The “Unprecedented” Cold
Published at 08:16 on 30 January 2019
It’s not unprecedented, and the fact it is being considered so proves rather than refutes global warming.
Yes, it’s cold. Yes, it’s far colder than average. But look at the all-time records in the Midwest. Most of them are colder than the temperatures now being seen. In fact, temperatures in the -20’s Fahrenheit and colder really aren’t historically that super-unusual from about northern Illinois northward. They didn’t happen every year, mind you, but they did happen once or twice a decade.
I know. I lived in northern Illinois as a child between the ages of five and twelve. I remember at least two cold snaps comparable in severity to the one now taking place. When they happened, there weren’t states of emergency. Mail still got delivered. My dad still went in to work. As children, we still went to school, even if we had to walk there.
It was part of every child’s normal experience to learn first-hand that when the temperature falls below zero degrees snow squeaks loudly when you walk through it and ice ceases to become slippery. I remember walking through that squeaky snow one weekend cold snap to my best friend’s house. We spent part of that afternoon playing outdoors, before we came inside and warmed up.
Our parents were not shocked or worried about their children playing outdoors in subzero weather. It wasn’t a natural disaster, it was just a cold winter. Such things happened from time to time, and life for the most part went on.
Yet, now it is a natural disaster. Now you have adults in their twenties and thirties, life-long Midwesterners, talking about squeaky snow as if they are experiencing it for the first time in their lives, because they are experiencing it for the first time in their lives. The mail is stopped, schools are closed, and employees are staying home from work.
People used to expect such cold, of course. Now, they don’t. So they’re not prepared for it. Individuals are not prepared for it, and neither are organizations. The cold is no longer expected, because it no longer happens once or twice every decade. It no longer happens so frequently because global warming has changed the climate: winters on average are milder than they used to be.
The news stories coming out of the Midwest are evidence of global warming.