We’d be remiss if we didn’t acknowledge Winter Storm “Cato” is probably going to do a pretty good job limiting the government tomorrow, as well as shortening tempers throughout the country if it jams up the BosNYWash flyway on the day before Thanksgiving. Surely many climate alarmists will blame this garden-variety coastal cyclone on global warming.

Rational minds should know that these types of storms are largely powered by the midlatitude jet stream. The jet is nature’s way of dissipating the difference in energy between warm tropical air and polar cold on a rotating earth—the larger the temperature difference is between the tropics and the North Pole, the more powerful it is. Greenhouse gas-induced climate change warms the poles much more than the tropics, which reduces the temperature difference and should make storms of Cato’s ilk less powerful and/or frequent. 

Many pundits are fond of blaming these storms on changes in the “polar vortex” (which itself has existed ever since the earth acquired an atmosphere) caused by global warming, a notion that was thoroughly debunked by Colorado State’s Elizabeth Barnes last year in Geophysical Research Letters.