Perhaps we seem to belabour the point about the harsh winter of 2025-26 in North America in particular. But we keep trying to figure out which weather pattern is the long-awaited proof of the alarmist case. So on the subject of predictions it is not unfair, redundant or acarpous to keep pointing out items like the one Chris Martz posted (and some people reposted without crediting him – please if you borrow acknowledge), namely a New York Times item from March 2024 headlined “Weirdly Warm Winter Has Climate Fingerprints All Over It, Study Says” alongside a February 2026 one asking “What’s Up With This Big Freeze? Some Scientists See Climate Change Link”. Yes. Because “some scientists” and some journalists are wearing opaque glasses with “Climate Change” printed on the inside. Likewise, Steve Milloy juxtaposes the New York Times’ “The End of Snow?” in 2014 and, removing the question mark a decade later as the certainty of the scientific consensus among journalists hardened from rigid to dogmatic, with 15 inches of snow in Central Park on Feb. 23. (And no, our spell checker didn’t know acarpous. But Nero Wolfe did and it means unfruitful.)
The Boston Herald, which lives there, groaned “Had enough yet? A historic nor’easter pummeled the region on Monday – with one spot even breaking the snow record from the Blizzard of ‘78 – as power crews work around the clock to try to restore electricity for hundreds of thousands.” Yes, record snow. If it were heat… but how long will it take for the media to get back to the “End of snow” once spring comes? And while it’s here, they say it proves climate heating breakdown thingy by, as Roger Pielke Jr. demonstrates, pointing to changes in the weather that are not real.
The issue here is the dreaded “Nor’easters” that have pummelled the U.S. east coast including New England, and reached into Canada’s maritime provinces, since the says when it was cool to use an apostrophe to elide letters. (As in “seven on the clock” becoming “seven o’clock” to the cool kids.) And as RPJ notes, a 2024 paper saying they’re getting worse was leveraged for all sorts of hysteria, from Live Science through Inside Climate News, the Weather Network and of course the dreaded lead author Michael E. Mann.
The Weather Network had its snow and ate it too, with:
“Nor’easters are growing more intense and producing more rain and snow than ever before, according to a recent study”
Note the hyperbolic “ever” as if we know what storms were clobbering the region during the 5th century AD or some such. And also that predictably the cold was due to warmth and the snow a harbinger of lack of snow:
“Nor’easters are getting stronger as the planet warms, a recent study warns, representing a trend that could have significant consequences for coastal communities along the Atlantic coastline. The trend of stronger nor’easters carries the risk for coastal flooding, beach erosion, significant snowstorms, and even more intense cold snaps for inland communities.”
Or not:
“What effect will climate change have on nor’easters heading into the future? Experts have found that low-pressure systems like nor’easters will actually become less common as the atmosphere warms. However, a recent study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences found that these sprawling storms will have the opportunity to produce more intense winds and greater precipitation rates going forward.”
And there’s a prediction you can’t take to the bank.
As Pielke Jr. complains, the University of Pennsylvania press release had the gall to say that according to the research “the strongest of these storms are unquestionably getting stronger”, surely something they should have left to other scientists to confirm or, uh, question. And we complain that it also said, that one of Mann’s graduate students, Annabel:
“Horton notes it may seem counterintuitive that nor’easters – often associated with frigid temperatures and heavy snowfalls – would be getting worse in a warming world. ‘That’s where the results from this research are so interesting,’ she says. ‘They show that these really intense, really destructive nor’easters will, in fact, only get more destructive and more powerful in a changing climate.’”
So warmth is cold, fewer storms are more storms and war is peace.
Well, RPJ questions it. The paper’s actual findings, and they are hardly statistically robust, concern not the strongest storms but those “in the 60th to 78th prercentile range” which is not exactly the end of the world or even of Boston.
Also, being smart alecks, we decided to do some of that dreaded historical research, namely Googling “worst nor easters in history”, and by golly the worst, admittedly only up to 1922, were headed by “The Great Blizzard of 1888”. In second “Storm of the Century (1950”). In third “Ash Wednesday (1962)”. Getting worse indeed. (There was another “Storm of the Century” in 1993 but it was evidently a different century, and only in 6th place, behind “The Perfect Storm (1991)” in 5th and that “The Blizzard of 1978” evidently named by someone in a hurry, lacking imagination or both, in 4th).
As is our wont, we refuse to believe history started in the late 19th century, and did an online search for nor’easters in the Little Ice Age. And sure enough, they seem to have been both common and exceptionally nasty. Including one that, illustrating the gaps in our knowledge, is known to us only because it hit Louisbourg on Cape Breton Island on Sept. 25, 1757, while the British were blockading the massive French fort there during the Seven Years War. How many others were not seen at all?
Even Copernicus, the European institution not the dead astronomer, concedes that:
“It seems counterintuitive that the colder LIA climate would generate more powerful midlatitude Atlantic cyclones than in the modern era, yet historical records show the LIA to be generally “stormier” with unusually powerful midlatitude hurricanes despite conditions that dampen hurricane energy.”
That Michael Mann’s doctoral students do not conduct that kind of research is we suppose understandable. But somebody might have.
Especially if they were looking to pull a fast one rather than come across as a slow one.
“Nor’easters are getting stronger as the planet warms, a recent study warns". Or perhaps it would be more accurate to say that hyperbole in the climate change fraternity is getting stronger as general interest in the subject cools.