As a global-warming skeptic (not to be confused with a climate-change denier; the evidence that the earth’s climate has changed radically over the eons is convincing), I see red whenever I read something like this:
Buffalo’s seven feet of snow provide climate deniers an opportunity to dismiss decades of research that indicates trouble ahead. What global warming?
This gem comes to us courtesy of John M. Crisp, described by his syndicate as “an op-ed columnist for Tribune News Service, (who) teaches in the English Department at Del Mar College in Corpus Christi, Texas.” I do hope he doesn’t count himself among the 97 percent of “scientists” who believe human activities are causing the climate to change. Mr. Crisp’s credibility might benefit from a citation of a serious climate scientist/skeptic who tried to refer to the Buffalo blizzard as evidence global warming is not occurring. I don’t know of any.
Mr. Crisp’s argument is of the classic straw-man variety. First, I live in a place that once was covered by ice a mile thick. I know of no one who disputes this fact. I’m hardly a “climate denier.” Obviously, the climate has changed and will change again. Second, people on both sides — who conflate “weather” with “climate” — may be guilty of using individual weather events to prove a climatological point, but serious students of the climate (and the weather) do not fall into this trap.
I once lived a couple hours east of Buffalo, on Lake Ontario, and while I never experienced “seven feet of snow” all at once, I have a pretty clear memory of very large quantities of snow caused by what is known as the “lake effect.” I also recall that in the brutal winter of 1977-78, there were a lot of jokes about putting all that snow that fell on Buffalo on railcars and sending it out west, where there was a drought. The fact it snowed a great deal in Buffalo in late November is neither unprecedented nor even particularly interesting, climatologically speaking.
Crisp brings up an interesting point: that some scientists think global warming (if it’s really occurring) would be good for mankind. He cites, somewhat breathlessly (as if he can’t wait to fire off his rebuttal) a report by Matt Ridley, “Why Climate Change is Good for the World,” that asserts a warmer climate would be better in terms of human survival and plant growth.
This isn’t exactly new thinking. I recall reading a report called “Global Warming: A Boon to Humans and Other Animals,” by Thomas Gale Moore. This tome came out a while ago: 1995. Moore reached back into fairly recent history, citing the Medieval Warm Period as a period of human progress and the subsequent Little Ice Age as a time of war, famine and disease. That really is the question we skeptics should put to the global warmists more often than we do: Who says today’s relatively cool climate is optimal for human progress?
