Weather and Climate in the Face of the “Snowpocalypse”

While Washington was buried under several feet of snow, we all needed some entertainment. Fortunately, leaders of the anti-science movement were happy to provide it.  Sen. DeMint (R-SC) said: “It’s going to keep snowing in DC until Al Gore cries ‘uncle,'” while Sen Inhofe (R-OK) built an igloo dubbed “Al Gore’s New Home.” Sean Hannity reported “it’s the most severe winter storm in years, which would seem to contradict Al Gore’s hysterical global warming theories.”

I suppose it doesn’t matter to them that the National Academy of Science and all major scientific organizations who have studied the question have concluded that pollution is causing changes to our climate.  Or that there is some evidence that climate change could make blizzards like this more common, even as the world continues to warm. According to TIME:

“Hotter air can hold more moisture, so when a storm gathers it can unleash massive amounts of snow. Colder air, by contrast, is drier; if we were in a truly vicious cold snap, like the one that occurred over much of the East Coast during parts of January, we would be unlikely to see heavy snowfall.”

One day’s weather does not define our climate. It’s one slide in the filmstrip — meaningful when strung together, but relatively uninformative on its own. (See our previous post on this.) That is why it is so important to follow the scientists unearthing past weather, recording present weather and modeling future weather — a theme The Colbert Report and the Daily Show picked up in their shows last week.

Unfortunately, some people are attempting to exploit the recent snow to mislead the public about a carbon cap. There’s an ad attacking Congressmen Boucher (D-VA) and Perriello (D-VA) for voting for the House climate bill. Far from “kill[ing] tens of thousands of Virginia jobs,” this bill would bolster the Virginian and American economies. LessCarbonMoreJobs.org shows just shy of 100 Virginian companies — already employing over 16,000 — are poised to grow under a carbon cap. That’s just one snapshot of the United States could achieve with climate legislation.