Human Events said Global Warming was a lie because of bad weather recently

[CreekDog]

Recent weather does not prove or disprove climate change, but let's humor them and look at last month around the nation:

January 2011 mean temperature (in F) compared to normal:

(from roughly west to east):

Fairbanks, AK +3.8
Honolulu, HI +0.4
Seattle, WA +1.8
Los Angeles, CA +2.1
Cheyenne, WY +1.7
Albuquerque, NM +0.6
Chicago, IL -1.4
New Orleans, LA -1.5
Boston, MA -1.7
Miami, FL -0.1

Would you say the above disproves global warming?

[elocs]

1. Yes, "weather" does not disprove "climate" change. What a concept. n/t

[Kennah]

2. I tend not to think small subsets of data prove anything ...

... and instead try to focus more holistically on the issue. However, even the small subsets of data paint a pretty damning picture.

[underpants]

3. Al Gore finally states what we all knew all along

Last week on his show Bill O’Reilly asked, “Why has southern New York turned into the tundra?” and then said he had a call into me. I appreciate the question.

As it turns out, the scientific community has been addressing this particular question for some time now and they say that increased heavy snowfalls are completely consistent with what they have been predicting as a consequence of man-made global warming:

“In fact, scientists have been warning for at least two decades that global warming could make snowstorms more severe. Snow has two simple ingredients: cold and moisture. Warmer air collects moisture like a sponge until it hits a patch of cold air. When temperatures dip below freezing, a lot of moisture creates a lot of snow.”

“A rise in global temperature can create all sorts of havoc, ranging from hotter dry spells to colder winters, along with increasingly violent storms, flooding, forest fires and loss of endangered species.”

..

http://blog.algore.com/2011/02/an_answer_for_bill.html

[napoleon_in_rags]

4. People don't understand thermal energy.

Thermal energy (heat) is kinetic energy (motion) spread out due to entropy. When you introduce heat to a system, like hot coffee to cool cream, what you see at first is turbulence, lots of action, kinetic energy. After time it spreads out becomes a dead heat. But anyway, if more heat were being introduced to earths atmosphere, the first thing I would expect to see is more turbulence, more extreme weather events of hot and cold. Only as the whole thing stabilized over long periods of time would I expect to see a nice predicable "warming" effect with normal weather.

What I'm saying is lots of extreme weather events, hot or cold, doesn't disprove the idea that more heat is being introduced. Only lots of averaged measurements, or waiting till it settles down, would you know if its warmer.

[Angry Dragon]

5. Global warming is the wrong way to look at it

One should say climate change