Frosty the Snowman Accused of Debunking Climate Change

This past week’s series of severe snowstorms, which dumped large and even record amounts of snow across the country, has prompted another unfortunate round of chuckling by deniers of climate change. In part, this is the result of framing the issue as one of “global warming,” which, while true, obscures some of the less “warm” aspects of the issue. And it provides an opening for political opponents of addressing the climate crisis to latch onto any cold weather of any significance and use it as “evidence” that the scientists and all their numbers, data, and conclusions regarding climate change are demonstrably and observably wrong. How could the world be warming, they ask, when huge blankets of snow are falling from the sky?

Thus, this month’s snow storms, according to climate change deniers, prove that there is no such beast as ‘global warming.’ The flaw in this argument, however, is easily recognized: While it may be snowing here in the USA, it is certainly quite hot right now in South America—or anywhere south of the equator this time of year—since they are currently experiencing summer (and likely a hotter one) for their hemisphere. Simply because it is cold and snowing here does not mean that the global climate as a whole has taken a similar turn. Just because it may occasionally rain in the desert doesn’t change the fact that the overall climate in a desert area is a dry one. The desert has not suddenly become an aquarian paradise after one good thunderstorm. Nor does one snowstorm change the fact that the overall global climate is warming or the fact that the past decade is the warmest on record.

Understood another way, climate change due to “global warming” at a very basic level means that the average temperature for the entire earth is increasingly warmer. In practice, what this means is that there is more heat energy in the global system that has to work itself out. Just as warmer water temperatures act as fuel that increases the strength of hurricanes, warmer water and air temperatures lead to increased water evaporation globally. All that water vapor, in turn, has to go somewhere, meaning that the resulting precipitation—rain or snow—will be more violent and come in greater amounts than before. Thus, as climate change advances, where there is rain, it will become rainier and wetter; where there is snow, it will become snowier; and where it is dry, it will become even dryer.

Thus, if any conclusion at all regarding climate change should have been drawn from watching these record setting weather events, it should have been the exact opposite one from that promoted by the climate change deniers: These extreme snow storms with record amounts of snow fit generally with the pattern expected by scientists as climate change proceeds. So, rather than be used as fodder by climate change deniers to prove that global warming is a hoax, serious observers and policymakers should have observed these isolated weather events and, if anything, become even more serious about addressing the climate crisis predicted by climate researchers. So, while these severe snowstorms do not in and of themselves alone prove climate change is happening, what these storms certainly do not show—by any stretch of the rational, non-politicized imagination—is that climate change is not occurring, as the evidence in this case points entirely in the opposite direction.

Jeremey Dobbins, Legal Intern