact whatsoever on the global climate.

I'm not anti-conservation.  I'm a hunter and fisherman.  I would like to see better and more sustainable farming practices.  I do not see the industrialization of agriculture, as Don Colacho puts it, is a particularly positive trend.  (Here's a good one:  God invented tools, the devil machines.)

I'd like to see us move to thorium reactors as a safe, clean energy source, but I don't think we should be terrorized by bad science into courses of action that will result in economic and social destruction.