I have a splendid view of snowy treetops outside my living room windows. It is lovely to sit here in my nice warm apartment and watch the sweep of easy wind and downy flake falling lazily from the sky. But it is becoming harder to enjoy the view.
Every time it snows I can just hear climate change skeptics licking their chops, smug in their certainty that we are dumb enough to believe the continued existence of winter disputes overwhelming evidence that the planet is warming.
Must we continue, every time it snows, to ask if there is some mistake in the consensus among 97% of the world's climate scientists? No one who has read any of the literature believes that a warming planet means the end of winter.
As Thomas Friedman, writes in today's NY Times, "The fact that it has snowed like crazy in Washington — while it has rained at the Winter Olympics in Canada, while Australia is having a record 13-year drought — is right in line with what every major study on climate change predicts: The weather will get weird; some areas will get more precipitation than ever; others will become drier than ever."
Friedman's column, Global Weirding Is Here is worth reading.
