Earlier today, Al Gore responded to a question posed last week by Fox News host Bill O’Reilly:
Last week on his show Bill O’Reilly asked, “Why has southern New York turned into the tundra?” and then said he had a call into me. I appreciate the question.
As it turns out, the scientific community has been addressing this particular question for some time now and they say that increased heavy snowfalls are completely consistent with what they have been predicting as a consequence of man-made global warming:
In fact, scientists have been warning for at least two decades that global warming could make snowstorms more severe. Snow has two simple ingredients: cold and moisture. Warmer air collects moisture like a sponge until it hits a patch of cold air. When temperatures dip below freezing, a lot of moisture creates a lot of snow.
A rise in global temperature can create all sorts of havoc, ranging from hotter dry spells to colder winters, along with increasingly violent storms, flooding, forest fires and loss of endangered species.
Apparently, Mr. Gore has never noted that climate scientists once thought snowfall would disappear. But wait, there’s more.
According to Dr. David Viner, a senior research scientist at the climatic research unit (CRU) of the University of East Anglia, within a few years winter snowfall will become “a very rare and exciting event.”
“Children just aren’t going to know what snow is,” he said.
Also, apparently Mr. Gore is unable to track the global monthly temperature. If he had, he would note that there is no “global warming” this month.
Note to Al: The global temperature has been falling in December and January in concert with a strong La Niña. In the chart below, negative values indicate cooling/La Niña, while positive values indicate warming/El Niño.
Al, please note the pretty blue colors:
NOAA’s Aqua satellite lower troposphere channel 5 shows that global temperatures are currently below normal. I’ve helpfully added a big purple arrow to help Mr. Gore read the graph.
Dr. Roy Spencer takes Gore to task here. We’ll have the final January UAH global temperature anomaly in the next day or so. I hope Bill O’Reilly points this out to Gore on Fox.
Anthony Watts operates the most visited blog on climate science in the world, www.wattsupwiththat.com.