A verminous, potentially rabid rodent in Pennsylvania crawled out of his hole in the ground this week, saw his shadow and, according to the local vermin whisperers, gloated that he’s entitled to another six weeks of dreamy winter sleep. Everyone clapped.
I say shoot him.
I have to admit that this creature’s cryptic weather forecasts are more accurate than those of a British climatologist who predicted 22 years ago that snow would become extinct in Britain within a few years. He was dramatically wrong.
Of course, a few datapoints – that there have been some harsh winters recently and Punxsutawney Phil forecasts another one this year – do not disprove the phenomenon of global warming. If you want to analyze by anecdote, consider that winters in Colorado over the course of my lifetime have become a bit milder.
In any event, even though the British climatologist is a woke, needle-dick, politically correct, attention-seeking alarmist and a British one to boot, and one that I’d really like to, I wish he had been right.
It’s blasphemy to the pagan climateers but – and so – I’ll say it: To hell with snow.
Part of my snow-phobia is undoubtedly due to my advanced age. I’ve seen two millennia now – the present one and the one before, and I’ve read about others – and I’ve seen a plurality of decades (never mind how many). My old-ish body translates cold into pain. I don’t like pain.
But I also have more altruistic reasons for favoring the abolition of winter. Winter is bad.
The warmingites always skip over this part of the debate. They think they’ve won the argument if they can win the point that it’s getting warmer by a degree or two. But that’s only half the argument. The other half is, is warmer good or bad? I say that warmer is good. Here’s why.
First, warmer has history on its side. This graph shows a proxy for temperatures over the last 500-some million years, nearly back to the development of the sort of life we would recognize as animals and plants. (The 4 billion years before then were even warmer.)
You can see from the graph that the earth has usually been warmer than it is now. It was during that long warmer period that most life evolved. There’s a reason they call a few hundred million years ago the Carboniferous Period. It’s because the warm earth grew a spectacular, lush, verdant jungle that thrived and died for millions of years to become the massive combustible hydrocarbon deposits that we call oil, gas and coal.
Later, still in the mostly warm period, those massive animals that we call dinosaurs evolved and ruled the earth for 100 times as long as the current rule of humans.
Finally, over the course of the last 5 million years, humans evolved from more primitive primates. Note that people now need clothing to survive in most places. That suggests they evolved in a warmer environment, right?
Right. Fossil records show that during almost all of human history, as in most of the preceding periods, the earth was warmer than it is today. Life and the evolution of it, including the really big kind and also the somewhat intelligent kind, do better in a warmer climate.
There are good thermodynamic reasons for that. Almost all chemical reactions take place better at higher temperatures where molecules are more active, including the biochemical reactions in living things. That’s why plants stop growing in the winter, that’s why many animals hibernate, and that’s why so-called advanced animals – that is, warm blooded ones – evolved to metabolize food into heat.
A warmer earth would clearly sustain more life. Compare the abundant life of the Amazon jungle with the barely existing life at the South Pole.
The climate alarmists are left with attention-grabbing headlines such as claims that polar bears are dying out. That’s false. Or claiming that the Himalayan and Alps glaciers are melting out. That’s true but fails to provide the context that glaciation of mountains in middle latitudes is not the norm. It’s almost unique to the current cold spell.
But, you say, what about rising sea levels due to these melting glaciers? Well, the most pessimistic predictions by the doomsdayers call for a rise of a foot or two in sea levels over the next century. At 7,000 feet above sea level in the Colorado Rockies, I’m not feeling at risk. As for coastal cities, if the Netherlands can dike itself at two feet below sea level, they can surely add another foot or two to those dikes in the next hundred years.
New Orleans? Be diked or be gone. We won’t miss you. New Yorkers will love this change. Rather than them moving to Florida, Florida will move to them. Maybe Florida will bring along its favorable tax rates and its governor who doesn’t sexually assault all his female staffers.
A greener earth with a longer growing season would be a boon to agriculture. Extending growing seasons by a week or two would eradicate hunger like no United Nations program ever could, and without the waste, corruption and anti-semitism.
Of course, that’s important to you only if you care about poor hungry people. Many warmingites care more about conspicuously practicing their religion in a snazzy electric car to take them to their mountain chalet.
