During coverage of the record-setting snowfall blanketing D.C. and the eastern United States yesterday, an anchor hosting Neil Cavuto’s mid-afternoon show advocated the controversial position that the dramatic weather undercuts the notion that global warming is a real threat. In recent days, everyone from prominent Republican politicians to pundits and commentators have echoed that line of attack.
“The Obama administration yesterday, amidst all this record-setting cold weather, proposed a new agency to study and report on the changing climate, also known as global warming,” said talk show host Rush Limbaugh on Februrary 9. “This is absurd.”
And an editorial at the Washington Times opined: “”Those who value freedom should thank Mother Nature for her sense of humor, undermining the case for global warming one flake at a time. So although we’re quite tired of shoveling, we say, ‘Bring on the blizzard.’”
The arguments are not unlike those being made by some Republicans in power, including Republican Sen. Jim Demint of South Carolina, who tweeted: “It’s going to keep snowing in DC until Al Gore cries uncle.”
Proponents of the existence of climate change say short-term weather fluctuations has no bearing on the overall debate on global warming.
Gavin Schmidt, a climate modeler at NASA, told the New York Times in 2008 that “it’s all in the long-term trends.”
NASA has released a report suggesting that the previous decade may have been the world’s warmest on record.
Also yesterday, MSNBC’s Contessa Brewer fought back a bit against the network’s meteorologist, who she suggested was being too impartial when he acknowledged “competing schools of thought” on the climate change issue.
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