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January 09, 2010

Global Warming, Local Cooling

This will qualify as preaching to the choir perhaps, but if conservatives get to glad-hand inane insanities like the President has to produce a for-reals birth certificate or we won't believe in him and things of that nature, then I owe the truth a favor or three similarly.

Global warming is an unfortunate term. It implies that everything everywhere is getting hotter, and in the average that's true, but in the specific, not quite.

The atmosphere is a system, and like anything interconnected into a whole, changes in one area may indirectly change something in another area – or, more appropriately, changes overall will change things overall – but in different ways.

Temperature is the measure of energy in this system. As average temperatures climb globally, the planet doesn't warm globally, but more energy is injected in the system – and where there's more energy, there's more chaos, more unpredictability, more unexpected extremes.

Thus, while the 2-foot snowfall Portland endured last winter may or may not say any one thing about the change in climate all over the world, it certainly indicates something might be going on. And, in my memory, as a kid in the mid-Willamette Valley, any snow was seen as a memorable event. Now it seems we get some snow every year.

There seems to be a change afoot.

More to the point, as Salem-based blogger Brian Hines points out, Just because it snows here doesn't mean that global warming has been suspended. Relating a recent exchange in the news, CNN it looks like (emphasis mine):

Idiocy must be contagious, because yesterday I heard something similar (on CNN, I believe). The weather person was saying that it was unusually cold in the central and eastern parts of the United States.

The anchor responded with something like "Well, that's interesting, since the Copenhagen conference on global warming happened not long ago." Before he could expand upon this illogical train of thought, the weather expert interrupted to save him from further embarrassment.

"When it's colder than normal in one area, it's usually warmer than normal somewhere else. Currently the jet stream is sending cold air from the arctic down into the heart of the country. But in Juneau, Alaska, it's warmer than in Chicago right now."

Unfortunately, calling it "global warming" enables chuckleheads in the media (and pretty much anyone on the yawning abyss that is FOX) to click and grin and go "hey, how's that global warming working out".

If we all go down to doom, it's because of ninnies like that. But, in point of fact the media have been falling down on the job with this for years now.

Anyway, the truth I'm forwarding on? Unseasonably cold weather doesn't mean global warning is off. Freezing temperatures in Birmingham Alabama might actually mean shirtsleeves in winter in Juneau Alaska.

And, since the tundra's probably thawing, that can't end well.

Posted by The Chinuk at January 9, 2010 07:44 PM