According to the National Weather Service, as reported in the New York Times:
the average temperature in New York for May, a customarily balmy month, has been an inhospitable 58.7 — several degrees below normal. More telling, however, is that for the first time in 20 years there was not a day in May when the thermometer hit 80.
Calling 58.7 degrees "inhospitable" is an allowable exaggeration, considering it's supposed to be spring. And along with the cold, it's been rainy and dreary here for a month straight. So how do they lead off that very same article?
On a chilly and sodden afternoon last week, Christina Vrachnos braced herself against the wind on Madison Avenue, and cast her eyes toward the skies. "Is it global warming?" she wailed. "What is it? What have we done to deserve this wretched weather?"
Talk about a political axe to grind. Global warming is somehow to blame for one of the coldest Mays on record? Perhaps without global warming it would only have been in the 40s. Perhaps we deserve this weather because Christina Vrachnos is an idiot. Or at best very gullible.
Comments (1)
This seems to a popular and very false myth. A 1996 study by the IPCC had a whole section about whether the climate has become more extreme. Their conclusion:
Overall, there is no evidence that extreme weather events, or climate variability, has increased, in a global sense, through the 20th century, although data and analyses are poor and not comprehensive.
This conclusion was largely confirmed in the more recent 2001 IPCC report.
Posted by Poop | June 14, 2003 3:34 AM
Posted on June 14, 2003 03:34