There is no winter in Ba Sing Se

Written by John O'Sullivan on March 14, 2025. Posted in Current News

We continue to be baffled by alarmist claims that the long, cold winter of 2024-25 did not happen, is not happening, and must not happen.

Sometimes things occur that surprise us and run contrary to our general understanding of the world, but when they do we notice them and admit them.

(Under which heading file that thus far in 2025 Arctic sea ice extent is at its lowest in a decade, the opposite of 2024.) But what are we to make of “The Science Behind the Hottest January on Record: What It Means for the Future” or “The Impact of Record-Breaking January Temperatures on Global Climate Trends”?

In fact, as we reported recently, the best available satellite data shows a sharp drop in temperature in January. And we recently learned that Ottawa “just had its coldest February since February 2015.”

In which it is far from alone, with harsh conditions from here to Central Asia. And we’re not out of the snowy woods yet. But who are you going to believe, data, headlines or your own eyes and frosty toes?

If they do admit that it’s happening, and they look a bit silly trying not to, they produce an explanation-like object that lacks a certain rigour. For instance a piece on the topic in the Hindustan Times (oh what a globalized world we live in as MSN delivers us the Delhi take on cold in Timmins) explains that:

“After last month’s polar vortex collapse, a second one is expected to unleash freezing conditions across North America.

With the winter weather phenomenon predictions eyeing a mid-March comeback, parts of Canada and the United States could be submerged in deep freezes, possibly even impacting travel as was seen in the previous cycle.

The UK and Europe may also end up facing the brunt of the extreme winter weather.”

OK, so what’s with the dreaded warming? Well, the piece goes on for a while about how weird stuff is happening weirdly:

“The polar vortex has been ‘considerably stronger’ than usual this year, according to Laura Ciastro, a meteorologist with NOAA’s Climate Prediction Centre, per CNN.

Ideally, this should’ve meant that the US would be saved from record-breaking cold. However, that hasn’t been the case because the polar vortex has been stretching into weird shapes, Judah Cohen, director of seasonal forecasting at Atmospheric and Environmental Research, said.”

Right. So NOAA’s “Climate Prediction Centre” isn’t doing a very good job of predicting the climate, is it? Still, you can always deny the obvious. Thus:

“Cohen explained that the polar vortex has been shifting shapes back and forth from a normal to a stretched state at an unusual frequency this year, which is resulting in all the cold snaps.”

All the cold snaps. Another way of saying a long harsh winter, except the “snaps” that implies brief duration. And then you blame heat:

“A ‘collapse,’ on the other hand, happens when the layer between six and 31 miles above the Earth’s surface heats up to 50 degrees in less than two days.

Scientifically understood as sudden stratospheric warming, or as Cohen explained, a stretched polar vortex can shift the jet stream farther south, allowing more cold air to spill into the US, Canada, the UK and Europe.”

We understand exactly what is going on. A sudden warming of the stratosphere is scientifically understood as a sudden stratospheric warming. Thanks for clearing that up. And then you blame climate while gesticulating vaguely:

“Jennifer Francis, a senior scientist at the Woodwell Climate Research Center, weighed in on the ongoing highly debated issue of why the US is witnessing extreme cold outbreaks in an overall warming world.

‘There are multiple ways that human-caused climate change is having an influence on the jet stream, but it’s never clear which factor is the most important one in any given event, like the cold spell happening now,’ she explained, per CNN’s report. ‘It’s always a combination (of factors), and it’s always complicated.’”

The same thing is rhetorically happening in the UK, complete with the suddenly trendy “polar vortex collapse”:

“Britain is bracing for weather chaos as a polar vortex collapse sends temperatures plummeting after a brief spell of spring-like conditions.

The dramatic shift will see the mercury drop from highs of 17-19°C this weekend to potentially -4°C in parts of Scotland by Tuesday. A 400-mile wall of snow is expected to blanket the UK from Inverness to Cardiff by midweek. The Met Office has confirmed there is now over 80 per cent chance of a sudden stratospheric warming (SSW) occurring by mid-March.”

So definitely climate and a warming world. We just can’t say how. Science has spoken.

Repeatedly, say journalists:

“The Arctic is warming at an astonishing pace, nearly twice as fast as the rest of the world. This region has seen a temperature increase of about 2.3 degrees Celsius since the late 1800s.

As the Arctic warms, the ice caps melt, which affects the delicate balance of temperature gradients that influence the jet stream. When these gradients change, the jet stream can become unstable, leading to unpredictable weather patterns. The rapid warming of the Arctic is a clear indicator of climate change, and its effects are being felt far beyond the polar regions.”

And again. And once more with feeling:

“It may seem contradictory to suggest that a warming planet could lead to harsher winters. However, the mechanics of climate change reveal that increased global temperatures can intensify weather extremes, including those experienced in winter.

A well-documented example is the polar vortex phenomenon, where warming in the Arctic undermines the stability of cold air, allowing it to spill southward into America. This shift results in severe cold snaps that can shatter local temperature records.”

Or not, because when it comes to testing theories by comparing their predictions to the evidence, it’s worth noting that in his book Solving the Climate Puzzle Javier Vinos notes a superficially paradoxical but empirically sound finding with respect to climate, warming and winter in the northern hemisphere:

“One of the most interesting scientific climate debates of the 21st century is the relationship between Arctic amplification and the occurrence of severe winter weather in the midlatitudes. Since 1997, Arctic winter temperatures have experienced an increasingly rapid warming trend relative to the global average. During the same period, winter land temperatures in eastern North America and eastern Eurasia have experienced minimal warming, coinciding with an increase in the occurrence of severe winter weather events. This divergence between Arctic and midlatitude temperature trends has puzzled scientists because it was not predicted by climate models.”

His explanation is complex and we again recommend reading the book. And evidence is complex and we do not claim that his theory is definitively established by appearing to be right in one area where orthodoxy is wrong.

Far from it. We maintain that science proceeds by investigating hypotheses, especially ones that sound weird but handle weird evidence well.

And to simplify drastically, because his argument incorporates everything from continental drift to solar influence on atmospheric currents, he thinks the key determinant of global warming or cooling is how much heat gets transported to the poles where the “greenhouse effect” is minimal in winter, and thus from there gets efficiently radiated back into space.

(For which reason the failure of Antarctica to warm in recent centuries as atmospheric CO2 rises, which baffles the computer models, looks to be a major reason for warming because heat isn’t reaching the south pole in the first place, so it can’t be lost back to space in the second.)

If he’s right, then the Arctic warming faster than other places isn’t proof of runaway warming. On the contrary, it’s a sign of significant cooling. Which we say again is something for science to investigate, not for journalists to declare settled one way or the other.

We say so especially because this prevalence and ferocity of winter despite the surface of the Earth being, or so they claim, “scorched”, as in “Record-Breaking Heat: Two-Thirds of Earth’s Surface Scorched in 2024”, scorched here not being a word meaning “burned by flames or heat” as it would be in, say, a dictionary since no empirical observation has confirmed anything of the sort, is so contrary to established dogma that they’ve taken essentially to denying that it’s happening.

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