Budapest Post

Cum Deo pro Patria et Libertate
Budapest, Europe and world news

NASA: Yes, it's freezing cold. No, that doesn't mean climate change is a hoax.

NASA: Yes, it's freezing cold. No, that doesn't mean climate change is a hoax.

As temperatures across the continental United States plummeted this week as a polar vortex descended across the country, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration made sure to remind Americans that the Arctic outburst does not mean that climate change isn't happening.
In a tweet posted Thursday, NASA Climate, a division of the space agency, pointed to the long-term trends since humanity began pouring greenhouse gases into the Earth's atmosphere.

On its website, NASA Climate explains that though "the Earth's climate has changed throughout history," the rate of change being experienced since the dawn of the Industrial Revolution is unprecedented, approximately 10 times faster than the average rate of warming experienced following an ice age. The causal mechanism that explains our accelerating rate of warming, the greenhouse effect, was established in the mid-1800s.

"It is undeniable that human activities have produced the atmospheric gases that have trapped more of the Sun’s energy in the Earth system," NASA Climate says on its website.

While the impulse to deny climate change based on the immediate weather conditions outside one's window is tempting, it's also worth remembering that the Earth's warming is a global phenomenon and that while one area may experience frigid temperatures, the planet as a whole continues to heat up.

In February 2021, a polar vortex descended on the Great Plains, extending as far south as Texas, leaving more than 4.5 million homes and businesses without power and resulting in the deaths of more than 170 people. Studies have since linked the severe winter outbreak to climate change. Due to the fact that the Arctic is warming faster than any other region on Earth, those higher temperatures have been shown to disrupt the behavior of polar vortices, weakening them so that they wander south over the continental U.S.

Those seemingly counterintuitive findings have done little to assuage the climate change denialism that regularly proliferates across social media in the winter months, promoting versions of the view "If global warming is really happening, how come it's so cold outside?" Perhaps the most famous instance of that faulty logic occurred in February of 2015, when Sen. Jim Inhofe, R-Okla., brought a snowball onto the Senate floor.

"In case we have forgotten because we keep hearing that 2014 has been the warmest year on record," said Inhofe, then the chairman of the Environment and Public Works Committee, "I asked the chair, do you know what this is? It's a snowball just from outside here. So it's very, very cold out. Very unseasonable."

While the fact is that along with the rise in atmospheric CO2, average temperatures have risen since the late 1800s and sea ice has diminished, the planet will continue to experience cold winters for decades to come.

"The bottom line is that not only are extreme cold events not inconsistent with the 1 degree [Celsius] of warming that we've already had, we can expect them to continue in the foreseeable future," Noah Diffenbaugh, a climate scientist at Stanford University, told Yahoo News in 2021.

That can even include record low temperatures like the ones that swept over much of Canada this week. What's more telling, however, is the longer-term trend in which the number of record high daily temperatures continues to outpace the number of record lows by a ratio of 2:1, according to a 2009 study conducted by the National Center for Atmospheric Research. Computer models suggest that disparity will grow to 20:1 by 2050 and 50:1 by 2100.

But now, with more than 1 million homes in the U.S. without power, thousands of flights canceled and roadways coated with ice, there is a similar temptation to dismiss the reality of climate change. On Twitter, for instance, a wave of climate denialism has coalesced using the hashtags #ClimateScam and #ClimateHoax.

Renowned climate scientist Michael Mann, director of the Penn Center for Science, Sustainability and the Media at the University of Pennsylvania, has watched with dismay as climate denialism on Twitter has spiked this winter.

"Twitter was a primary medium for dissemination of the facts surrounding the climate crisis," Mann told E&E News, an environmental news platform, in an email. "By infecting the online discourse w/ massive troll and bot armies, it becomes very difficult to communicate these facts, which is precisely what polluters and petro-state bad actors like Russia and Saudi Arabia want."

While there's little doubt that bots promoting climate denialism have run amok, their effect can be felt at holiday gatherings and even in the halls of Congress by those who assert that cold weather proves climate change isn't real. For climate scientists like Peter Gleick, the co-founder of the Pacific Institute in Oakland, such views are, by now, all too familiar.
AI Disclaimer: An advanced artificial intelligence (AI) system generated the content of this page on its own. This innovative technology conducts extensive research from a variety of reliable sources, performs rigorous fact-checking and verification, cleans up and balances biased or manipulated content, and presents a minimal factual summary that is just enough yet essential for you to function as an informed and educated citizen. Please keep in mind, however, that this system is an evolving technology, and as a result, the article may contain accidental inaccuracies or errors. We urge you to help us improve our site by reporting any inaccuracies you find using the "Contact Us" link at the bottom of this page. Your helpful feedback helps us improve our system and deliver more precise content. When you find an article of interest here, please look for the full and extensive coverage of this topic in traditional news sources, as they are written by professional journalists that we try to support, not replace. We appreciate your understanding and assistance.
Newsletter

