Time Mag Headline 'Holiday Blizzard: More Signs of Global Warming'

In today's "Everything Is Caused By Climate Change" segment, the folks at Time magazine offer a howler destined to start your morning off right with a chuckle: "Holiday Blizzard: More Signs of Global Warming."

The contents were even more hysterical:

One theory is that a warmer Arctic may actually lead to colder and snowier winters in the northern mid-latitudes. Even as countries like Britain — suffering through the coldest December on record — deal with low temperatures and unusual snow, the Arctic has kept on warming, with Greenland and Arctic Canada experiencing the hottest year on record. Temperatures in that region have been 5.4°F to 7.2°F (3°C to 4°C) above normal in 2010. As a result, the Arctic sea-ice cover has continued to shrink; this September, the minimum summer sea-ice extent was more than 770,000 sq. mi. (2 million sq km) below the long-term average, and the third-smallest on record. Snow may be piling up in midtown Manhattan, but the Arctic is continuing its long-term meltdown. 

Shhh, wait - there's more:

The loss of Arctic sea ice helps accelerate the warming of the atmosphere in the far north, thanks to what's known as the albedo effect. White ice reflects sunlight into space, cooling the air, but when ice melts and is replaced with dark ocean water, the effect is reversed and more of the sun's heat is absorbed. As the Arctic air warms, it raises the altitude of discrete areas of high pressure, which can then alter wind patterns. This, in turn, can weaken the jet stream, allowing more cold air to seep out of the Arctic and into Europe and the eastern U.S. As the authors of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's recent "Arctic Report Card" put it, "There is evidence that the effect of higher air temperatures in the lower Arctic atmosphere in fall is contributing to changes in the atmospheric circulation in both the Arctic and northern mid-latitudes. Winter 2009-2010 showed a new connectivity between mid-latitude extreme cold and snowy weather events and changes in the wind patterns of the Arctic; the so-called Warm Arctic–Cold Continents pattern."

Ah - the famous Warm Arctic-Cold Continents trick. I hate it when that happens.

Then again, this might not be happening, for Time offered readers another theory if the first one seemed a tad convoluted:

Judah Cohen, the director of seasonal forecasting at the environmental research firm AER, has written that increasing seasonal snow cover in Siberia may drive extreme winter weather. Even as the planet has continued to warm and the Arctic has melted, seasonal snow cover has increased in Siberia, especially north of high Asian mountain ranges like the Himalayas. (As the climate warms overall, the atmosphere can hold more moisture, which can lead to more precipitation — falling as snow in places like Siberia that remain relatively cold.) All that Siberian snow creates a dome of cold air near the mountains, which bends the passing jet stream. Instead of flowing west to east, the jet stream moves in a more north to south fashion, carrying cold air south from the Arctic in the eastern U.S. and in Europe.

So, on the one hand, the cold and snow in America and Europe could be caused by the absence of ice in the Arctic.

If you're not buying that one, how about it's being caused by too much snow in Siberia?

Of course, if you like either of these theories, there's still some swampland available for sale in Florida that's getting even cheaper as those buying into Nobel laureate Al Gore's favorite money-making myth flee the southern states fearing it's going to be too warm to retire there.

Snicker, snicker.