Saturday, January 30, 2010

The State of the Climate Debate

Is this the best they can come up with?
Temp is -12 global warming degrees F up the mountain at Killington today. Think I'll just ski half a day, have a couple of beers and some chili, and drive back to NYC.
or:
Late Thursday evening, in the hour before midnight, I found myself driving home from the airport amidst howling winds, blowing-and-drifting snow, and rapidly-falling temperatures. Watching the temperature dropping on the display of my truck's exterior-monitoring thermometer, an interesting and possibly didactic exercise occurred to me:

Ponder the following three factoids:
o The long-term average high temperature for this time of year (at the BTV airport reporting station) is 27F;
o Monday, the temperature reached into the low 50s;
o Friday (yesterday), the temperature struggled to reach into the low single-digits.

Do the math and ponder what these things tell you about the nature of the underlying "system"....

I know that this is supposed to be a clever rebuttal of the Climate Change theory, but I just can't bring myself to do anything but laugh at it. What a pathetic attempt.

I'm glad I don't live near the ocean in one of those low-lying cities like New York or Los Angeles. Though, to be able to travel by ship through the Northwest Passage which has opened for the first time in memory would be cool ...

1 comment:

  1. Um, yeah. If I may offer my own rant, I know a math professor (no, not at my uni) who makes these same arguments: "it's been plenty cold these last couple of years--this global warming stuff has to be wrong". A math professor?! What part of _average_ temperature do you not understand?

    ReplyDelete