Massive snowstorms such as the one sweeping into the US north-east on Monday are “part of the changing climate”, New York’s governor, Andrew Cuomo, declared at a press conference announcing a state of emergency.
Cuomo said on Monday that “there is a pattern of extreme weather that we’ve never seen before” – reiterating his comments in the wake of hurricane Sandy, when he said that “anyone who says there’s not a dramatic change in weather patterns is probably denying reality.”
After noting that he “just wants to introduce the idea,” Nye conceded, “Now, proving any one storm is connected, especially cold-weather events is quite difficult.” He added, “But I just want to present that.”
According to Nye, “the very strong winds that will be associated with this storm in the next couple of days, these could be connected to climate change.” Considering that this is a snowstorm in winter, Nye was careful to avoid the term “global warming.” Cycle co-host Toure cheered, “I love you for bringing that in.”
While the “curator” of theWashington Post’s newly-minted online “Energy and Environment” section Chris Mooney tells us in hisarticlethat global warming may make blizzards worse by increasing the temperature of the western Atlantic ocean and thereby increasing the moisture feed into the developing storm, meteorologist Ryan Maue isquick to point outthat just the opposite is likely the result—that the elevated sea surface temperatures actually act to make such storms tamer.
Maue goes on toaddthat it is “easy to make case that global warming weakened this blizzard significantly due to warmer [sea surface temperatures].”
So, one says “climate change” will make snow storms worse, the other says “climate change” reduced the impact. Refer back to facepalm above.
Professor Roger Pielke, Jr., is less than impressed with the pronouncements, noting that no one has been able to attribute any trends in winter storms to a human fingerprint. Of course, that won’t stop warmists. Nothing will. They live in a different world.