No Records Broken Today: Climate Change Called Off

It is legitimate to criticize people who use a single weather event to bolster their case for concern about global warming. But how much more bizarre is it to seize upon a single soggy summer (this one) in a very narrow part of the world (Toronto) to argue the opposite?

The purple proseur Rex Murphy did just that in his Globe and Mail column (“So where’s the global cooling alert?”) a week ago. He wanted to know why we had not all cancelled the climate change alarm on account of Toronto’s unusually wet and chilly summer weather. Noting the likelihood that record-breaking hot weather moves people to discuss the risks and evidence of global warming, Murphy says:

Now, however, Toronto in July is cool and I am waiting in vain for the lips of just one forecaster to ask how can this be. Waiting just once to hear the familiar phrase “global warming” in a sentence that even hints that the theory behind it is so much more tentative than we have been urged with such fervour to believe.

It’s a little like ending an uneventful motorcycle ride with the conclusion that there is – quite apparently – no longer any danger to cycling and that helmet legislation should be repealed.

Murphy’s myopia is pathetic on two counts. First, his position is just silly. The fact that many days pass without the breaking of records does not remove concern about the days when records are dashed.

Second, although he is the host of CBC’s Cross Country Check-up – a national radio call-in show that makes an effort to canvas news and views from every part of this far-flung country – Rex neglected to check across the country. If he had, he would have noticed record-breaking of all kinds: colder, wetter weather where he is, unprecedented heat building dangerously in British Columbia and waves of warmth pouring north, where Arctic ocean ice is melting toward another dangerously low year.

Wouldn’t it serve us all so much better if Rex started basing his columns on a thoughtful canvassing of accurate information, based perhaps on real science, rather than the raving (as in this instance) of agenda-driven climate-science amateurs like Ian Plimer, whose thoroughly debunked book Murphy recommends as a reasonable source?