[ Last Friday, with this recent bomb cyclone, 53.7% of the nation
was covered in snow; more than any time since record-keeping began --
As the oil industry knowingly lies to us and rakes in profits]
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HOW GLOBAL WARMING MAKES IT FREEZING COLD  
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Thom Hartmann
December 26, 2022
The Hartmann Report
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_ Last Friday, with this recent bomb cyclone, 53.7% of the nation was
covered in snow; more than any time since record-keeping began -- As
the oil industry knowingly lies to us and rakes in profits _

, Image by Erika Varga from Pixabay

 

William Clay didn’t realize this was the weekend fossil fuel
billionaires’ intentional actions would lead to his death, but
that’s what happened. He died
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Buffalo on his 56th birthday, Christmas Eve, and was found frozen to
death about a mile from his house, attempting to walk home from the
store.

While Buffalo is famous for the intensity of its winter storms, this
appears to be worse than anything in recorded history both there and
across much of the rest of the nation. It seems Biblical: in Texas,
bats are freezing and falling from trees; in Florida cold-stunned
iguanas are raining down from palm trees onto unsuspecting
pedestrians.

FOSSIL FUEL INDUSTRY BARONS WIN NO MATTER WHAT. THEY ALL KNOW
ACCOUNTABILITY FOR CORPORATE EXECUTIVE DECISION-MAKING IS NONEXISTENT
IN TODAY’S AMERICA, CORRUPTED AS WE HAVE BEEN BY FIVE CONSERVATIVES
ON THE SUPREME COURT LEGALIZING POLITICAL BRIBERY. AND AS LONG AS THE
GOP HAS ANYTHING TO SAY ABOUT IT, THEIR HUNDREDS OF BILLIONS IN
TAXPAYER-FUNDED SUBSIDIES WILL NEVER END.

When extreme weather hits the US — be it extreme heat in the summer
or extreme cold in the winter — more of their product is burned to
create electricity and heating/cooling, earning them more profits.

When weather is “normal” they just go back to bribing climate
science deniers and Republican politicians across the nation to block
any action to hold them accountable for 60 years of intentional lies.

Last Friday, as the most recent bomb cyclone was blasting much of
America, 53.7%
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the nation was covered in snow, more than any time since
record-keeping began. Casper, Wyoming saw
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temperature drop to -42℉, the coldest _ever_, as similar records
going back centuries were shattered across the US. In Denver, for
example, temperatures dropped
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in a mere 2 hours.

Over 200 million Americans were under winter storm warnings as parts
of Texas’ privatized, for-profit power grid failed
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joining a dozen other states with deadly power outages. Dozens of
people died.

Predictably, shills for the fossil fuel industry (and the suckers who
believe them) were imitating Oklahoma Republican Senator James Inhofe
from February 2015 when, as Chairman of the Environment and Public
Works Committee (taking money from the fossil fuel industry and thus
dancing to their tune), Inhofe famously threw
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snowball on the Senate floor to, pathetically, try to show there’s
no global warming.

The twits this past weekend were saying
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like, “Love me some global warning.”

SO, HOW DOES GLOBAL _WARMING_ PRODUCE RECORD-BREAKING _COLD_?

It appears to have a lot to do with global warming messing with the
Jet Stream and the related walls of wind circulating around northern
latitudes that in prior decades and centuries largely kept arctic air
over the arctic. Now it’s ending up in our front yards.

BACK IN 2012, RUTGERS’ DR. JENNIFER FRANCIS AND THE UNIVERSITY OF
WISCONSIN’S STEPHEN VAVRUS PUBLISHED
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HYPOTHESIS TO EXPLAIN THE INCREASINGLY EXTREME VARIATIONS IN WEATHER
WE’RE EXPERIENCING IN THE NORTHERN HEMISPHERE. WHILE STILL THE
SUBJECT OF SCIENTIFIC DEBATE
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THEIR HYPOTHESIS WAS BOTH ELEGANT AND EASILY UNDERSTOOD.

As long as the Arctic Ocean was covered with deep, hard ice it
produced a permanent and cold plateau of stable-temperature air. That
cold air dome, in turn, stabilized the temperature and pressure of the
air above it so the circular flow of high-altitude winds around the
Arctic — called the normal “polar vortex” — were largely kept
in place at those high, northern latitudes.

We had summer and winter, storms and snow, fronts pushed through
quickly by the Jet Stream, but extremes like we’ve been experiencing
for the past decade were the stuff of science fiction disaster movies.

