Blizzards of Blather

If you’re living in New England and you’ve recently been buried under snow, you probably don’t want to hear how it’s somewhat the fault of (man-​exacerbated) global warming. Nor that we can, maybe, tweak the weather to perfection if only we drastically curtail the carbon-​emission needed to make boots, gloves and roofs, and to operate snow plows.

Perhaps you’re saying, “Warming? The snow is cold.”

But half-​baked conclusions that the concluder is frigidly determined to reach regardless of evidence may be “based on” any set of facts under the sun.

Patrick Michaels and Paul Knappenberger of the Cato Institute point out the silliness of regarding an unknown human contribution to climate patterns as co-​responsible for any bad weather.

Blizzard Juno (like pretty much any storm) was “the result of a very complex system of physical interactions — the precise behavior of each one of which is not completely understood, much less perfectly predictable. This makes ascertaining the influence of human-​caused climate change virtually (if not entirely) impossible.”

The authors present a graph of snowfall totals in NYC’s Central Park since the late 19th century. Lots of spikes, lots of troughs. In other words, natural variability in the weather is nothing new.

We can’t always predict the course of storms very exactly. But, these days, we sure can predict that when the storms come, humanity will be indicted along with Mother Nature … almost as if there were no weather on earth before human beings showed up.

This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.