What passes for a killer graphic in the denialist community is a pastiche of Time Magazine covers that purports to make the point that “Those Crazy Warmers – No matter what happens, it’s always due to Global Warming!”
No, that is not it below. You can find the real one in the usual places, but I only post reality on this blog.
It appeals to the bonehead base, I get that. And for those Palin-drones at the office cooler, it’s as far as the reasoning process is going to go. Call me elitist, but rather than distorting images from Pop culture, I prefer to actually learn from the advanced technology we’ve spent so much money on over the last 50 years, and find out what it’s telling us about how the Planet is behaving.
That’s why the image above, from the Physical Science Division of NOAA’s Earth System Research Lab appeals. It shows us what is really happening. See my take on denialist logic below.
What the climatology community has been looking at, rather than old magazine covers, is an image of a changing arctic,a new normal, that is being reshaped by, among other things, the decreasing sea ice cover in northern polar regions.
For two winters in a row, unusual and striking weather systems have aligned to spill winter cold out of the arctic, where in most years it has historically been bottled up, and draw warm air up into the northern latitudes.
I’ve blogged on this several times in the last few weeks, so if you want to do a 10 minute review, here’s your cliff notes.
“Winter is Cold, so there’s no Global Warming”
“White Christmas in Southeast. Heatwave in Hudson Bay”
I’ll be doing my annual debunk of the “Ah looked out mah winder, an’ it wuz cold, so there ain’t no global warmin'” school of climatology in the coming month – but for now, here’s last year’s version, as well as one of my most popular Crock-busters, the “They Said in the seventies there would be an Ice Age” video.
Peter, I’ve really been enjoying your increased post frequency, it’s making this blog a fantastic place of its own rather than just a repeat of your YouTube feed. Keep it up!
Kate
http://climatesight.org
I’m liking it too, and the numbers show that a lot of people are discovering this over the last month or 2 – it’s helping more people discover the vids, and it allows me to focus on things that are maybe not yet vid ready, but still notable, as I do my reading and research.