Posted on 11/03/2011 9:31:56 AM PDT by Sub-Driver
NBC Nightly News Blames Halloween Snowstorm on Global Warming By Noel Sheppard Created 11/03/2011 - 11:12am
You knew some major news outlet was going to blame this weekend's east coast snowstorm on global warming.
On Tuesday, the folks on the NBC Nightly News did precisely that (video follows with transcript and commentary):
BRIAN WILLIAMS, anchor: Everybody out East said the same thing about this freak snowstorm, `This kind of thing didn't used to happen. This never happened before.' And while that is true, it may also be true that we'll all have to start getting used to this kind of thing over the long haul. That story tonight from our chief environmental affairs correspondent, Anne Thompson.
ANNE THOMPSON reporting: Around the world, it seems like the weather is going to extremes, not just the Halloween snowstorm in the Northeast, but record-breaking flooding in Thailand, 1400 new highs hit in the US just in the month of July, Moscow reaching 101 degrees in the summer of 2010, heat and wildfires consuming southern Australia in 2009.
Dr. GERRY MEEHL: This is the future and we're already experiencing climate change.
THOMPSON: Dr. Gerry Meehl is the senior scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder. He says our warming planet makes extreme weather events more likely as greenhouse gases created by burning fossil fuels, such as oil, gas and coal, alter the climate.
Dr. MEEHL: Just as steroids make the baseball player stronger and increase his chances of hitting home runs, the greenhouse gases are the steroids of the climate system. They increase the chances of record-breaking heat to occur compared to record-breaking cold.
THOMPSON: If the climate weren't changing, the ratio would be one record hot day to one record cold day. Meehl says we saw two record hot days for every record cold day in the last decade, and this year we are on a three-to-one pace.
Heat and little rainfall have parched Texas for the last year, making it, in the words of state climatologist John Nielsen-Gammon, the worst one-year drought in Texas history.
Mr. JOHN NIELSEN-GAMMON (Texas State Climatologist): This is really the first time when climate change--the impact of climate change has manifested itself in a tangible way within the state of Texas.
THOMPSON: Adding to all this, a new study that finds global warming is real and that the science behind it is not impacted by bias, bad data or cities that act as heat islands.
Professor RICHARD MULLER (University of California-Berkeley): The existence of global warming, I think, is pretty much beyond dispute now. I think we have closed the last remaining questions on that.
THOMPSON: Muller's study is getting a lot of attention because it was funded in part by a foundation backed by Charles and David Koch. They are oil billionaires and climate change deniers. Today no one can deny that extreme weather is here to stay. Brian:
WILLIAMS: All I know is this didn't happen when we were kids. Anne Thompson on the change in our weather. Thanks.
All I know is this didn't happen when we were kids.
And that somehow makes it historic.
After all, snow records in this region only go back to 1869. That of course is extremely convenient for the global warming enthusiasts as the rise in temperatures according to this climactic theory begins in 1850.
Funny how that works.
Yet October snows in the northeast though infrequent do occur. As Accuweather reported Monday:
The last time that Central Park recorded measurable snow was on Oct. 21, 1952 when 0.5 of an inch fell. Prior to that, 0.8 of an inch fell on Oct. 30, 1925. [...]
A record snowfall of 6.0 inches was set at Bangor, Maine, on Sunday. This broke the old record of 5.0 inches set back in 1963.
The point being that it does snow in this region in October. I actually have firsthand knowledge of this.
On October 4, 1987, I was scheduled to be married in, ironically, Williamstown, Massachusetts, when an historic snowstorm hit cancelling the nuptials until the following day:
With this in mind, despite what Williams does and does not remember, October snowstorms do happen in the northeast, and we don't have to go back that far to prove it.
One can only imagine what kind of storms hit this region during the Little Ice Age of the 16th through 19th centuries. But since Williams and Thompson weren't alive, and snowfall records began in 1869, weather events earlier than that seem unimportant.
This of course is common for climate alarmists, so we shouldn't be the slightest bit surprised.
In their view, whatever is happening today couldn't possibly have happened before records starting being kept, and therefore all weather events outside "the norm" are considered extreme and therefore proof of climate change.
Quite confirms Bernie Goldberg's point this week about nightshift employees at 7-Eleven having more introspection than today's journalists.
Brian Williams is a D-bagger.
Brian Williams is a moron.
PING
barf.
And here I was looking to find out if Algore was traveling through the northeast. /sarc
My mathematical models suggest that global warming will lead to a rapid downward shift in northern hemisphere temperatures over the next two months, followed by a warming trend from spring to midsummer. On a shorter time scale, we’re likely to see significant warming most morning up until early afternoon, with an AGW-induced cooling trend in the evenings and at night.
I say the single biggest contributor to globull warming is daylight savings time. Just look at all these years we’ve added an extra hour of sunlight. This has to add extra warming.
Funny how the increase in snowstorms and cold weather were NOT predicted in Al Gore’s movie or any of documentaries, magazine articles, newspaper articles etc. - Until a few years ago when we started getting record cold weather on a regular basis.
All of a sudden these new theories popped up out of nowhere and they act as if they knew this all along. “Oh, of course there are record cold temperatures all over the place, thats because ‘climate change’ is causing severe weather! and its supposed to get colder!”
“It’s snowing more now because there is more moisture in the air from global warming, you morons don’t know this? Of course this is common knowledge! Pick up a book you denier! Global warming makes it snow more! Idiots!”
And on.. and on.. The massive hurricanes predicted by them are also non-existant. They couldn’t even predict that correctly 5 years into the future.
Change it to Climate change and they are never wrong.
Its all about world socialism. Who doesn't want to protect the world?
But this is not about that, never has been.
Who could possibly argue with a statement like this?
ping
The naked casuistry of the high priests of Warmism would make a Jesuit blush
This is silly. I lived in upstate New York for four years, as a kid. It snowed most of those years in my town, from October to May. That was in the early seventies. How can these loonies conclusively state something consistent with historical norms is any part of their made-up doom and gloom scenario, with any credibility whatsoever?
Everyone, including my 13yo daughter, in my house was screaming at the TV during this report last night.
Hey, Brian, maybe you’d like to haul off all those tree branches that your global warming knocked into my yard over the weekend, MoFo.
After all, October snowstorms have NEVER happened before /s.
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