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United States News Title: Global warming means more snow and less snow and the same amount of snow In 2000 in the British newspaper The Independent, a senior research scientist at the climatic research unit (CRU), made what is now a notorious prediction: that within a "few years," winter snowfall will become "a very rare and exciting event," and "Children just aren't going to know what snow is." As more than 10 years have passed and we are not yet seeing any less snow, we can likely throw this prediction in the trash bin of history. Still, the view that a warming globe will create less snow has much support. The advocacy group Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS), in collaboration with 50 experts, developed a comprehensive report called the Northeast Climate Impacts Assessment (NECIA). The report outlines the expected course of action for climate change in the Northeast region. What it predicts is increased temperatures, shorter winter seasons, less snow and quicker melting of the snow that does fall. The report even goes so far as to measure the economic impact of ski slopes that will face added costs with the less lucrative winters to come. Clearly, there is a legitimate case that climate change will cause less. However, the snow shortage is yet to be seen as we look at the most recent winters and even the most recent weeks. Last week's CNN headline, "Monster snowstorms still spell global warming," is nearly identical to the 2010 Chicago Tribune headline, "Yes, global warming could mean more snow" or the 2009 headline in the UK daily newspaper The Telegraph, "Snow is consistent with global warming, say scientists." The problem with all of these headlines is that while global warming may mean more snow, it could just as easily mean less. While snow is consistent with global warming, severely lackluster snow seasons would be just as consistent. Even average snowfall would be consistent insofar as it doesn't contradict climate change. And while monster storms may be used as evidence for a changing global climate, the lack of such storms could just as easily be used to evidence the same conclusion. Therefore, just because any scenario would be consistent with the conclusion, it is simply not intuitive to assert that the scenario is evidence of or justification for the conclusion. Simply put, you cannot assert that the current weather is the result of climate change if the every other weather pattern would also support climate change. The alternative would also be true. Even Al Gore has fallen suspect to these fallacious tactics, writing in a 2010 New York Times column that the year's heavy 2010 snow supports climate change. Gore writes, "Scientists have long pointed out that warmer global temperatures have been increasing the rate of evaporation from the oceans, significantly more moisture into the atmosphere – thus causing heavier downfalls of both rain and snow." Gore is absolutely correct, but leaves out the fact that the opposite result is also justified within mainstream science. The scientists who wrote the NECIA made it very clear that there would be increased rain and decreased snow, not increases in both. Thus, if the opposite had occurred and there was less snow, Gore would have been able to cite it as evidence for his agenda just as easily as he did with more snow. Furthermore, the current weather events are just that: weather, not climate. Climate would require more time to determine a trend, as well as more than just anecdotal evidence from the past week to make the case that snowfall is increasing or decreasing on a large scale. The public, no matter the bias, largely fails to make this distinction. So, moving on to the future, we shouldn't allow isolated weather occurrences to determine our conclusions on climate matters, even if they appear to be intuitive to piece together.
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