By Vijay Jayaraj 

I live in Bengaluru in southern India. This month, the city recorded the coldest temperature in 10 years for the month of November. So has been the case in my country’s capital New Delhi where extreme winters have become a norm in recent years.  

A small percentage of India’s 1.3 billion population has access to electrical heaters. However, a majority must burn a variety of fuels for fire to stay warm, making many people susceptible to surprise cold events. Why are cold events considered a surprise and not a normal part of weather? Is it because the public mind has been made complacent about cold by the fearmongering of global warmists? 

The reality is cold events have become common not just in India but across the globe. Since 2017, there have been regular incidences of below-average temperatures in both winter and summer. What can be inferred from these cold spells and what do they suggest about the apocalyptic rhetoric of the climate cult?  

Death by Cold and Heat in India 

Image by CO2 Coalition

Data Source: https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pmed.1002619.t002

Cold Spells and Polar Ice Sheets 

The November 18 snow event at Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport is the earliest snowfall in recorded history since 1898. Just an isolated event due to a regional storm? Well, think again. 

The past few months witnessed unusual cold spells in the U.S. and Canada. Buffalo registered one of its highest snowfalls for November while Vancouver saw unusual early winter snowfall. 

On November 20 and 21, hundreds of daily all-time low temperature records were registered across the U.S. as Arctic air swept through the North American continent. There have been extreme cold events in other parts of the world too.  

In August, China’s northwestern province of Xinjiang experienced surprise summer snowfall. South America, Europe, Asia and Australia registered record low temperatures in recent months. 

In Greenland – often a subject in the climate-change debate – the surface mass balance (SMB) of ice sheet this year is at one of its highest levels since 1981 and is set to increase further in the winter season. Greenland has been registering a consistent growth in ice sheet SMB since 2016.  

As Electoverse writer Cap Allon notes, “(S)ince 2016, Northern Hemisphere (NH) snow mass seasons have been holding well above the 1982-2012 average, and the 2022-2022 season is proving no different — as of the latest datapoint (Nov 19), the ‘Total snow mass for the NH’ chart, which comes courtesy of the Finnish Meteorological Institute (FMI), continues to ride above both the multidecadal average and the standard deviation.” 

Northern Hemisphere Snow Accumulation  

Source: https://globalcryospherewatch.org/state_of_cryo/snow/fmi_swe_tracker.jpg 

The “Dangerous Warming” Rhetoric 

So, do these record snowfall events and record low temperature events mean that there is no increase in global average temperatures? Certainly not! There has been a warming trend since the Little Ice Age began to lose its grip in the 17th century, but never has there been a dangerous general warming – and there is none now. 

The claim that global warming has made our summers hotter and winters milder is certainly wrong. As evidenced in the last five years, both extreme cold and extreme warmth have been common. 

Until the climate debate took over our media, these thermal ups and downs were known as weather variations. However, in the age of climate apocalypse, every extreme weather event is a catastrophe. Even unusual snowfall and cold are considered sour fruits of man-made emissions of carbon dioxide.  

This pseudoscience and outright distortions of media and political elites are harmful. The most vulnerable in our world are more exposed to the risks of cold because of an exaggerated concern about warming. 

More than 500 million Indians still use open fire to warm themselves while cold kills more people than heat. In some parts of India, winter temperatures can reach as low as -20 Celsius/-4 Fahrenheit. Even in a developed nation such as Germany, climate complacency has led to unpreparedness for winter energy needs and the government officials are now asking citizens to heat just one room in their homes! 

It is the cold that kills. If anything, the warming of the past three centuries has been extremely beneficial to mankind, helping us achieve unprecedented progress in human health, living standards, food production and technological achievement as we utilize earth’s resources ever more efficiently. 

Vijay Jayaraj is a Research Associate at the CO2 Coalition, Arlington, Virginia. He holds a master’s degree in environmental sciences from the University of East Anglia, UK and resides in India.