The violent winter storm that has ravaged much of the lower 48 states over the Christmas holiday has claimed dozens of lives. At least one politician — New York Governor Kathy Hochul — is blaming climate change, which used to be referred to as global warming, for the deadly weather.
Buffalo, New York, has been hit particularly hard by the wicked winter weather. As of this writing, at least 31 people have died in Erie County, which encompasses the Buffalo area, with the death toll expected to rise. Many of the dead have been found stranded in their homes, in vehicles, on the streets, and even in frozen in snow banks.
Elsewhere around the nation, at least 25 more people have died as a result of the storm.
Thus far, the storm has deposited more than 50″ of snow in Western New York. With temperatures expected to rise in the coming days, officials are worried about possible flooding.
As with any unusual weather event, climate change, which is said to be driven by global warming associated with fossil fuel emissions, is being blamed.
“Last night I had to bring in the National Guard. The conditions — the blinding snow, the zero visibility, absolute white outs … it may go down as one of the worst in history,” Hochul told reporters on December 24. “People are comparing this to the dreaded blizzard of ’77 where Buffalo first got its reputation for having an unprecedented amount of snow.”
“It’s very clear to me that the effects of climate change are wreaking havoc everywhere,” the New York governor blurted.
Governor Hochul is not the only one making that capricious claim.
For years now, scientists have been attempting to blame harsh winter weather on global warming. In 2018, a study from climate scientists at Rutgers and AER attempted to blame global warming for colder winter weather in the Northeast United States.
“Five of the past six winters have brought persistent cold to the eastern United States and warm, dry conditions to the west, while the Arctic has been off the charts warm,” said co-author of the study, Jennifer Francis. “Our study suggests that this is no coincidence. Exactly how much the Arctic contributed to the severity or persistence of the pattern is still hard to pin down, but it’s becoming very difficult to believe they are unrelated.”
So, based on what they call “observational evidence,” that study claimed that global warming must be contributing to cold winter weather – but the scientists were unable to pin down just how that worked.
Yet another study, this one done in Europe by Marlene Kretschmer and her team at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, attempted to pin cold winter weather on a supposedly weakening stratospheric polar vortex. According to their theory, that weaker polar vortex could be allowing arctic air to escape south easier via the jet stream.
However, Kretschmer and her team still don’t understand exactly how their theory works.
In February of 2021, Kretschmer tweeted: “bottom line: we need a better understanding of the different mechanisms (and associated risks) of how further Arctic changes (which are unfortunately certain in a warming climate) might affect our weather and climate.”
And a 2021 study, this one featuring MIT’s Judah Cohen, who contributed to the Rutgers study in 2018, attempts to link an allegedly warming Arctic
“Despite the rapid warming that is the cardinal signature of global climate change, especially in the Arctic, where temperatures are rising much more than elsewhere in the world, the United States and other regions of the Northern Hemisphere have experienced a conspicuous and increasingly frequent number of episodes of extremely cold winter weather over the past four decades,” that study suggests.
But even that study notes that “there is no agreement on whether a physical link exists” between a slightly warmer Arctic and horrific winter weather in the mid latitudes.
What it all boils down to is that politicians need to be able to blame every single unusual weather event on global warming, no matter how silly those pronouncements might seem. The main reason that “global warming” was rebranded into “climate change” was so that extreme weather of every season could be pointed to as evidence that humans were destroying the climate with their fossil fuel emissions.
In the climate change cult. truth is far less important than the ability to create fear.
