It has been one heck of a snowy week, and really, a snowy winter for Washington, DC in general.
Take a look at the pictures I took yesterday during the snowstorm (affectionately termed “snowmageddon,” “snowpocalypse,” “snOMG,” etc. in the Twitter world.)
Sorry folks, ‘snow newspapers today.
Woman skiing down Connecticut Avenue. Not something you see everyday.
The Post couldn’t deliver print newspapers Saturday because of the snow. I took this Saturday, but you see that the Friday paper is still in the machine.
Again, not something you see everyday: sledding down Connecticut.
For whatever reason, the snow isn’t making me as irate as it used to. I am from Cape Cod, Mass. So I grew up with this much snow basically every winter, no big deal. In fact, on the Cape, if we got 2 feet of snow, we would typically still end up having school. After a while, I began to absolutely loathe the snow. But, what is irritating me about the weather here in DC this winter is that there are a lot of people pulling out the ol’ “What happened to global warming?” card. I’m not just talking about your everyday average idiot that doesn’t know what they are talking about, I am talking about the professional idiots that don’t know what the are talking about.
Check out this (poorly made) video from the Virginia GOP. It basically tries to frame the recent snowstorm as more evidence that global warming isn’t “real,” and therefore more incentive to prevent Obama’s proposed cap-and-trade program from getting through.
Now, if I am being totally honest, I don’t think the cap-and-trade program is perfect. I actually much prefer a carbon tax program. I think it would be a better way to encourage research and development in more sustainable energy technology and would hurt consumers much less financially. However, there will be a price, for everyone. We’ve got a huge hole to crawl out from here.We can either pretend nothing is going on and keep on digging ourselves deeper or do something about it. A carbon tax program would hit companies where it hurts–their pockets. And it will cost consumers too, which again will help to change consumer habits and spending–we will buy more energy-efficient appliances and turn the heat down and buy more fuel-efficient cars, etc. Humans are adaptable. We will figure out how to minimize our financial burden, and consequently minimize the environmental burden on the planet. I don’t think it will be easy at all, but “easy” is what got us into this mess to begin with.
Furthermore, this video encourages the already existing confusion about what global climate change even is. Climate change is NOT about waking up one day and feeling like you are in a sauna. It is much more complex than this, and there are a lot of symptoms of gradual climate change. This Web site is especially helpful and informative. There have been more and more recent phenomena that point to climate change, including but not limited to: ocean warming, sea-level rising, heat waves, droughts, fires, spreading disease (which breeds because of the increasing temperature), earlier arrival of spring, flooding and heavier snowfall.
Furthermore, and perhaps most importantly, if you look out your window and there is snow on the ground, you are seeing WEATHER. It is the winter time, it is supposed to be cold and snowy. So regardless of which way you look at the storm, it is either a possible pocket of evidence for climate change on a grander scale, or it is simply weather.
It is irresponsible, misleading, conniving, and completely asinine for these politicians to try to convince us to “just look around” and know global warming isn’t happening. There are situations across the globe providing evidence for climate change, and maybe this is just one more piece. But one thing is for certain: one isolated snow storm is certainly NOT evidence against it.
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