Climate Change Snow Fight!

First it was a heat wave in Europe in 2003, followed by Hurricane Katrina in 2005. Now, according to New York Times columnist John M. Broder, climate change skeptics are using the recent east coast blizzards as fodder for their point of view. Where a substantive debate could be had, instead elected officials and other climate change commentators are reducing their arguments to cheap shots. Republican Senator James M. Inhofe even built an igloo on Capitol Hill for Al Gore.
 
“Ideologues in the Senate keep pushing the anti-scientific disinformation that big snowstorms are evidence against human-caused global warming,” climate change expert Joseph Romm told the Times.
 
Bloggers join in the foolery making light of the recent cancellation of a Senate hearing on global warming due to the weather. And Virginia Democrats might have to deal with constituent calls for help shoveling snow after advertisements by their Republican counterparts that urged voters to do so as punishment for the Democrats’ support of the federal cap-and-trade legislation.
 
Thankfully, Broder's article brings some scientific reason to the table amidst the snow fight:
 
Climate scientists say that no individual episode of severe weather can be attributed to global climate trends, though there is evidence that such events will probably become more frequent as global temperatures rise.
 
Jeff Masters, a meteorologist who writes on the Weather Underground blog, said that the recent snows do not, by themselves, demonstrates anything about the long-term trajectory of the planet. Climate is, by definition, a measure of decades and centuries, not months or years.
 
Check out this piece, too, on the climate change discussion minus the mudslinging.