Who'll stop the rain?

Regular readers of this blog will know that I have my doubts about the global warming "consensus" that's driving a lot of public policy these days.  I don't mean that I doubt that the climate is changing -- always has; always will -- but I'm not convinced that the changes we are currently seeing are man-made.

Here in southern Ontario this year, we're having a real, old fashioned winter.  There's been plenty of snow, a massive ice storm that blacked out half of Toronto for the better part of a week, and temperatures well below long-term averages since the start of December.  I wouldn't think of arguing that any of this disproves global warming, or whatever the alarmists are choosing to call it this week -- weather is just weather.  But it's interesting to contrast how it gets reported these days compared to how things were in the fairly recent past.

Our national weather service, Environment Canada, has developed a habit of issuing "special weather statements" for the least little thing.  Slightly elevated winds?  Special weather statement!  Localized fog?  Special weather statement!!  Couple of inches of snow?  Special weather statement!!!  They may have their own good reasons for doing this, but the plethora of warnings of imminent doom is surely serving to create a perception among members of the public that this year's weather is much more extreme than it really is.

Then there's the dreaded "polar vortex", which has visited us (and most of the central and eastern parts of the continent) twice in the past four weeks.  I think this is what in the bad old days we used to call "a cold snap", but now it's been dressed out with a much more ominous name.  Climate alarmists smugly say that "of course, you can't attribute an individual event like this to global warming", and then proceed to do exactly that.

They've cobbled together an explanation for how warming is making it so cold -- something about how warmer temperatures in the Arctic are loosening the "vortex" of cold winds around the North Pole, allowing the bottled-up frigid air to spill south. Might even be true, but it's remarkable that nobody thought to mention such a possibility until after the fact.  The same thing happened, of course, with the recently-mooted "pause" in global warming, which may now have been going on for fifteen years.  Ah yes, we're told, the warmth is being absorbed by the deep oceans, a possibility that was never mooted until the pause had actually happened.

Indeed, another set of scientists has moved the goalposts entirely, arguing that there is no pause anyway, if you look at more complete data that they just happen to have come up with.  In which case, does that mean that the guys who concocted the theory about the deep oceans absorbing the heat are wrong?  Just asking.  I mean if, as we are regularly scolded, "the science is settled", it's puzzling that these inconsistencies can still arise.

But wait....I've just returned from a week in Barbados, where the weather, in the middle of the dry season, was the soggiest I can recall in four decades of visiting the island.  We didn't need suncream so much as rust proofing.  Polar vortexes at home I can handle, but if the weather in Paradise is going screwy, then things really are getting serious.  Something must be done!