During the first two weeks of January, a record cold wave invaded Florida. It was the longest and coldest penetration of Arctic air into Florida since 1940. For the first two weeks of 2010, West Palm Beach had an average low temperature of 39 degrees.

This month, Washington DC, Baltimore, and Philadelphia were buried under record amounts of snow. Meanwhile, another storm dropped snow on the Deep South closing schools and highways. Dallas reported getting a foot of the white stuff, breaking that city’s 24-hour record for snowfall.

The winter of 2009-10 is rewriting the record books for cold and snow. Gee, I thought we were going to see the end of winter due to global warming -- at least that’s what Al Gore told us. And yet, to the amazement and amusement of many we are being told that this winter’s record cold and record snowfall is due to global warming. Huh? Record cold and record snow is because it’s getting warmer?

Here is the political spin on all this cold and snow: To defend the climate Armageddon predictions, the global warming enthusiasts have declared that warmer temperatures introduce more moisture into the air and therefore create more snowfall. The global warming faithful say these weather extremes are a sure sign that global warming is here and we had better change our ways because global warming is even worse than we thought!

The problem with all these claims: there is no evidence to support any of them. As with so many global warming proclamations, these pronouncements are literally pulled from thin air. The claims that global warming would produce all kinds of severe weather from cold to hot is new. It was only a few years ago that the alarmists were claiming the earth would get warmer and this would produce more heat waves, droughts and melting ice caps and glaciers. Then the global temperature stopped going up after 1998. At this point winters started getting colder and snowier around the world. The alarmists had to restructure their doomsday predictions because nature was not cooperating. The new spin is global warming causes everything. How can your prediction be wrong if you forecast everything to happen? The answer is you can’t. This silly notion is what we are being told to swallow. We are being “educated” into believing that record cold is the result of warmer temperatures. Something is very wrong with this picture.

Despite all the shouting about an increase in more extreme storms, the reality is that there has been no increase in the variability of weather. Let’s look at record high and low temperatures in the United States. By far the highest level of extreme temperatures was in the decade of the 1930s. There were many more record high and low temperatures in the ‘30s than at anytime in the last 130 years. In fact the most recent decade of the 2000s had the lowest number of record high and record low temperatures since the 1880s! This means that in terms of temperature the weather has been much more stable, not more extreme. How about hurricanes? The global warming alarmists have been telling us that these storms will become more powerful as the earth warms. An examination of the World Accumulated Cyclone Energy Index reveals the opposite. This index measures the total energy output of tropical storms and hurricanes around world. It shows that worldwide tropical cyclone energy levels are now lower than anytime in the last 30 years. Hurricanes are not increasing in intensity around the world, they are getting weaker. How about tornadoes in the US? There are about 1,200 tornadoes in the US each year. No other place on earth even comes close. Global warming theory says these violent whirlwinds should become more common and stronger. The opposite is happening. An examination of strong and violent tornadoes shows us that the number of powerful tornadoes has been decreasing since the 1970s.

The theory that all forms of weather will become more extreme due to global warming is suspect. We live on a round planet and therefore the sun heats the world unevenly. The earth is cold at the top and bottom and hot at the equator. Storms transport heat away from the tropics and mix it with cold air at the top and bottom. This keeps our global temperature in check.

The strength of the storms depends on the magnitude of the temperature difference between the poles and the equator. This difference is greatest in the winter. In winter, temperatures at the North Pole can be 50 to 60 degrees below zero while readings in the tropics are in the 80s and 90s. A good way to see how the atmosphere reacts to this difference in temperature is in the speed of the jet streams. These powerful rivers of wind triple in strength from summer to winter. They blow about 60 miles per hour in the summer when the difference in temperature from pole to equator is the least. In the winter, these winds increase to near 200 miles per hour. The same is true for the winds on the ground. In the summer, the migratory storms move more slowly and have much less wind. In the winter, as the temperature differences increase, the storms become more powerful.

In a warmer world, we are told that storms will become more severe. There is no reason for this to happen. Global warming theory says the temperature changes will be most pronounced at the poles, much less so at the equator. As the temperature difference between the poles and the equator decreases, there will be fewer strong storms. As the winter temperature difference decreases in a warmer world, the energy available for stronger storms will decrease and so will the strength of the storms just as it does now from winter to summer. As the temperature contrast across the planet decreases, the winter storms would become more like summer storms are today. Less variation in temperature means fewer and weaker storms. Hurricanes would become less common and weaker in a warmer world. Hurricanes transport vast quantities of heat from the tropics to the higher latitudes. In a world of less temperature contrast the atmosphere won’t need to make as many hurricanes.

The severe winter weather over the last several years is due to global cooling, not warming. All data show the earth has been cooling since 2002. As this cooling continues the temperature difference across the planet will increase. This will result in stronger winter storms and more record winter weather events.

The recent snowstorms in Washington, DC broke the snowfall records set 126 years ago. The old record was 54.4 inches. The new record at the time of this writing is 55.9 inches. These numbers are within 97% of each other. There is an inherent inaccuracy in measuring snow especially in windy conditions. Also snowfall amounts are highly variable from one location to another in any snowstorm. Today we measure snowfall at far more locations than in the past.

Given these factors, we can say that the two seasonal snowfall numbers are basically the same. This means that a winter of similar magnitude and ferocity struck the Middle Atlantic region 126 years ago. The current winter is just a return of the same weather we had back then.

In summary, global warming did not cause the big winter of 1898-99 and it is not causing this year’s winter storms, either.