As my colleague Mark Finkelstein reported Friday, global warming-obsessed media have been hysterically blaming this year's record snowstorms on climate change under the theory that Al Gore's favorite myth will increase moisture in the atmosphere thereby raising the amount of the white stuff falling from the sky.
As Finkelstein pointed out, the problem with this postulate is that this season's storms in our nation's capital all occurred on abnormally cold days.
Another case in point: Dallas, Texas, has just seen the greatest 24-hour snow total in the city's history with temperatures nearly 20 degrees below normal (picture courtesy Story Balloon):
Large, fluffy snowflakes fell heavily across North Texas for about 24 hours Thursday, bringing record snowfall that sailed past the previous all-time one-day record.
A new record of 12.5 inches of snow in a 24-hour period was set at Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport (11.2 on Thursday) -- and flakes were still coming down after midnight. The previous daily record was 7.8 inches on Jan. 15, 1964, and Jan. 14, 1917 and the previous 24-hour record was 12.1 inches.
Why did it snow instead of rain? According to the Star-Telegram:
The ingredients for a snowy season are simple: multiple upper-level storm systems supported by temperatures low enough to turn moisture to snow.
Those two elements have collided more than once over North Texas this season.
"It's definitely one of those winters," said Bill Bunting, a meteorologist with the weather service. "You never really know when you’ll get one."
If temperatures in this region had been at their norm for this time of year, all this extra moisture would have fallen as rain. The average temperature in Dallas on February 11 is 50 degrees. The average low is 40. Temperatures in Dallas are forecast to continue to be abnormally low the rest of the week.
As such, Dallas just go pummeled with snow because it was too cold to rain as it normally would have this time of year.
And therein lies one of the lies concerning this issue: if global warming is increasing moisture in the atmosphere AND temperatures, parts of the globe that RARELY see snow shouldn't suddenly be seeing more than they ever have.
Certainly, the coldest parts of the planet that experience greater amounts of moisture will see more snow if the alarmists are correct.
But America's deep south setting snowfall records as the planet is supposedly warming defies anything approaching logic - unless of course you're a journalist tied to Al Gore's hip.