Posted 1/12/2014
Record-breaking cold temperatures and snowfall across much of the United States and Canada have experts warning people to be careful, saying the frigid conditions could even kill those who are not prepared or properly dressed for the conditions. In some areas, factoring in wind chills, it could feel as cold as 70 degrees Fahrenheit below zero. At the earth’s poles, the situation is even more serious, with the highest amount of sea-ice cover since records began almost four decades ago. As their controversial theories melt down on the world stage, however, global-warming alarmists are not giving up yet.
Many climate experts around the world say the ongoing freeze is just the start of a new period of global cooling sparked largely by decreasing solar activity. More than a few scientists are even warning that the planet is headed for another “Little Ice Age,” with potentially devastating consequences for humanity. Even the discredited climate-alarmism apparatus at the United Nations has quietly lowered its wild temperature predictions. Political analysts, meanwhile, are now forecasting the imminent demise of what critics refer to as the “cult” of global-warming hysteria.
For government-backed global-warming alarmists, however, the record cold is, somehow, just more evidence of alleged “man-made global warming,” requiring, of course, carbon taxes and a planetary climate regime. Despite regularly seizing on every bit of bad weather as more evidence for their anthropogenic (human-caused) global warming theories, other alarmists are warning that the record-breaking cold should be ignored because it is weather, not climate. In desperation, a few alarmists have even hyped some warm weather in Australia to claim that their theories should still be taken seriously.
As global-warming hysteria gets put on ice, weather watchers are warning Americans and Canadians to bundle up for the ride. “All the ingredients are there for a near-record or historic cold outbreak,” meteorologist Ryan Maue with Weather Bell told the Associated Press. “If you’re under 40 (years old), you’ve not seen this stuff before.” Among the forecasts: -25 in parts of North Dakota, -30 in some areas of Minnesota, and more. With wind chill, parts of the northern United States could feel as cold as 73 below.
Multiple cities, including Chicago and Detroit, are expected to see all-time new records, with daily highs lower than any ever recorded since data has been kept. Experts are also forecasting temperatures potentially 40 or even 50 degrees below normal as polar air freezes much of North America. In Minnesota and parts of other Midwest states, schools are closed due to the cold. Heavy snow is also wreaking havoc across much of the region. Over a dozen deaths have already been blamed on the life-threatening cold.
According to Maue, the major blast of Arctic air will likely freeze over the Great Lakes and other bodies of water, which means that the unusual cold will probably stick around for the rest of the winter season. “Right now for the winter, we will have had two significant shots of major Arctic air and we’re only through the first week of January,” Maue explained. “And we had a pretty cold December.” November temperatures were also well below average, data from the National Climatic Data Center revealed.
While the latest blast of record-setting cold is expected to last only a matter of days — perhaps until Wednesday — experts said it also raises the prospect of more frigid temperatures ahead. Space and Science Research Corporation President John Casey, a rocket scientist and climate researcher working with respected scientists from around the world, says natural cycles from the sun are responsible for bringing about the worst cold in two centuries.
“The next climate change to a long cold era may well reshape the future of humankind through massive global crop losses, social upheaval, and significant loss of life,” Casey said in a recent piece, noting that scientists at the Russian Academy of Sciences have also said a new “Little Ice Age” would begin this year. The Earth’s oceans, he noted, have been cooling for a decade, and the “climate models” that UN man-made global warming “zealots” use to justify their schemes “are simply wrong by a wide margin.”
In his internationally acclaimed climate-science book Cold Sun, Casey even called the theory of man-made global warming “the greatest international scientific fraud ever perpetrated on the world’s citizens.” He told The New American that the dumping of so much taxpayer funding into the “charade” of man-made climate change had led to “substantial corruption and failures within the scientific leadership community” — making it harder for humanity to understand the coming era of global cooling and how to deal with it.
“The Space and Science Research Corporation and many other scientists worldwide say that the worst cold in over 200 years is now upon us,” Casey noted in a January 4 op-ed for the Orlando Sentinel. “Further, if this next cold climate behaves like the last similar one (1793-1830), then we may also see some of the worst-ever earthquakes and volcanic eruptions. The sun regulates more than we have been told.”