Speaking of mountain chalets, I’m always amused by the sanctimony of Colorado ski companies like Aspen Skiing Company that advertise how they’re abating global warming. They boast that their little ski patrol huts are heated with solar energy while they ignore the thousands of tons of carbon dioxide they spew into the air to generate electricity to drag private jetters in $2,000 jackets up a manicured snowhill so that they can slide back down.
These ski companies worship snow because they worship profits. Fine, but don’t expect our applause for that. It’s like physicians worshiping accidents and illness because that’s what keeps them in business, and then expecting the rest of us to congratulate them for such worship.
Let’s have an open debate. Do we want more winter or more summer? More warmth or more cold? More food or more starvation? More life or more ice?
the Aspen beat 
An amusing article. I enjoyed it immensely.
I like winter.. I like winter so much that I want more of it.. But, I would be a nudist if such were “appropriate.” I spend much of my summer, naked after my daily swim. But they do complain at the King Soopers, when I forget to abide by the new heretics rules. So, you have given me a new defense of my favored proclivity. I submit that Darwin would defend those of us who love nudity (especially of the female variety.) And of course, as any democrat will tell you, everything Darwin says is the true word of god. And it is you clothed versions that are the perverts.
Always amusing…that is what one bets when the author has a 200 IQ,,,,Thanks Glenn for my morning high point.
More warming, please.
One of my favorite local ski areas has an event for an organization called “Protect our Winters”, which wants people to take action against “Climate Change” so that winter won’t go away.
So basically, they expect me to drive nearly 100 miles each way to a mountain in a remote location where nobody could exist if it were not for the ample supply of inexpensive fossil fuels, suit up in my high-tech ski gear which are products of high-tech manufacturing from all over the globe, and then be transported up a mountain over and over again for no better purpose than my personal recreation, except that this time I’ll be doing it in the name of fighting “climate change”, which if taken the least bit seriously would ultimately mean eliminating 100 mile drives, high-tech manufacturing, and self-indulgent personal recreation.
If these people honestly believe that human behavior is solely responsible for climate change and wish to be personally responsible for it, they really have no excuse for promoting or engaging in a sport like skiing.
To add to the irony of it all, for the last two seasons I’ve been doing a bit less skiing than usual, because of the excessive cold we’ve been having in the region.
Again, NO Global Warming advocate here, but fossil fuel burning IS responsible for the latest CO2 levels rising and world temps increasing! BUT, as Glenn stated, SO WHAT! Do we REALLY know if that is a bad thing? First of all, unless the intellectual planet hugging idiots clamor for ALL Nuclear plants for electricity, they are dumber than we can comprehend. And, oil is the basis for all our polymers, many medicines, and all the “high tech” modern wizardry that the wealthy LOVE to use! We CANNOT exist without oil! “Brandon” needs to have this hammered into his demented mind!
Phil sees his shadow 90% of the time. https://www.groundhog.org/Files/Admin/history/UpdatedGroundhog_Day_Predictions.pdf
I love the movie “Groundhog Day”
I want more winter.
But just like my wife and I cannot agree on the perfect temperature of our house, I’m sure we all can’t agree on the perfect temperature of our planet.
And one of the reasons for global warming and global cooling that is not discussed very often is the Milankovitch Cycles. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iA788usYNWA
Hi:
I am NOT a climate denier at all, and hate those sanctimonious pseudo intellectuals who worship at the altar of climate change, BUT, the Milankovitch cycles, while totally accurate, do NOT account for the latest temps rising due to CO2 levels increasing. BUT, like Glenn, we do NOT know if that is a BAD thing at all, for most of the reasons he stated in this fine article. In addition, if ALL the Arctic ice melted, NO sea level rise at all. For seas to really rise, we would need the Antarctic sheet ice to melt.
Lest anyone think that the Aspen Skiing Company has any principles, it has just jettisoned its social-distancing requirement — not because this measure was useless and stupid but in order to cram twice as many people into each lift gondola and increase its profits. At least skiers will now be able to keep each warm in the gondola.
Statistics show many more people die from severe cold weather than do from severe heat. But what’s good for people isn’t on the “climate change” agenda.
I think cold harsh winters in Northern Europe back in the day were the mother of invention. Northern Europeans had to engineer and invent their way to survive the four seasons and to ride out the cold winters. Cold weather drove advances in agricultural technology, food preservation and storage, home design, clothing, transportation, etc.
