Weather

We had our first major snowstorm here in Nanticoke last week, on Wednesday, February 10. It amounted to fourteen inches, and this may have been the high tally for the region - even Wilkes-Barre, just six miles away, received only about eight inches.

There have been a series of unusually heavy snowstorms in the last few weeks affecting areas like Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Washington D.C. that normally don't see much snow. And, right on cue, the usual suspects are leaping up and proclaiming that this is proof that global warming is a hoax, Al Gore is a liar, science is wrong, and the overwhelming majority of climate scientists are in on a massive global conspiracy.

Never mind the fact that this is (according to members of the vast meteorological and climatological conspiracy) an El Niño year, during which weather will behave in weird ways. Never mind that snow is being helicoptered in to the Winter Olympics in Vancouver to make up for the stuff that melted during the period of unusually warm weather they are experiencing. Never mind that ski resorts are struggling to pull in revenues that even come close to miserable 2009 totals, thanks to an absence of snow on the slopes - again.

The funny thing is, you never see these same folks donning sackcloth and ashes during a heat wave, standing on the church steps and declaring global warming to be upon us, Al Gore to be correct, and decrying their own arrant stupidity.

No. That would be stupid. A single unusually warm period doesn't prove global warming, any more than a single Winter of unusually heavy snow in some parts of the world disproves it.

But what do I know? I've thrown in my lot with that vast scientific conspiracy.


See also: Jon Stewart - Unusually Large Snowstorm (Global Darkening!)