Surprise! Bad Science Reporting From Rush Limbaugh

Today Rush hit on something that I see a lot, and I find so terribly frustrating.  You take the phrase "global warming," and then you point to something unusually cold, and you say "HA IT A LIE."  Today he points to Colorado's ski season, which opened on a record early date, as evidence that global warming isn't a real thing.

This is a divisive issue, and it shouldn't be.  Climate change is real, it is measured, it is happening, it is just a fact.  Now whether or not you think we should do anything about it, or what we should do specifically - these things are up for debate.  But climate change, and the rise in greenhouse gases, and the link between those two things?  Scientific fact.  Just as fact-y as the fact that water is made of hydrogen and oxygen.

It. Is. A. Fact.  

The first problem is that Rush is using the phrase "global warming" to mean that "everything gets hotter."  (No - wait - the first problem is that Rush is using a single example to disprove an entire scientific theory.  One could just as easily find a single Republican who commits a crime, and use it to "prove" that all Republicans are criminals and thieves.  But I digress.)

"Global warming" is an unfortunate phrase, because it is somewhat misleading.  It refers specifically to the temperature of the oceans.  When the temperature of the oceans rises, it breaks the convection currents which carry ocean nutrients and temperature differentials across the world.  The planet's weather system (as well as its oceanic food chain) is driven by the conveyor belts in the ocean.  When those conveyor belts break down, so does the weather.  And make no mistake, that is a bad thing.

It is because of this misunderstanding of "global warming" that most researchers and reporters now use the phrase "climate change."  Really, everyone with half a brain and the willingness to accept the facts has switched to "climate change."  Climate change means what it says: the climate will change.  Is changing.

Now, from the perspective of climate change, is Colorado's freakishly early ski season indicative of climate change?  Well, it is a change, and it has to do with climate, so I would say yes.  Once again, you can't use one anecdote to prove or disprove a whole entire scientific model, but hey.

Rush Limbaugh doesn't have a single fact to stand on in this debate.  It isn't even properly considered a debate.  You just have the facts on one side, and the deniers on the other.  It is beyond me, why Rush Limbaugh would want to deny climate change, except that Republicans generally seem to be anti-science as a rule.  Damn scientists!  

Where they think their food and computers and internet and radios and televisions and medications and electricity and cars and every other aspect of modern life comes from is also beyond me.  Yeah, let's curse science and scientists!  On our computers, over the internet, surrounded by a modern existence which is only made possible through science!

We're the laughingstock of the rest of the world for even allowing this to be framed as a "debate," by the way.  And it's all thanks to the efforts of dangerous idiots like Rush Limbaugh.