One of the most notorious climate alarmist predictions is the 2000 one by David Viner of the Climatic Research Unit of the University of East Anglia (yes, the CRU of “Climategate” fame) that “Children just aren’t going to know what snow is”. And honestly we’re grateful to its author, not just for placing a large juicy fish in a small shallow barrel but because too much climate alarmism consists of predictions too vague or distant to be tested, thus making a mockery of the scientific method while claiming to follow it. This one was direct, concrete and verifiable. Or to get technical about the philosophy of science, falsifiable. And guess what? It got falsified. They do know. Now in the spirit of fairness the prediction concerned Britain specifically, which has not been an especially snowy place since the end of the Little Ice Age in the mid-19^th century. So we lead off this item with, well, very cold and snowy conditions in Britain. But we don’t stop there. Including “A winter storm warning has been issued to over 20 million people in the Northeast on Friday as several areas could see their largest snow totals in over three years.” So kids know in New England too. And Europe, where Ryan Maue asks “When’s the last time it snowed this much in Europe? The Little Ice Age? Woolly mammoths will be surveying the glacial landscape in the coming weeks”. In Alaska, Heatmap informs us, “Juneau, Alaska, is blanketed under a record 80 inches of snow, equal to six-and-a-half feet” so they know there too. As for nearby Yukon, the Weather Network writes “Yukon U-turn underway after one of longest cold snaps on record”. Whereas the whole point of snaps, except where climate journalism is concerned, is that they’re sudden, sharp and short.

Strangely the original The Independent story quoting Viner, and others, is no longer available online. But nothing really disappears from the Internet. (So be careful what you post.) And all the people trying to claim that he didn’t say it, or if he did he was right, are looking pretty silly. Because, for instance, at time of drafting this item, in Ottawa, it was minus 21C at 9:42 AM. Moreover we have had almost continuous snow cover since early November with no relief in sight (we even had freezing rain when it was -9C shortly before Christmas, an odd and horrible combination).

Now nobody is quicker than we at CDN to insist that because weather is variable, and so is climate, one season does not make a trend. But we follow up almost as quickly by saying that if someone has taken the opposite position, insisting that a warm winter proves “climate breakdown”, then they are hoist on their own petard by a cold one.

Even if they don’t know it. For instance when the National Post reports that Canada just recorded its coldest temperature in 50 years, an astounding -55.7 in Braeburn, Yukon (which we would suggest renaming Braefreeze if we didn’t know that “burn” has nothing to do with fire but is Scottish, via bourne and from Anglo-Saxon not Gaelic, for a creek or small river, especially an intermittent one and we dare say it’s not flowing at -55.7). But now compare the hysteria when Canada hit a record high in nearby Lytton, BC in 2021 to the almost complete media silence about a near-record low (the actual record having been set in 1947 in Snag, Yukon, minus 63C “plunging it into a surreal netherworld in which exhaled breath immediately turned into powdered ice crystals, and sounds became hyper-amplified”) and especially that not even the sensible Post made any reference to climate in the cold story.

Likewise this year’s unusually early opening of Ottawa’s Rideau Canal Skateway prompted no musings about climate, unlike late ones. But when there was snow in Tasmania on Christmas Day, which is of course unusual since December is midsummer there, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation went “Christmas morning snow in Tasmania, amid Western Australian heatwave” lest people get the wrong idea. And Scientific American chimed in dolefully with:

“Dreaming of a white Christmas or not, the chances of actually seeing snow on December 25 come down to both the prevailing climate wherever you live and the weather leading up to and on the day. For some of us in the U.S., it’s a lock; for others, the odds are sadly slim. And in many places, they are getting slimmer as global temperatures rise and winter weather gets wetter.”

And yet year after year, kids there know what snow is. Weird, huh?

As for Britain, its Met Office, all in on climate extremism, announced that:

“High pressure to the west and low pressure to the east will bring a northerly airflow across the UK from New Year’s Day. This pattern allows Arctic air to push south, resulting in a prolonged spell of very cold weather as we head into the New Year. Warnings for wind, snow and ice are now in place.”

A prolonged spell. At least not a snap. But not a “wave” and not in any way related to climate even if largely very dangerous, with “Several National Severe Weather Warnings” issued and exhortations to “check in on friends, family and neighbours that are most vulnerable” because cold is so dangerous but no reference to “climate” even though that item appeared on a page with all sorts of headings about climate. But cold is just weather.