It’s still true today … necessity is the mother of invention.
If everyone all lived in lush, green temperate environments, we would all be spending more time laying about in hammocks or napping beneath palm trees while eating ready and easily supplied foods like bananas and coconuts.
I’m not concerned about a half degree F, or a degree or two F. If it does happen, which I am somewhat doubtful about … we’ll just engineer our way out of it. The Obamas purchased a multimillion dollar home in Martha’s Vineyard, so I don’t think they are too concerned about the ocean swallowing up their home.
These Leftists love to virtue signal and to demand that the general public change or forego their lifestyles, their air conditioning, their automobiles, their natural gas for heating and cooking. Yet the elite globalists like Obama and his ilk continue to jet set around the world to “important” meetings in locales like Davos so they can plan out and tell the rest of us how we are going to live the rest of our lives.
In the meantime, I trust Phil the rodent before I trust the global cooling/global warming/climate change alarmists like AlGore and AOC. Didn’t AlGore predict the complete meltdown of the Arctic and the extinction of all of the polar bears within ten years when his dopey movie came out some 15 or 16 years ago?!? A couple years ago AOC predicted the world would be gone in ten years … and now we’re down to 8 years and counting.
It’s February here where I am in Southern California, and the weather is looking much the same as it does every other past February since I have lived here going back to the 60s.
Dementia Joe Biden does need to massively RESET his presidency as his polls right now are running neck and neck with the Wuhan created Covid-19 Frankenvirus.
As a start … I would highly suggest deep-sixing his so called “Climate Czar,” the haughty looking John Kerry who by the way served in Vietnam. Next appoint Phil the rodent as the President’s new Climate Czar.
Phil has a better skill set level, a better personality, and a higher IQ than that loser Democrat presidential candidate who married into the Heinz ketchup fortune. Phil the rodent might even make a better husband to the Heinz fortune woman who married the then Democrat Senator/gigalo. I’m sure that Phil’s monthly expenses would be a lot more kinder to Teresa Heinz’s bank account.
At least a Climate Czar Phil will not jet set around the world burning up fossil fuels and increasing his carbon footprint like John Kerry. Phil will just go back to sleep in his burrow at Gobbler’s Knob and let God sort things out. Feed him well when Spring comes around and give him a few attractive and receptive female rodents and Phil will leave everyone alone, unlike John Kerry.
Here’s hoping that the alarmists like AlGore, AOC and John Kerry can just shut their pieholes with their Chicken Little rantings of gloom and doom … rantings just so they can expand and exert more government control over the rest of us. Their ad nauseam alarmisms definitely feel like the movie Groundhog Day.
EXCELLENT response! (Not that you need me to verify it!) BUT, Kerry, (the Ent) was in Vietnam, he never really “served!” He pushed for two Purple Hearts he didn’t deserve, just to get out of Vietnam before his tour was up. In addition, he should have been tried for treason when he independently went to Paris to bargain BY HIMSELF with Ho Chi Minh!
My favorite was when President Obama flew the world’s most expensive private jet to Africa to give a speech at a conference of African youth. He admonished young Africans who aspire to a standard of living similar to the one that even America’s poor enjoy not to expect having nice homes with air conditioning and automobiles because the climate couldn’t handle it. He then hopped back on the world’s most expensive private jet to fly back home to make his next tee time.
This is an example of the level of elitist absurdity that the climate change agenda can accommodate and yet somehow remain credible.
Personally Glen, I like to think in terms of more recent climate changes; say from the end of the last glacial period, 20K yrs ago to the beginning of the Holocene Warm Period (8K ago) then to of the MWP and the recent LIA,when glaciers were advancing globally mowing down forests as they went. If we’re lucky and we stay this warm for a few more hundred years – like the MWP – we could once again see forests taking root at those higher altitudes where they have grown time and time again. Love green – love warmth.
Perhaps during our lifetime (you & me) GT’s have risen 1/2 C +/-. Nobody can actually feel/experience that sort of a minimal change in global averages.\. Now if you move from Aspen to Miami – one will definitely feel the average difference.
What humans can feel and suffer/die from is the Urban Heat Island Effect – nothing to do w/ GW.
