Branch Gorevidians Explain Harsh Winter

By Doug Powers

This time of year, especially under the conditions much of the country is experiencing, we see people who are digging out from under tons of snow who are mocking "global warming." This ticks off global warming bureaucrats for two reasons: 1) They need to quickly develop alternative excuses (which they have), and 2) Your heavy winter clothing makes it more difficult for them to reach your wallet.

But a good global warmist wouldn't win an episode of Eco-Fear Factor unless he or she could explain how global warming can indeed bury us in snow (because, as you know, it never snowed before global warming started a few years ago).

Here's the basis for the "blizzards caused by global warming" argument: NASA reported that 1.5 trillion and 2 trillion tons of ice in Greenland, Antarctica and Alaska have melted at an accelerated rate since 2003. One blogger at the Daily Kos ("It is wise to study the ways of ones adversary") echoed other global warmists and explained our harsh winter:

When ice melts, the surrounding air or water cools down, basic thermodynamics. It would be ironic if that cooler air and water from excess northern melt were to work their way south a little farther and a little earlier in the season than they otherwise would have, and maybe even help fuel an occasional localized snow or ice storm, which right-wing climate change skeptics, especially those bearing a borderline pathological obsession with Al Gore, would then seize on as evidence that global warming is ... well not sure exactly.

Thermodynamics? Okay, good. Physics can explain all this. But what it can't explain is that thermodynamics doesn't know if it's summer or winter.

If the melting ice is making the surrounding air cooler and making temperatures drop more in wintertime (in locations very far away), how come the same melting ice isn't making those same locations cooler in the summertime? Is the ice not melting in the summertime? Yes it is, according to satellite data. And if all that ice melt is cooling the surrounding air, shouldn't that lowered air temperature slow the melt instead of speed it up?

When the eco-left is using occasionally stifling summer heat (which, again, never happened until global warming started a few years ago) as evidence of global warming, where is this magical and far-reaching thermodynamic cooling? That must be the time of year that thermodynamics is on summer break. Al Gore, unfortunately, is never on break.