Everybody Talks About The Weather, And Now Everyone's Trying To Do Something About It

A Weather Channel idiot calls for the de-certification of anyone who doesn't promote the "global warming" hype as absolutely, unquestionably true.

This will come as a surprise to those of us who never even suspected that vapid weather-models like Sam Champion had any sort of "certification" at all, except, perhaps, for having "cutting-edge cheekbones."

Melanie Morgan notes the woman's expertise seems to be based on her "earning a bachelor's degree in Near Eastern religions and history from Juniata College. "

Well, that seems egalitarian, doesn't it? We are all Climate Experts of a sort. We can all tell, after all, when it's "cold as shit" and we all know "it's not the heat, it's the humidity."

Doesn't all this "wacky weather" prove global warming?

Well, no, not really. We've always had "wacky weather." It happens. Freak storms may be freak but they're not unprecedented.

The whole "global warming" claim -- the alarmist strong-form of the silly theory -- is that we know, with 100% confidence, that not only is the world getting warmer, but that this additional warmth is not a good thing as some drooling imbeciles may stupidly assume, but a very, very bad thing indeed, because weather patterns will be changed to create "more extreme weather."

More extreme weather. Not just somewhat warmer weather, and certainly not somewhat warmer weather featuring less extreme weather due to temperature amelioration by warm air warming cold areas why cooler air cools warm areas. If global warming resulted in the latter -- a greate range of temperate areas right in the human comfort zone and a right in the happy medium for agriculture -- global warming wouldn't be a calamity, it would be an outright boon.

It's silly to start claiming that one season's weather proves anything either way.

But so long as we're going to stake the claim of "more EXXXTREME weather" on a single season, let's consider this season's EXXXTREME weather.

Not a single hurricane. Some penny-ante tropical storms that just couldn't gather up the necessary cold-air-swirling-with-hot-air prerequisites to go fully cyclical.

The weather in the usually-cold Northeast is unseasonably warm -- and pleasant as you could possibly hope for.

On the other hand, it snowed in Malibu. Is this horrible? Well, I'm sure Malibu doesn't like it. But it's an example of an amelioriation of weather effects, a mixing of cold and warm, so that cold areas get a little warmer and warm areas get a little cooler. Again, I'm sure those in Southern California aren't happy the endless summer ended, but if a few weeks of cold weather in SoCal means a few months of tame winter in the Northeast, I'd say that's a bargain I'm willing to make.

I won't even bother talking about the Midwest. The Midewst always has severe winters and always will. I suppose it's because all that warm air travels north along the oceans (and thus the coasts), only allowing cold arctic air to surge its way across the inland areas. But what do I know. Same thing seems to happen in Eurasia; Western Europe and Japan are temperate, Russia is cold, Siberia is permafrost.

So if we're going to take a single season as "proof" of global warming -- fine. And let's just note that as far as this single-season goes, we have not had more "EXXXTREME" weather, but in fact extremely mild weather.

I'm supposed to be scared that in mid-January Boston I can walk outside with just a sweater and be reasonably comfortable?

I have no link -- perhaps one of you can help -- but some climate scientists say the historical record directly refutes the claims of the strong-form, EXXXTREME weather, we're-all-gonna-die alarmists. That, in fact, periods of rising global temperatures are periods of mild, nicely-distributed weather, whereas it's during periods of falling temperatures that air and ocean-water circulates less and in fact leads to cold areas becoming colder while warm areas become unbearably hot.

Again, I know nothing about this -- almost as little as "Dr." Heidi Cullen, Climate Exxxpert -- but it does seem to me that if the air and water have higher kinetic energy (i.e., are warmer), that would suggest they would have a greater tendency to move and circulate about, creating less severe weather everywhere.

Makes sense. May not be true, but then, I'm not sure how that off-the-cuff theory is any less viable than "warmer air inevitably leads to global weather calamities."

I think all of this crap is just will stabs in the dark, but, look, if you want to go by the "wacky 2007 winter," I say let us have more of these wacky winters.

Global Warming May End The Oceanic Conveyer Belt Cycling Warm Water To The North and Cold Water To The Tropics! Well, sure. Or, you know, it might speed the conveyer belt up, as the fundamental impulse of water is still to flow from warm to cool and cool to warm.

Horrors! Enormous Uninhabitable Areas Will Become Quite Habitable! Due to what I will now begin calling the "Miracle of Global Warming."

The report notes that some areas -- like Alaska and Siberia -- will become fairly pleasant, rising in temperature by 10 degrees C.

But other areas, the report warns ominously, will become uninhabitable.

Now, study claims the entire globe's temperature will rise by FOUR degrees C -- so obviously Alaska and Siberia, according to the report, will get much warmer than the rest of the globe, due to oceanic and atmospheric warming.

That means that other places will get cooler. After all, we need to balace out the ten degree increase in the arctic areas with smaller increases in other areas; the whole deal has to balance out to 4 degrees of increased temperature world-wide.

So which places will become barely warmer, or even a little cooler?

Places like, say, the tropics?

Are the tropics going to become less hospitable to human life by losing a couple of degrees of temperature? Or more hospitable?

posted by Ace at 06:40 PM

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