Clowning around in the Senate hit new heights of fun last week when James Inhofe (R-OK) playfully lobbed a snowball pretending to demolish 100 years of empirical data supporting human-induced climate change. Let the games begin:
We keep hearing that 2014 has been the warmest year on record," Inhofe said. "So I ask the chair," — referring to Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-LA) — "Do you know what this is? It's a snowball, from just outside here. So it's very, very cold out... very unseasonable." He then lobbed said snowball to a page and lapsed into deep silence, a smile across his face.
Inhofe, by the way, isn't some random nut off the street. He's currently chair of the Senate's Environment and Public Works committee. You want Congress to do something about global warming? For the next two years, at least, any bill would have to go through him.
Yes, 2014 was the warmest year on record in the NASA GISS database. And while the month of February was no fun in the Northeast, it was
plenty warm in at least 20 US cities out west. Both for the same reason: from time to time the circumpolar jet stream has been dipping further south and east over the continental US and edging up higher in the west. That means cooler temps from time to time in the Northeast and warmer air some of the time in the north and west. It's not difficult to understand, unless your livelihood depends on not understanding it.
