Weather is NOT Climate

Anomalous Weather: Both a Weapon and Scourge of Climate Hysterics

James Murphy
New American


Weather is different from climate. There, I said it.

When late season blizzards and an unusually large amount of rain fell this spring in parts of the Upper Midwest and the Mississippi River Valley — weather events — causing widespread flooding, adherents of the climate-change religion tore their garments, put on sackcloth, and loudly lamented that global warming was to blame.

A high priestess of Climate Hysterianism, New York Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio Cortez, said in Congress recently, “Iowa, Nebraska, broad swaths of the Midwest are drowning right now, under water. Farms, towns that will never be recovered and never come back and we’re here and people are more concerned about helping oil companies than their own families? I don’t think so! I don’t think so!”

While tragic for those involved, this year’s floods along the Mississippi are hardly unprecedented. The list of major floods on the Mississippi is long. It is a giant river, and the residents who live adjacent to it understand that it floods frequently. 

Unfortunately, for climate hysterics, weather and its cousin climate don’t always cooperate with their beliefs. Consider for instance, the recent springtime weather in Minnesota.
Six weeks into spring, a vast snowstorm has dropped record amounts of snow in the state. In fact, snow fell along a line from Sioux Falls, South Dakota to Duluth, Minnesota. Even in those regions, known for cold weather, mid-May snow is rare.

Snowfall records were broken all over the Duluth area with up to a foot of snow falling in some areas. The National Weather Service reports that the snowfall broke records dating back 117 years.

Colorado, too, is experiencing springtime snow. Denver is reporting snow and parts of the area could receive up to six inches of icy, wet snow, with wintery conditions expected to last until Saturday.

To paraphrase Miami Mayor Tomas Regalado: “If this isn’t global cooling, I don’t know what is.”   [Emphasis, ours.]

Fortunately, Coloradans and Minnesotans are both hearty and pragmatic folks. Perhaps they cursed the late-season snow, but then they got on with their lives. The people experiencing the floods along the Mississippi River are similarly rational. They will either rebuild or move to higher ground because they understand that the areas where they live have both risks and advantages to them.

Climate alarmists like to point to anomalous weather events as “proof” of their assertion that man-made global warming, now called climate change, is causing irreparable damage to the environment. Each hurricane, drought, or tornado points to their assertion that climate disaster is on the way. They further like to claim that only meekly submitting to their version of what do to about it — stop using fossil fuels, give up our freedoms, stop eating meat, etc. — will save us from a coming ecological apocalypse.

But they can’t have it both ways. When anomalous weather occurs contrary to their narrative, they ignore it. When it’s pointed out to them, they quickly turn up their noses, sniff haughtily, and claim that climate realists “don’t know the difference” between climate and weather.

Weather is the collection of meteorological events (i.e., rain, precipitation, wind, cloud cover, etc.) that we experience on a daily basis. Climate is a long-term average of those events — usually at least a 30-years’ average according to most climatologists and meteorologists. When the television weatherman tells you what the temperature outside today is, that’s weather. When the same person tells you what the average temperature for today is, that’s climate.

A quote widely attributed to Mark Twain says it like this: “Climate is what you expect; weather is what you get.”

So, yes. We know the difference between weather and climate.

In their hearts, the globalists promoting climate alarmism know that climate alarmism is bunk. But it’s also the perfect monster with which to frighten the masses into global government. The worst aspects of climate change — sea level rise, desertification, upheaval of humanity — are all in the undefined “future.” Predictions placing New York underwater can be made decades into the future. Scientists and politicians who parrot those predictions and demand “climate action” will be long dead before they can be held responsible for them.

Climate change is the ultimate shell game. It’s nothing but media-driven sleight of hand. Whether an anomalous weather event is proof of climate change or not is completely dependent upon whether that event confirms the global warming narrative or not.