Everything you wanted to know about the 'Polar Vortex' (ThinkProgress)

[Glia]

On Sunday night, a reporter for The Weather Channel stood in a Minnesota snowstorm, talking about local efforts to move homeless children into heated shelters. “How cold is it supposed to get?” the anchor, back in the studio, asked. The reporter replied: “Colder than Mars.”
Indeed, recent temperatures across the U.S. have been Mars-like. Forecasts in the midwest call for temperatures to drop to 32 below zero in Fargo, N.D.; minus 21 in Madison, Wis.; and 15 below zero in Minneapolis, Indianapolis and Chicago. Wind chills have been predicted to fall to negative 60 degrees — a dangerous cold that could break decades-old records.
All of which begs the question — if climate change is real, then how did it get so cold?

continues here
https://thinkprogress.org/climate/20...-polar-vortex/

[podfish]

All of which begs the question — if climate change is real, then how did it get so cold?

simple answer. Climate is not a synonym for weather. Is weather change real? sure, it changes really often. Climate - the typical pattern for weather - shockingly enough seems to change too! who woulda guessed??
and check the temperatures for Moscow, (and here, for that matter - we just set a record high for the date, apparently) if you're impressed by unseasonable weather extremes. Just 'cuz much of American media is in locations affected by the recent cold weather pattern, we're seeing a disproportionate reaction. Again, who woulda guessed that our media treats what happens to them as a universal for everyone on earth??

[Glia]

Good summary, Podfish! A recent article in Business Insider addresses these issues:

Why cold weather does not mean global warming is not real
https://www.businessinsider.com.au/c...warming-2014-1

simple answer. Climate is not a synonym for weather. Is weather change real? sure, it changes really often. Climate - the typical pattern for weather - shockingly enough seems to change too! who woulda guessed??
and check the temperatures for Moscow, (and here, for that matter - we just set a record high for the date, apparently) if you're impressed by unseasonable weather extremes. Just 'cuz much of American media is in locations affected by the recent cold weather pattern, we're seeing a disproportionate reaction. Again, who woulda guessed that our media treats what happens to them as a universal for everyone on earth??

[Star Man]

All of which begs the question — if climate change is real, then how did it get so cold?
https://thinkprogress.org/climate/20...-polar-vortex/

Big Media, Big Finance, Big Insurance, Big Military, Big Energy, Big Banking, Big Ag, Big Pharma and the other parties in the corporatocracy that operates America and much of the world for its benefit and not for the benefit of We The People knows how to prevent change that would upset its agenda (to make more money) -- sow dissent and get people arguing about reality (in this case the reality of climate change). It's as if a dozen frogs in a slowly heating pot of water argued and argued about whether the water was really warming or not. All the while the water was coming to a boil. Eventually all the frogs die.

The corporatocracy is in massive denial, because it is addicted to power and money. It somehow believes that a warming planet will not incinerate all biological life forms. One species after another is disappearing, but the Very Important People don't believe that they are at risk. One hundred thousand bats fall from the sky in Australia due to the heat, but the corporatocrats don't see their own fate in the fate of the bats, the Siberia Tiger, the dodo, the sabre tooth tiger, the coral reefs, the lions that are disappearing from Africa, the Neanderthals, and on and on. We narcissistically call ourselves "Homo sapiens" the "wise man." Ha ha ha. We would better be named "Homo imprudens," the species that could not foresee the consequences of its own actions. Another possibility is "Homo stultus," the "foolish species."