This Winter Storm Is Not Natural Or Something

They really can’t help themselves, and this probably doesn’t help calm them down

That caused a whole bunch of unhinged articles from the Credentialed Media.

Winter storm doesn’t disprove climate change, despite Trump’s claim. Scientists explain why.

It’s the same old same old, which gets repeated here

‘This is not natural’: VCU expert links climate change to intensifying Virginia winter storms

A Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU) expert says climate change is intensifying winter storms ahead of this weekend’s snow and ice storm. (snip)

A VCU professor in the School of Life Sciences and Sustainability warns that climate change may be intensifying the system and increasing the risk of widespread power outages.

8News spoke with Vickie Connors, a professor with the VCU School of Life Sciences and Sustainability, about how warming in the Arctic is influencing winter weather patterns in Virginia.

Connors said rising temperatures in the Arctic are allowing more heat and moisture to enter the atmosphere, hurting circulation patterns that usually keep cold air contained near the North Pole. (snip)

“This is not natural,” Connors emphasized. “If we didn’t have this excess amount of gases, like CO2 and methane and in our atmosphere, we would be seeing a pretty respectable polar ice cap, and we would have snow pack that’s older than five years.”

Sigh.

Climate Change Won’t Make Winter Storms Less Deadly
In some ways, fossil fuels make snowstorms like the one currently bearing down on the U.S. even more dangerous.

The relationship between fossil fuels and severe weather is often presented as a cause-and-effect: Burning coal, oil, and gas for heat and energy forces carbon molecules into a reaction with oxygen in the air to form carbon dioxide, which in turn traps heat in the atmosphere and gradually warms our planet. That imbalance, in many cases, makes the weather more extreme.

But this relationship also goes the other way: We use fossil fuels to make ourselves more comfortable — and in some cases, keep us alive — during extreme weather events. Our dependence on oil and gas creates a grim ouroboros: As those events get more extreme, we need more fuel.

This weekend, some 200 million Americans will be cranking up the thermostats in their natural-gas-heated homes, firing up their propane generators, or hitting icy roads in their combustion-engine cars as a major winter storm brings record-low temperatures to 35 states, knocks out power, and grinds air travel to a halt.

See? You using fossil fuels makes winter more winter.