XDA

I'm all sad about the warm January the rest of the world is having because I thought it would get colder, but I'm not the only one who cannot see the future. Cracked-voice Warmie true believer Robert Kennedy Jr. was waxing nostalgic just over a year ago about the lack of snow in DC and the Northern Virginia suburbs and the mild winters caused, he believed, by our flying around in jets, etc.

In Virginia, the weather also has changed dramatically. Recently arrived residents in the northern suburbs, accustomed to today's anemic winters, might find it astonishing to learn that there were once ski runs on Ballantrae Hill in McLean, with a rope tow and local ski club. Snow is so scarce today that most Virginia children probably don't own a sled. But neighbors came to our home at Hickory Hill nearly every winter weekend to ride saucers and Flexible Flyers.

I guess he's happy with two feet of global warming shutting down the nation's capital. (I'm happy when anything shuts down DC).

I lived for a decade just 100 miles south of DC in Richmond, VA, during the 60s and 70s. Snow was always rare there. Freezing rain, miserable weather, was common. Of course the mere fact that it's gotten warmer or cooler tells you nothing about the cause of the warming or cooling. Merely repeating that things are changing doesn't convince anyone that humans are to blame for the change, except to Warmie true believers.

Robert Kennedy also attacks the AGW deniers for being "supported" by companies like ExxonMobile, etc. I prefer to hear refutation of the arguments to ad hominem attacks. Of course Kennedy's article came out before the release of the private e-mails of scientists in and around the Hadley CRU, which revealed a very nasty mindset in the WTB designed not to refute the deniers' arguments but to prevent their dissemination; not to open up the raw data of the WTB to review by the deniers but to stonewall data release requests; and to destroy the raw data rather than reveal the "tricks" they were using to "hide the decline" of mean global temperatures recently.

And if we're into trading ad hominem arguments, the WTB support from the government is measured in the tens of Billions. Kennedy was talking about a few dozen millions to the skeptics. Yet the skeptics are winning, I say because the truth is on their side.

UPDATE: Robert Kennedy, Jr. doubles down in a particularly nasty vein as is his wont. Here is a sample:

Idiots on the right like Rush [Limbaugh] like to point to any cold-weather anomalies as proof that global warming doesn’t exist,” Kennedy says. “They are either deliberately blind to science or trying to protect their corporatist interests.” Kennedy also sticks by the anecdotes from his childhood in Virginia. “It used to snow consistently in McLean — enough to have a ski hill,” he says. “It wasn’t just a single season.

Bobbie Jr. is younger that I am by a year or so. We were living in the same state, about 90 miles apart, at the same time, and I think his memory is faulty. I was NOT snowing all the time in Northern Virginia during the 60s and 70s. There were storms like this recent one from time to time, but rare. Northern Virginia was not just like Massachusetts.

Also notice the immediate name calling and ad hominem attack. Deniers are either fooling themselves or corporate shills. There is no room for honest disagreement with this self righteous prig. He's not only a WTB but a paragon of liberal intolerance as well.

Labels: Global Warming Hoax; Limited Foresight; Robert Kennedy, Jr.; Mild Northern Virginia Winters