I love snow – in its place – that being on the side of the mountain where I can gaze at it from my front porch while sipping an ice cool beer…
A little warming would actually be beneficial in most ways. A cooling Earth would be catastrophic…starvation, wars, unaffordable heating bills for most of us and a whole litany of bad things. There are Russian scientists who are predicting a new solar minimum to rival the Little Ice Age. Let’s hope they are wrong.
Good, informative post as well as delightful and amusing comments. My $.02 is that I really like to ski, and since I live a half-hour drive from my local hill, I prefer to retain sufficient “winter” to get my thirty-or-so days skiing in. (I like skiing so much that I would be content to extend the season into a six months stretch, instead of the two-and-a-half months we get here in central Pennsylvania.) OTOH, my wife is not a winter sports enthusiast (although she once was, but advancing years have taken a toll on her joints, poor darling) and we do have a nice boat on our equally nearby lake, which is our preferred place to be during our also-too-short summer, spending time with our children and grandchildren as often as their schedules allow. (Being retired–as you might gather from my handle–scheduling time on the lake is not exactly a problem for us.) Since we have absolutely no ability to control the weather, let alone the climate, I am content to accept whatever God in His wisdom and beneficence grants to us. I am inclined to believe that those who actually think we can alter the climate by means of our puny efforts are, in the words of the Catechism I read as a youth, “invincibly ignorant,” with the emphasis on “ignorant.” As for those who are in favor of appropriating the income of others to the fool’s errand of “defeating global warming/climate change,” I would suggest a public horsewhipping followed by a ride out of town on a rail.
“Invincible ignorance”! The phrase of the day.
Why is it that the more formal education people acquire, the more invincible their ignorance becomes?
Your question is a good one, Chad. I think I know the answer:
People who haven’t been stuffed with sundry data in schools (at least back in the days when schools offered data) have only their ability to reason. And so that’s what they use. Reasoning is a very powerful tool, even in people whose innate reasoning ability is not particularly high.
In contrast, people who’ve been stuffed with data tend to forget about reasoning and instead look to the data they’ve been stuffed with. Which is usually not really on point, and so it’s not very effective. It’s impossible to stuff a person with enough data to live his life on it.
Of course, a really successful person uses both, but by definition a successful person is not your average person.
Glenn, I would like to see you have a real debate with Greta Thunberg. Someone needs to stand up in the middle of one of her idiotic speeches and say, “SO WHAT?” (Hat tip to George Felder, above.)
I don’t think I could be in the same room with Greta.
I wouldn’t want to be within a country mile of her!
She definitely has that Village of the Damned creepy kids’ stare.
Bad things could happen …
The problem is that Global Warming/Climate Change is pure fraud and has been pure fraud since day one three decades ago.
(A) Quick overview: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y-mRJmfFjFE&list=LL&index=37&t=22s
(B) For those who read books:
(1) Bjorn Lomborg “The Skeptical Environmentalist”
(2) Harm de Blij, “Why Geography Matters”
(C ) The 97% consensus: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ewJ6TI8ccAw
(D) Historic Overview: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M1VJtER2IUE&list=LL&index=60&t=1659s
(E) How to think about climate change: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CA1zUW4uOSw&list=LL&index=74&t=7s
(F) Corruption of the Surface record: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hElTSfQEdsk&list=LL&index=121&t=120s
(G) Corruption of the Satellite Record: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bOHrYY3yAGE&list=LL&index=68&t=18s
(H) Sea Level: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=poZ0pEOtFYM&list=LL&index=72&t=1s
(I) Bill Grey: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UL6ZCmmCU7c&t=20s
B (3) Steven J Koonin, “Unsettled.”
(4) Michael Shallenberger, “Apocalypse Never.”
But, But, But – Aren’t Guns Evil? Maybe we could eliminate the groundhog with a spear or a club?
Global warming was proven to be a hoax a LONG time ago, yet there are still so many idiots out there willing to believe the alarmists and the lying media. Climate changes have happened to this good old Earth since the beginning of time, but the government doesn’t want us to know that. They’d rather keep everyone stirred up with a non-subject to deflect from their misdoings behind closed doors. The entire Biden administration consists of evil, corrupt, perverted a-holes and every one of them needs to be booted OUT of office, and off this planet!!
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