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 Al Gore has whipped up another blizzard of controversy by telling Fox News' Bill O'Reilly that global warming — climate change, if you prefer — causes more snow. REUTERS FILE PHOTO |
Al Gore has whipped up another blizzard of controversy by arguing global warming — climate change, if you prefer — causes more snow.
Challenged by Fox News’ Bill O’Reilly to explain why southern New York (and, for that matter, large parts of North America and Europe) looks like “the tundra” this winter, Gore responded on his blog by quoting approvingly from a year-old column by the Chicago Tribune’s Clarence Page, commenting on last winter’s severe weather and heavy snowfall in parts of the United States.
To wit: “In fact, scientists have been warning for at least two decades that global warming could make snowstorms more severe. Snow has two simple ingredients: Cold and moisture. Warmer air collects moisture like a sponge until it hits a patch of cold air. When temperatures dip below freezing, a lot of moisture creates a lot of snow. A rise in global temperature can create all sorts of havoc, ranging from hotter dry spells to colder winters, along with increasingly violent storms, flooding, forest fires and loss of endangered species.”
The observation that higher temperatures can lead to more snow — and many other weather phenomena — is accurate.
Incorrect claims
But claiming one can determine whether any single weather event, or events — even over several seasons — are caused by global versus regional warming, cow farts versus car exhaust, or natural causes versus man-made ones, isn’t.
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As for Gore, if, as he argues, climate scientists have predicted for decades that global warming would make “snowstorms more severe” and lead to “colder winters,” why was there no mention of this in his “documentary,” An Inconvenient Truth?
It portrayed global warming exclusively as a phenomenon of steadily rising temperatures, expanding deserts, retreating glaciers and deadly heat waves. (Ironically, severe cold has always posed the greater threat to human life.)
If climate scientists have long warned that global warming will lead to bigger snowstorms and colder winters, then Gore and his advisers clearly decided to sacrifice accuracy for the sake of dramatization — or, if you prefer, propaganda — in An Inconvenient Truth.
Perhaps they thought linking global warming to colder weather and more snow would confuse people.
The problem is when people now hear from Gore that virtually any weather phenomenon — cold snaps or heat waves, harsh or mild winters — is linked to global warming, many understandably become skeptical.
To be fair, O’Reilly’s premise — that one big snowstorm, or harsh winter, or a series of them, discredits the theory of man-made global warming, is inaccurate.
A common tactic employed by Fox News commentators and many Republicans, it comes from deliberately confusing weather with climate.
The real concern here is better explained by Page in the piece from which Gore selectively and approvingly quoted, perhaps without reading it to the end.
Healthy skepticism
To where Page wrote: “I don’t necessarily agree with all of the alarm that Gore has expressed on climate change. Nor do I disagree with all of the skeptics, who question how much climate change is caused by human activities … Public skepticism about climate change is healthy, if it is based on good scientific research.”
Page notes the real problem is that far too much of the debate about climate change today is based solely on people’s politics.
So true — on all sides.
lorrie.goldstein@sunmedia.ca