Evil climate denier Anthony Watt says 2001-2010 was the world’s snowiest decade in, well, decades. And Rutgers University has the stats to back him up. But Al Gore says you should just ignore all that fluffy white stuff you’re up to your ass in.
“Just as it’s important not to miss the forest for the trees, neither should we miss the climate for the snowstorm,” Gore wrote in a wonky Op-Ed for The New York Times.
“The heavy snowfalls this month have been used as fodder for ridicule by those who argue that global warming is a myth,” he acknowledged.
“Yet scientists have long pointed out that warmer global temperatures have been increasing the rate of evaporation from the oceans,” he wrote. And that puts “significantly more moisture into the atmosphere – thus causing heavier downfalls of both rain and snow.”
Unfortunately for the Goracle, Watt and the Rutgers University Global Snow Lab respectfully disagree. At least we think it was respectful.
“Now that we have reached the end of the meteorological winter (December-February,) Rutgers University Global Snow Lab numbers (1967-2010) show that the just completed decade (2001-2010) had the snowiest Northern Hemisphere winters on record. The just completed winter was also the second snowiest on record, exceeded only by 1978. Average winter snow extent during the past decade was greater than 45,500,000 km2, beating out the 1960s by about 70,000 km2, and beating out the 1990s by nearly 1,000,000 km2. The bar chart below shows average winter snow extent for each decade going back to the late 1960s.”
Who’s your money on?
Source: New York Daily News, WattsUpWithThat.com
