Topic: CNSNews.com
In a Jan. 29 CNSNews.com column, the MRC's Dan Gainor writes:
[Al] Gore is scheduled to nuzzle his way into a hearing for the Senate Foreign Relations Committee Wednesday to warn of a warming planet. Temperatures are near freezing. It may even snow.
Gore’s appearance in the dead of bone-chilling winter is almost five years to the day since he came out of hibernation in New York and called President Bush a "moral coward" for his climate change policies. That day was the coldest the Big Apple had seen in 47 years.
Not much has changed – in the weather or Gore’s message. This time around, it might not be so bone-shatteringly cold, but it certainly has been this winter. ABC’s weather man Sam Champion told viewers this season’s weather “feels like the coldest winter in years.” He added, “and a report from NASA climate scientists says 2008 was the coolest year since 2000.”
Gainor is perpetuating the fallacy that short-term changes in weather, let alone an individual winter storm in January, bear any relevance to the global warming debate. Even Patrick Michaels -- a global warming denier like Gainor who is authoritatively quoted as contradicting Gore in another Jan. 29 CNS article -- has warned against portraying short-term extreme weather as indicative of the existence (or not) of global warming.
