Wait for it … wait for it …

It came on Saturday, courtesy of the Washington Post (Scientists say Arctic warming could to blame for blasts of extreme cold). I knew it was coming. They say that our recent Arctic blast is caused by … climate change.

The article is typical of this kind of nonsense, full of qualifiers, as in “…understanding any link between planetary warming and extreme cold remains a work in progress,” and …observations of jet stream patterns have not confirmed the hypothesis.” and “there’s still a lot of mixed feelings in the scientific community, though there is some tantalizing evidence that there is some ‘there’ there.”

What is this “tantalizing evidence”? They do not say. They are vague except in explaining that there is an area of low pressure normally parked over the Arctic, surrounded by bands of fast-flowing air. When the winds are strong, the band is tight, and the cold air is kept in check. Often in winter, the vortex acts like a wobbling top, and Arctic air escapes and invades areas south, like Canada and the Northern US.

When I was in school, especially studying accounting in college, the orders were firm on tests – SHOW YOUR WORK.” These people who are making the assertions contained in this flimsily-backed article, do not show their work. They say scientific consensus is years away, as if there is ever such a thing as “scientific consensus”, and as if they even know the future.

I grew up in Montana – we used to call these Arctic blasts “Canadian fronts,” as if that country was at fault. They were infrequent, but sometimes more regular. I distinctly remember 1969, a year where in the month of February, the temperature did not exceed zero. At that time I was working for a Cadillac dealership as a parts runner, and had to drive a beat up old pickup that had no heater. I put it inside at night, so it was warm when I started out in the morning on my runs, but the days were long and very, very cold. All I could do to stay warmer was to stuff a towel in the vent where heat would come out if there was a heater.

As I recall, and understand memories are not reliable, the 1980s saw very mild winters, and hardly any Arctic blasts. That is probably what this article means when it says blasts are now twice as frequent as in the past. What they fail to do is quantify “past,” as in how far back are they going? I recall bitterly cold days in the 1960s, when we had difficulty starting cars in the morning. My older brother was going to take me skiing, maybe in 1966 or so, and we had borrowed an International Harvester Scout to make the sixty mile trip to Red Lodge Mountain. Not only would it not start in that ridiculous subzero weather, it would not even turn over.

My guess, as temperatures have only changed modestly in the last 100 years (perhaps 1 degree Centigrade of warming), is that climate is cyclical, variable, and extremely difficult to predict. One thing going on now that adds some predictability is that we are in the third year of a La Niña cycle, a very rare thing. La Niña is the cooling trend that follows El Niño, and having it last three years has led some more reliable climatologists to predict that this would be a severe winter.

One is Joe Bastardi of the Heartland Institute, who predicted a very cold winter for Western Europe, and also (and I think this is La Niña-related), a late season hurricane making landfall in the US, aka Ian. There are a few people who know a thing or two about climate, Bastardi is one. (Heartand is great on this topic, by the way, one of my go-to’s.)

There is no (predictable) climate change, very little warming (in the 19-year stretch between 1995 and 2014, there was no warming. It was around then, I recall, the “global warming” became “climate change.”) What we do have are serious and controlled liars, and agreed-upon lies that are enforced as fascist dictats. I find it intriguing that Global Warming, officially introduced as a thing in 1989, has slowly gained momentum. Those behind the hoax now threaten to do great harm to us. It is, as I’ve said before, an anti-population movement controlled by psychopaths and misanthropes. Not a word of their science is true. It is all a big made-up lie, one that is agreed upon by very powerful organizations and people.

These liars mean business, and want harm to come to all of us save them.