But today the New York Times has an article on the subject: “Climate Fight is Heating Up in Deep Freeze“. While justifiable, I suppose, as “news” to report on, the arguments it presents are inane.

The idea that a large snow storm disproves global warming is argument from example at its best. It’s comparable to stating that because one large company failed capitalism has been proven wrong. All hail Marx and the socialist revolution!

Beyond this shameless argument from example, there are several things to note about this “debate”:

• Virtually everyone the Times quotes on the anti-global warming side is a politician (usually with an ideological opposition to the idea).* Nearly everyone quoted on the pro-global warming side is a scientist (who has actually studied the subject). There might not be any bias here, but I’ll leave that up to you.
• If you must look at one month in time as evidence for global warming, at least look at the whole world. While temperatures in North America and Europe may have been cooler than normal, the rest of the world is warmer. Not that it means too much, as what we really should be looking at are long term trends. It’s just a shame that the cold weather happens to occur where the highest percentage of skeptics exist.
• And most ironically, the specific examples cited—snow storms—are in line with global warming predictions. Not these, or any particular, snow storms, of course. But the general trend of increasingly powerful weather activity. The Times helpfully mentions this at the very end of the article:

“However,” he continued, “one can ‘load the dice’ in favor of events that used to be rare — or unheard of — if the climate is changing to a new state.”

A federal government report issued last year, intended to be the authoritative statement of known climate trends in the United States, pointed to the likelihood of more frequent snowstorms in the Northeast and less frequent snow in the South and Southeast as a result of long-term temperature and precipitation patterns.

Copenhagen was a disaster. That much is agreed. But the truth about what actually happened is in danger of being lost amid the spin and inevitable mutual recriminations. The truth is this: China wrecked the talks, intentionally humiliated Barack Obama, and insisted on an awful “deal” so western leaders would walk away carrying the blame. How do I know this? Because I was in the room and saw it happen.

Sadly, this makes complete sense to me. It’s just how politics (international or otherwise—look at the recent health care hijackings) work. I wish it wasn’t so.

They’ve done a good job of laying out both sides of the argument without bias or name-calling. What is interesting to me is that throughout the entire thing, “The Consensus” is on the defensive. That seems to be true in the debate as a whole, from my understanding. It’s an unfortunate predicament to be in, because it detracts from one’s credibility even if there is no reason to do so.