Snowfall Made Simple

(And, just for the sake of repetition of the obvious: warmer air means more evaporation, more moisture capacity, and, then, almost like science -- more snow. In the winter. When it snows.)

Pissing Into The Wind

Here's a waste of time and energy:

Faced with rising political attacks, hundreds of climate scientists are joining a broad campaign to push back against congressional conservatives who have threatened prominent researchers with investigations and vowed to kill regulations to rein in man-made greenhouse gas emissions.

If presentation of and interest in facts made a difference to the deniers, it wouldn't even be necessary. The evidence is there. It's a little, what shall we call it, inconvenient, though. Doesn't fit the narrative. Like pretty much everything else congressional and teabagger conservatives believe.

So, nice try guys. But you're wasting breath and adding see oh two to no good end.

Hot Topic

With so much crazy out there, so much from which to choose, I haven't commented lately on global warming denialism. But there's a thought I've had for a long time and just haven't gotten around to mentioning. So here it is. In honor of Earth Day, which I missed.

A favorite tactic among the supercilious is reminding us that a mere forty years ago, there were scientists sounding alarms over the prospect of global cooling. To which I have two things to say in response. First, the obvious: that's what science does. It corrects itself. By definition. Science differs from, say, entrenched reticence, religious fundamentalism, or reflexive rejection of whatever you don't like, in that it challenges the known; tests it; refines it; seeks falsehood and replaces it with something closer to truth. Continually.

Next, my little insight. The argument defeats itself!! If, based on geologic trends over previous eons, we were predicted to be heading into a cooling phase, and if, within a mere four decades that trend has entirely reversed, doesn't it suggest something pretty serious and non-geological (for lack of a better term) is happening? Isn't it pretty apparent that NOTHING but human activity could account for such rapid change? A half-century! A semi-demi-hemi-nanosecond in geologic time.

Or, to put in another way, it's like calling off the fire department as your house burns, because yesterday a guest told you it was cold inside.