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Climate change is not a weather forecast. Trying to conflate the two is just coal company propaganda. What it does predict is greater weather extremes. Guess what's happening? This cold snap may be a natural consequence of the unhinging of the polar vortex through arctic warming. But that is just speculation on my part. Arctic warming, however, is happening.
Unusually cold weather at the local level can be a sign of global warming. It has to do with jet streams being redirected and a blast of cold air from the north rather than a more temperate flow of air from the west. However unusually cold weather is probably just a normal part of weather. Over the course of a few years the average area temperature would have risen when compared to 100 years ago. The rise in temperatures has to do with greenhouse gases in the atmosphere keeping the earth's surface warmer. The greenhouse gases are known to come from burning carbon-base fuels. It is proven. The ultimate damage is unknown.
Unusually cold weather at the local level can be a sign of global warming. It has to do with jet streams being redirected and a blast of cold air from the north rather than a more temperate flow of air from the west. However unusually cold weather is probably just a normal part of weather. Over the course of a few years the average area temperature would have risen when compared to 100 years ago. The rise in temperatures has to do with greenhouse gases in the atmosphere keeping the earth's surface warmer. The greenhouse gases are known to come from burning carbon-base fuels. It is proven. The ultimate damage is unknown.
No, a much more relevant global warming gas is water vapor, not CO2 which can either warm or cool the earth.
Water vapor is a more relevant greenhouse gas but that water vapor is being warmed more than it once was due to the other greenhouse gases, greenhouse gases being emitted by carbon-based fuels.
On a serious note, this is awful. Our trees are laden with ice, that won't melt for many more days because it's not getting above freezing, and the branches and even whole large trees are toppling. Power lines are snapping, and huge quadrants of the city lost electric power, for more than a day, meaning no way to charge communication devices and no way to leave the home due to icy, hilly roads. In the hillier locations, plumbing relies on electric pumps, which were down, causing huge wastewater emergencies. On Monday, we have a predicted low of 2 degrees, which will likely kill off much of our abundant wildlife. So there are messages on Nextdoor to make sure your bird feeders are full, and your bird baths are tended to provide fresh unfrozen water. And people are reporting unprecedented traffic at their feeders - the birds and squirrels know what's coming.
There are messages from city leaders to please check on neighbors who may be elderly or isolated, to see if they're ok.
Local hotels are full of people who were freezing in the dark. This, during a very celebrated recent downturn in COVID due to our careful masking and distancing.
Huge wake up call. In northern states they have infrastructure that deals with massive prolonged ice storms, and we do not.
Wow, that's pretty bad! I hope things ease up soon!
People who do not understand the difference between long term climate patterns and a single weather event are either being completely disingenuous or have zero intellectual curiosity.
From Missouri I can drive in this stuff but most of my fellow Houstonians can't.
Missouri doesn't get black ice.
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Guess you guys are getting all of our cold.