The dire long-range predictions of "global warming" and the less dramatic but more nebulous "climate change" are dubious at best and conspiratorial at worst. Some recent dire short-term predictions have the misfortune of being subject to comparison with reality, unlike forecasts of temperature increase by the year 2100, when the temperature of the forecasters themselves and most of humanity will be that of the room.
In the case at hand, the optimistically-named AccuWeather had projected back in October 2011 that the 2011-2012 winter was likely to be "Another Brutal One." Indeed, most of AccuWeather's meteorological colleagues were similarly confident about the havoc winter seemed poised to wreak. However, as today's Los Angeles Times notes, not much wreaking has come to pass so far. Drudge went so far as to proclaim with Drudgian hyperbole, "USA seems to have escaped winter!" To be fair, we still have to get through February's proverbial dead-of-winter and then the volatile month of March, so there is plenty of time to salvage reputations and improve forecasting accuracy percentages. But that is the whole point of climate change/global warming skepticism. Inaccurate short-term computer models don't improve by moving the ending date further into the future.
Anyone who had invested in the skiing industry based on the forecasts in October would currently be having some serious second thoughts. Calls to invest $10.5 trillion to fight climate change based on models peering decades into the future are certainly worth some equally serious second thoughts. Mark Twain famously said, "Everybody talks about the weather, but nobody does anything about it." And maybe that's the way it ought to be.
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