Extreme weather was kept at bay because the “gradient” or
difference in temperatures between the cold arctic polar vortex air
and the warmer air from our mid-latitudes produced a “wall” of
sorts to keep the cold air over the arctic.

In addition to the polar vortex, there’s another river of air
flowing in a circle around the north pole at a different altitude that
largely controls our weather. Called the Jet Stream, it pushes along
cold and warm air masses, producing the fronts and weather we
experience.

You can see the dynamic in this graphic from NOAA
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[Infographic showing stratospheric polar vortex in a strong state and
a disrupted state]
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NORTH OF THE JET STREAM IS THE COLD, ARCTIC AIR; SOUTH OF IT IS OUR
WARMER AIR. WHEN PARTS OF THE JET STREAM DIP DOWN OVER NORTH AMERICA,
WE OFTEN SEE THAT PHENOMENON OF COLD- AND WARM-FRONT AIR-MASS
COLLISIONS PRODUCING “FRONTS” THAT PROVOKE STORMS RANGING FROM
RAINFALL TO TORNADOES TO DERECHOS.

As MIT climatologist Judah Cohen told Newsweek
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week:

“When the polar vortex is in its normal or strong state, there is a
strong ribbon or river of air that flows rapidly from west to
east...that acts like a barrier that separates cold air to the north
over the Arctic and milder air to the south across the mid-latitudes.

“When the circulation around the polar vortex becomes less and less
circular in shape, the cold air normally confined to the Arctic can
expand southward to the mid-latitudes, including the U.S., Europe and
East Asia.”

BUT TWO DECADES AGO THE ICE COVERING THE TOP OF THE WORLD, THAT CAP OF
ARCTIC SEA ICE, HIT A TIPPING POINT AND BEGAN TO MELT SO COMPLETELY IT
WAS REPLACED BY OPEN WATER, WHICH IS BOTH WARMER THAN ICE AND, BEING
DARK, ABSORBS RATHER THAN REFLECTS HEAT FROM THE SUN.

As NASA’s _Earth Observatory_ scientists note
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“[A] pattern of steep Arctic sea ice decline began in 2002.”

The arctic is now warming several times faster than the mid-latitudes,
in part because of this “dark water” phenomenon replacing
reflective ice and in part as a consequence of the entire planet’s
CO2-driven global warming.

As the air above the arctic warms, it _reduces_ the gradient — the
difference in temperatures — at the boundaries between the arctic
and the mid-latitude air.

WHEN THAT TEMPERATURE GRADIENT DECREASES, SO DOES THE STRENGTH OF THE
“WALL” OF THE BOUNDARY CREATED BY ARCTIC AIR HITTING MID-LATITUDE
AIR. AS THAT “WALL” WHICH HELPS HOLD IN PLACE THE JET STREAM
WEAKENS, THE COLD AIR ABOVE IT CAN PUSH THROUGH, PAST, OR UNDER THE
JET STREAM. IT THEN ENDS UP IN YOUR FRONT YARD AS -42 TEMPERATURES.

This is apparently also why here in Portland we had 3 consecutive
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days two summers ago, killing hundreds of people and millions of
trees: hot air from south of us that would normally have been kept to
the south by the Jet Stream punched north all the way into Alaska and
sat over us for days.

It’s also probably why Arctic air covered so much of the US this
past week, punching as far south as Texas: air that’s normally
confined to the arctic broke past its “wall” and drooled down over
North America.

AND GLOBAL WARMING IS DRIVING THE AMPLIFICATION OF THE ENTIRE PROCESS.

At the same time the fossil fuel industry — particularly the oil
industry — is enjoying record-breaking profits, thousands of
Americans are dying every year from climate change-amped weather
ranging from droughts to floods to massive tornadoes and derechos.

Industry CEOs and executives have knowingly lied to us for a
half-century about this coming disaster, and most also _continue_ to
fund lies and liars
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stuffing their money bins fuller every day.

The politicians who take their money and lie about climate change are
little better: it’s almost impossible to find a Republican,
nationally or even at the state level, who’s not on the take,
directly or indirectly, from this poisonous industry.

How to deal with these moral crimes will be the next challenge
confronting both democracy and our criminal justice system as
Millennials and Zoomers take political power.

And that reckoning can’t come soon enough.  

Here’s a great 5-minute explainer video put together four years ago
by Yale Climate Connections
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_Thom Hartmann is a NY Times bestselling author 34 books in 17
languages & nation's #1 progressive radio host. Psychotherapist,
international relief worker. Politics, history, spirituality,
psychology, science, anthropology, pre-history, culture, and the
natural world._

* Global warming
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* freeze
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* polar vortex
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