It’s almost 50 degrees Fahrenheit (above zero) in Anchorage, in early January, today. So this little tidbit that’s been on my mind for some time seems appropriate for me to vent.
Please don’t use this as “proof” that climate change is real.
You know when Donald Trump tweets shit like “oh man it’s cold in the Midwest in January, climate change must be fake lulz!” and he’s obviously an idiot for saying that? Yeah. Well when you say a warm day proves climate change is real, you’re kind of doing the same thing.
Climate change is real, but an occasional short-term deviation from the mean in any location doesn’t prove anything, one way or another. The temperature is going to regularly dip and spike below and above the mean, sometimes by a wide margin. But when we talk about climate change, we’re referring to long-term changes world-wide. Trying to take a snapshot in one moment at one place and extrapolate that to the entire globe over decades is ridiculous. It’s far too small of a sample size. That’s true no matter which side of the line an outlier falls upon.
So don’t be a reverse Donald Trump. I mean, you can still punch Nazis, but what I’m trying to say is that one warm day doesn’t prove climate change.
Hammer & Icicle 