The U.S. lost its chance at the gold medal in hockey — maybe even the chance to play on the ice ever again. New York times reporter Binyamin Appelbaum says we can now resume creating a world “too hot for hockey” due to global warming.
Appelbaum took to twitter after the U.S. Olympic hockey team lost to Canada on Friday to share his worries about the future of winter sports with the world.
Oh well. Back to our long-term plan of making the world too hot for hockey.
— Binyamin Appelbaum (@BCAppelbaum) February 21, 2014
The Times’ Washington correspondent may be worried that the world could be too hot for hockey (even though the game is played indoors and the arena is kept icy using modern technologies), recent temperature trends make it unclear just how much warming will occur.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change predicted last year that the world could warm by more than two degrees Celsius in the next century due to mankind burning fossil fuels, like coal and oil. But the world has not warmed in last 17 years, leaving climate scientists perplexed.
Eight theories have been offered as to why global surface temperatures have remained stagnant in the last two decades, but there seems to be no consensus on why temperatures have stopped and even cooled slightly since the late 1990s.
This winter has also been one of the most chilling in recent memory. A polar vortex from the Arctic brought heavy snows and frigid weather on most of the country for weeks. In that time 4,406 record low temperatures across the U.S. in January along with 1,073 record snowfalls.
The Obama administration and environmentalists have tried to argue that the exceptionally cold winter doesn’t prove or disprove global warming, but it is the kind of thing to expect as the planet warms.
“A growing body of evidence suggests that the kind of extreme cold being experienced by much of the United States as we speak is a pattern that we can expect to see with increasing frequency as global warming continues,” said White House science czar John Holdren.
“If you’ve been hearing that extreme cold spells, like the one we’re having in the United States now, disproves global warming, don’t believe it,” Holdren added.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration found that U.S. winters have been getting colder in the past two decades at a rate of minus 2.5 degrees Fahrenheit per century, running up against arguments that winters have been warming.
“Basically, global warming causes less snow, except when global warming causes more snow,” climate skeptic Marc Morano told Fox News host Neil Cavuto. “And it causes less cold, except when it causes more cold.”
“Every heatwave is proof of global warming, but now we have record cold, record snow, the east coast may see one of the snowiest decades now since the 1960s — exceeding the 1960s,” Morano added. “And the new theory is: bundle up, it’s global warming.”
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