Oops--So Much for Global Warming
(Or, Conventional Wisdom Isn't so Wise)

If I hear one more person recite the title of this essay, so help me I'll scream.

We're having a cold December here in Ottawa. I understand it's like this across much of North America. And, every time we have a cold month, the climate-change debunkers are out in full force. From little fish (e.g. conversations on the bus or in the bingo hall) to big fish (e.g. Donald Trump's frequent Twitter tantrums), you hear the same thing over and over again:

"Oops--so much for global warming!"

I'm sorry, but these idiots are so stupid, you just wanna give 'em a smack.

The fact is, cold weather these days is largely the exception that proves the rule. The naysayers have it exactly backwards--it's not that a little cool weather proves that global warming doesn't exist--it's the fact that the weather is usually warmer that proves global warming. Climate change. Whatever you want to call it, it's real.

I remember the 1980s. Particularly, I remember Decembers in the 1980s. Then, it was cold. For Pete's sake, temperatures like we've currently experiencing were more the norm back then. In fact, until just a few days ago, the temperature this cold season (I use that in lieu of "winter" as winter hasn't even started yet) hadn't gotten below -10. That would have been unheard-of in the '80s. I remember 1986, for example, when it was -10 just a few days after Hallowe'en. Yes--that's how you spell it. This year, it happened a full month later. A full month.

I remember December of 1994 or 1995, when it was so cold, residents in some neighbourhoods had to keep their taps running, lest the pipes freeze. That doesn't happen today.

For another example, look at the last time the temperature went below -30. I remember a lot of December days in the 80's where it got a lot colder than that--for days at a time. Lately? The average person will cite dozens of times, but they're talking about the wind chill index, which isn't a temperature at all; they're just too stupid to know the difference. Well, it didn't happen last year, nor the year before, and not often in the past 15 years. I have the numbers to prove that, by the way.

Look at the weather records--extremes if you like. Most of the record lows were set years ago. Most of the record highs were set recently. For today, just for an example, the record high (10.2 C) was set in 2010--six years ago. The record low (-28.9)? 1942--back in World War II. Seventy-four years, and we haven't had a colder December 17. The same sort of situation applies to hundreds of days in the year, nowadays. Hundreds.

Look at the average temperature. It's rising. 2016 is on track to be the hottest year globally, ever, eclipsing--guess when?--2015. The deniers point to an apparent hiatus in climate change in the early aughts, claiming triumphantly that it was all a hoax and that they knew it all along. Well, guess what--scientists have determined that the warming was occurring then, too; but the heat was being pulled into the oceans for a time. And, guess what? The atmosphere is back to warming up. Very little has changed except for the rising level of pollutants in our atmosphere. The sun isn't the cause--scientists have been monitoring that for years, and the solar output has been steady as a rock.

The basic problem is that people don't remember and don't think for themselves. They notice the extremes and completely dismiss the normal. In this part of the country, cold stands out much more than hot; and so we notice the cold days, completely ignore the ever-climbing norms, and only barely notice the hot days. After all, "It's summer--it's supposed to be hot!" For some reason, it doesn't occur to them that winter is supposed to be cold--precisely because the last 20-or-so winters have been warmer than normal.

There's a bit of a war on science going on lately. We saw it first-hand in Canada, during the Harper years, when scientists were muzzled, prevented from speaking their minds and sharing their observations. Now it's happening in the United States. My theory is that people don't trust science, because they don't understand it, don't trust scientists because scientists are smarter and know more than they do. At what point did that become a fault?

How many times has someone you know said, "the scientists don't know what they're talking about." Well, heads-up, dummy--they do. They don't rely on fallible memories of how it used to be--they deal with solid numbers. Unlike most people, they look at all the data--going back years--before they shoot off their mouths. They apply mathematical tests, do comparative analyses, adjust for known climate perturbations (el nino, la nina, volcanic eruptions, etc.). Just because it's a slightly complicated process doesn't mean it's wrong. What's wrong is scanning your feeble memory for five seconds before pronouncing on the state of the climate. In other words: your ignorance does not prove the converse of what scientists are saying.

I have the numbers to prove that this December was above normal in temperature for the first half--and those are recent normals, allowing for climate change. And, even with that, the values were still warmer than usual. I'll bet you any money that people in January take all of three seconds to think about it and will look back on December as a cold month--all of it. One of the coldest, in fact.

Climate-change deniers remind me of Nero, singing and plucking at his lyre while Rome burned around him.

So, the next time you're tempted to utter the phrase that makes my blood boil, take a few minutes to think about it. Really think. Remember the weather back in your childhood. Does the current weather measure up? Barely--it would have been considered normal, back in the years before climate change really got going.

So, buck up. Yeah, it's a little cold right now. But I'll tell you this: if you're 25 years of age, or older, it got a hell of a lot colder when you were a little kid. That's based on hard fact. And you can take that to the proverbial bank!