The country is enduring yet another bout of brutal cold courtesy of the North Pole Express, AKA the polar vortex. Warmists dismiss this as “weather”, which only begs the question as to when “weather” becomes “climate”. There’s certainly no red line dividing one from the other, nor could there be, the two being so interrelated. With this in mind, there’s one factor generally overlooked by warmists, and by skeptics as well: the fact that this arctic cold does have climatic effects, resulting directly from day after day of freezing temperatures across continental distances, and that these effects are well understood. Simply put, cold weather created by the polar vortex results in widespread and enduring snow cover and large-scale freezing, with both occurring over larger areas than normal. This results in buildups of ice and snow layers that increase the earth’s albedo  – its reflectivity as involves incoming solar...(Read Full Post)