“This year’s summer will be warmer than usual for most of Europe,” read the headlines in major mainstream media. Yet, the summer has started off with a “Polar Plunge.”
This past weekend, thousands in Europe were forced to stay indoors because of below average weather conditions in what was supposed to be a pleasant early summer weekend.
Though this is a weather phenomenon caused by Arctic winds, it makes us question the claims of global warming alarmists who had predicted—and continue to predict—contrasting weather conditions.
Is freezing the new warming?
I still remember how I spent my “bank holiday weekend” in UK during the years 2009–2010. Sipping my tea and enjoying the beautiful countryside of Norfolk.
But the bank holiday weekend on May 6 was no time for outdoor activity. As the Arctic air plunged through parts of North and West Europe, temperatures dropped well below the average.
Paris had its coldest May temperatures in 22 years, forcing the yellow-vest protestors to wear warm clothes. Bern, Switzerland, recorded 4 cm of snow, which was very unusual for the month of May. The last time Bern experienced snow this late was in May of 1945. Germany, too, saw some unusual “May snow.”
There were shades of this freeze in the United States, too. Marquette, Michigan, recorded 5.4 inches of snow on May 1, setting an all-time record for measurement dating back from 1961. In Chicago, O’Hare International Airport measured more than 3 inches of snow in late-April, the first time it has happened since April of 1967. Colorado is expected to receive anywhere from 9 to 15 inches of snow this week.
The sudden plunge in temperatures took many by surprise, as most of Western Europe was forecasted to experience heatwaves during the summer of 2019, not these freezing conditions.
People argue that these are just weather patterns and that they are not representative of long-term climatic conditions. That is correct!
But these weather conditions are not supposed to happen if we were to interpret our climate system based on the global warming alarmists’ claims.
According to alarmists, cold snaps like these are supposed to happen less and less frequently. And though they might be colder than equivalent periods a decade or so ago, we shouldn’t have to look back before the relatively warming of the 1980s–1990s (unmatched since) to exceed them. But to their dismay, temperatures in the past two years have hardly behaved in such a manner.
The winter of 2017–2018 was the harshest in recent times, with record snow and record low temperatures across the Northern Hemisphere. It brought historic levels of snow and broke 80-year record lows at many places.
Following the inevitable coverage of those record winter lows in the mainstream media, the alarmists began arguing that extreme snowfall is actually a symptom of global warming. They were quick to scramble their personnel within academia to produce scientific reports to support the same.
If we were to go strictly by alarmist logic (of extreme snowfall caused by global warming), then we should prepare ourselves for cold weather and a freezing future, not a warm one.
Astonishingly, the alarmists have managed to the make the masses believe global warming causes both record heat and record cold and snowfall.
The kind of untimely snowfall we are observing in May requires below-average temperatures, not above-average temperatures, thus exposing the contradictions within the claims of alarmists.
Even if much of Europe were to experience record warmth in the coming summer months, it still will not explain why global temperatures dropped below average in the past two years during various seasons.
Either the alarmists are wrong in their predictions, or they have intentionally lied to create warming panic among the public.
Though weather patterns do not prove or disprove the extreme global warming theory, they do expose the extraordinary claims of extreme warming. Despite the continued doomsday call, we are experiencing contrary weather conditions.
A continuation of the alarmist misguidance will result in global nations being unprepared for cold weather conditions and could put millions of lives at risk. Alarmist prophecies should never be the guideline for policy makers in our political institutions.
Vijay Jayaraj (M.Sc., Environmental Science, University of East Anglia, England), Research Associate for Developing Countries for the Cornwall Alliance for the Stewardship of Creation, lives in Bangalore, India.