Related Articles

0:00
0:00
Close
Street justice isn’t pretty but how else do you deal with this kind of insanity? Sometimes someone needs to standup and say something
Armenia and Azerbaijan sign U.S.-brokered accord at White House outlining transit link via southern Armenia
Barcelona Resolves Captaincy Issue with Marc-André ter Stegen
US Justice Department Seeks Release of Epstein and Maxwell Grand Jury Exhibits Amid Legal and Victim Challenges
Spain Scraps F-35 Jet Deal as Trump Pushes for More NATO Spending
France Faces Largest Wildfire Since 1949 as Blazes Rage Across Aude
French Senate Report Alleges State Cover‑Up in Perrier ‘Natural Mineral Water’ Scandal
British Labour Government Utilizes Counter-Terrorism Tools for Social Media Monitoring Against Legitimate Critics
OpenAI Launches GPT‑5, Its Most Advanced AI Model Yet
Brazilian President Lula says he’ll contact the leaders of BRICS states to propose a unified response to U.S. tariffs
US envoy Steve Witkoff arrived in Moscow to seek a breakthrough in the Ukraine war ahead of President Trump’s peace deadline
WhatsApp Deletes 6.8 Million Scam Accounts Amid Rising Global Fraud
Britain's Online Safety Law Sparks Outcry Over Privacy, Free Speech, and Mass Surveillance
Nine people have been hospitalized and dozens of salmonella cases have been reported after an outbreak of infections linked to certain brands of pistachios and pistachio-containing products, according to the Public Health Agency of Canada
Karol Nawrocki Inaugurated as Poland’s President, Setting Stage for Clash with Tusk Government
US Charges Two Chinese Nationals for Illegal Nvidia AI Chip Exports
Texas Residents Face Water Restrictions While AI Data Centers Consume Millions of Gallons
U.S. Tariff Policy Triggers Market Volatility Amid Growing Global Trade Tensions
Tariffs, AI, and the Shifting U.S. Macro Landscape: Navigating a New Economic Regime
German Finance Minister Criticizes Trump’s Attacks on Institutions
India Rejects U.S. Tariff Threat, Defends Russian Oil Purchases
United States Establishes Strategic Bitcoin Reserve and Digital Asset Stockpile
Thousands of Private ChatGPT Conversations Accidentally Indexed by Google
China Tightens Mineral Controls, Curtailing Critical Inputs for Western Defence Contractors
OpenAI’s Bold Bet: Teaching AI to Think, Not Just Chat
U.S. Tariffs Surge to Highest Levels in Nearly a Century Under Second Trump Term
Ong Beng Seng Pleads Guilty in Corruption Case Linked to Former Singapore Transport Minister
BP’s Largest Oil and Gas Find in 25 Years Uncovered Offshore Brazil
Italy Fines Shein One Million Euros for Misleading Sustainability Claims
JPMorgan and Coinbase Unveil Partnership to Let Chase Cardholders Buy Crypto Directly
Declassified Annex Links Soros‑Affiliated Officials and Clinton Campaign to ‘Russiagate’ Narrative
UK's Online Safety Law: A Front for Censorship
Parents Abandon Child at Barcelona Airport Over Passport Issue
Bus Driver Discovers Toddler Hidden in Suitcase in New Zealand
Switzerland Celebrates 734 Years of Independence Amid Global Changes
China Enforces Comprehensive Ban on Cryptocurrency Activities
Grok 4 Video plus Voice, can identify wildlife!
George Soros tells the World Economic Forum: "President Trump is a con man and the ultimate narcissist, who wants the world to revolve around him."
Hamas are STARVING the hostages.
The UK Does Not Have a ‘Far-Right’ Problem
British Tourist Dies Following Hair Transplant in Turkey, Police Investigate
WhatsApp Users Targeted in New Scam Involving Account Takeovers
JD Vance Warns Europe Faces “Civilizational Suicide” Over Open Borders and Speech Limits
Germany Enters Fiscal Crisis as Cabinet Approves €174 Billion in New Debt
Trump Administration Finalizes Broad Tariff Increases on Global Trade Partners
JD.com Launches €2.2 Billion Bid for German Electronics Retailer Ceconomy
Azerbaijan Proceeds with Plan to Legalise Casinos on Artificial Islands
IMF Upgrades Global Growth Forecast as Weaker Dollar Supports Outlook
House Republicans Move to Defund OECD Over Global Tax Dispute
France Opens Criminal Investigation into X Over Algorithm Manipulation Allegations
×