Fox News has used the blizzard in Buffalo as a sham pretext for denying global warming. Oh, and attacking President Obama, while they were at it, for trying to combat it.
Host Brenda Buttner signaled a not-so fair and balanced segment to come when she announced in her introduction, “The snow job after the snow storm.”
Most of her guests followed suit.
Gary B. Smith sneered that President Obama’s decision to spend $3 billion to combat climate change was “unbelievable.” Smith also scoffed, “Notice, by the way, how it’s now ‘climate change’ instead of ‘global warming.’ They’ve rebranded it because there hasn’t been any global warming for the last 18 years or so.”
Jessica Ehrlich, a Democratic strategist, responded:
First of all, it is global warming. We just had the hottest October on record. These storms that we’re having in places like Buffalo are a direct result of the fact that the ozone has been depleted, that we have these bizarre weather factors going on, and the worst offenders that create the problems that we’re seeing that affect not only our citizenry and our cities but also our economy is because of countries like China and other underdeveloped nations who are continuously polluting in atrocious ways into our atmosphere. So by helping them, we actually help ourselves, and $3 billion is a lot less than $60 billion that we had to spend on hurricane Sandy.
Ehrlich is right. Think Progress notes that not only did we have the hottest October ever, but in 2014, we had the hottest June, August, September and March-May ever recorded by the reputable Japan Meteorological Agency.
But Buttner replied, “This dispute, of course, is not settled. We don’t know that it’s global warming or not.”
Tracy Byrnes said, “Until you have conclusive evidence that Mother Nature is all screwed up and we’re going to blame this on climate change or global warming and not just a really bad storm, I say the money stays still.”
Jon Layfield complained, “These tree huggers drive me absolutely nuts.” Yet, he also insisted, “I’m an environmentalist.”
“Environmentalist” Layfield griped about those who want to address global warming: “All they want to do is punish coal. They want to punish fossil fuels and take a ton of money and make a ton of money off of it. They don’t offer any solutions. A grid will expand renewable energy. There’s ways to do this, cut out C02 emissions. What these guys are doing is preposterous.”
Slate explains how climate change is helping to juice up lake effect snow.
Truly extreme lake-effect snows gather their energy from a wide temperature differential between the lake temperature and the air temperature. That temperature contrast produces atmospheric instability—the warm air immediately over the lake wants to surge upward through the colder air on top, bringing with it heaps of evaporated moisture. That moisture is quickly converted to snowfall in massive quantities, and deposited squarely on the hills and towns at the far end of the lake. As the Great Lakes warm due to climate change, there’s now more evaporation, and more of an opportunity for that drastic water-air temperature difference to manifest itself, especially during the kinds of intense cold air outbreaks that we’ve been seeing seemingly more of over the last few years.
In Tuesday’s storm, that difference approached a whopping 50 degrees Fahrenheit—with a pool of warmer-than-average water in Lake Erie joining forces with near-record-low temperatures in the lower part of the atmosphere.
The result was a highly unstable atmosphere, in which thundersnow flourished and snow totals skyrocketed.
Yet Buttner treated the whole matter as a he said/she said matter up for debate.
Watch it below, from today's Bulls & Bears.