Casey, whose scientific institute has arguably among the best track records on climate issues, is hardly alone in forecasting much colder temperatures going forward. In late 2013, for example, German scientists at the European Institute for Climate and Energy announced that their research pointed to naturally occurring cycles suggesting global cooling will intensify until around the year 2100. The trends, the climate researchers said, would culminate in another “Little Ice Age” with temperatures around the 1870 level.
As The New American reported last August, increasing numbers of scientists and climate experts are speaking out about the potential for naturally fueled global cooling. Irish solar specialist Ian Elliott, among others, warned that “we may be on the path to a new little ice age,” very low solar activity, and “some very cold winters.” Danish astrophysicist Henrik Svensmark, meanwhile, warned that, due to solar activity, temperatures might not rise for another 30 years — or might even begin to decrease. Elements of the establishment media have even been picking up on the trends.
Overall, global-warming alarmists hoping to find “evidence” supporting their climate doomsday prophecies had a terrible year in 2013 — devastating, according to many analysts. For instance, Al Gore, the government-funded BBC, pseudo-environmentalist outfits, and various “climate scientists” had repeatedly and hysterically warned that the Arctic would be “ice-free” by the summer. Instead, Arctic ice cover grew by more than 50 percent over 2012’s low levels, getting global-warming true believers who heeded the failed prophecies and tried to sail the Northwest Passage stuck in ice this summer.
In Antarctica, a gaggle of “climate scientists” and “journalists” who set off hoping to show the world that Antarctic ice was melting ended up getting their ship stuck in record levels of ice cover — in the summer. The Media Research Center found that 98 percent of the network news stories on the warmists’ inconvenient meeting with reality failed to mention the real story: that the ship was on a “climate research” mission. Still, the saga served as an important illustration of how ridiculous the alarmist movement was beginning to look and how the establishment press is trying in vain to cover it up. In reality, Antarctic sea-ice cover hit a new record in 2013 — for the second year in a row.
Despite countless predictions that snow cover in the Northern hemisphere was on its way to disappearing, meanwhile, 2013 featured the fourth highest levels on record, according to data from Rutgers University’s Global Snow Lab. Spring snow cover was the highest in a decade, while data for the fall indicate that it was the fifth highest ever recorded. Meanwhile, contrary to hysterical predictions by global warmists, hurricanes and tornadoes have been hitting in record-setting low numbers.
Watts Up With That (WUWT), run by meteorologist and climate researcher Anthony Watts, highlighted the numbers in a piece noting that last year was indeed a terrible one for global-warming alarmists and their increasingly wild fear-mongering. “It seems like every major CAGW [Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming] prediction has failed in 2013,” the article explains, citing a vast trove of data. “Thus CAGW proponents must be very bad at making predictions or maybe Mother Nature is just showing them who’s boss…. Can anyone cite a CAGW prediction that was accurate in 2013?”
Of course, alarmists, appearing increasingly detached from reality, are trying fiendishly to keep the global-warming hysteria — and the taxpayer funding for their alarmism — from melting away entirely. Realists, though, are calling them out. “So record cold is now evidence of man-made global warming? What evidence would disprove climate change?” wondered Climate Depot editor Marc Morano in a recent segment on CNN. “It seems like no matter the weather, everything that happens proves it.”
A handful of alarmists are becoming even shriller, claiming that alleged man-made “global warming” is now “accelerating” and that humanity will face certain doom if governments do not immediately accept carbon taxes, UN power grabs, and drastic cuts in living standards. In the real world, though, temperatures have not risen for some 17 years, debunking every one of the UN’s 73 “climate models” and predictions. Critics of the hysteria say that despite hundreds of billions squandered on “climate” alarmism, the end of the alarmist movement is probably just around the corner. Whether global cooling is, too, remains to be seen.
Photo: AP Images
Alex Newman is a correspondent for The New American, covering economics, politics, and more. He can be reached at anewman@thenewamerican.com.