From Watts Up With That?

Essay by Eric Worrall

Last week my family enjoyed a BBQ with friends at a seaside park on the beautiful Fraser Coast. But apparently are all suffering a climate catastrophe.

JAN 31, 2026 7:23 AM AET

Snow Storms in North America. A Record Heat Wave in Australia. Is This Climate Change?

by Simmone Shah
REPORTER

Extreme weather events are battering both ends of the world this week. In the U.S., Winter Storm Fern set snow records in parts of the country last weekend, quickly followed by one of the longest cold-air outbreaks in decades. A bomb cyclone is expected to hit the southeast over the weekend. Across the globe in southern Australia, a heat dome is setting records, with temperatures reaching 120°F—the most severe heat waves the country has experienced in 16 years. 

It’s difficult to outright blame climate change for any one specific weather event, but as our planet warms, it could mean that extremes of all kinds, occurring at the same time around the world, could become the norm. 

From hot days to snow storms, hurricanes and droughts, extreme weather events have always been natural. “We’ve had extreme weather as long as we have records of weather information,” says Lackmann. But research shows that climate change is making them more frequent and intense. “What we’re finding is that the intensity and the frequency of the most extreme events is certainly likely to have the DNA of climate change,” says Marshall Shepherd, director of the Atmospheric Sciences Program at the University of Georgia and former president of the American Meteorological Society. 

What remains clear is that frigid temperatures and piles of snow by no means disproves climate change. “People will say things like, ‘Hey, it’s snowing. That must mean there’s no such thing as global warming.’” says Shepherd. “I said, ‘No, that just means it’s January in the wintertime.’”

…Read more: https://time.com/7362792/snow-north-america-australia-heat-wave-climate/

If global warming causes unusually hot AND unusually cold weather, what does global cooling cause? Abnormally normal weather?

Actually, we know the answer to what the weather is like when the world cools, and the answer is not good.

A climate of conflict: How the little ice age sparked rebellions and revolutions across Europe

Author links open overlay panel

David Kaniewski ^a 1, Nick Marriner ^b 1, Frédéric Luce ^a, Morgane Escarpe ^a, Majid Pourkerman ^c, Thierry Otto ^a

Highlights

• •A study based on 140 rebellions and revolutions during the Little Ice Age.
• •Climate impacted livelihoods, causing poor harvests and higher grain prices.
• •Led to malnutrition, which increased people’s vulnerability.
• •Climate did not generate crises but sowed the seeds for uprisings.

Abstract

The Little Ice Age (LIA) – lasting from ∼1250 to ∼1860 – was a long period of cooler, drier conditions, characterized by increased climate instability. The most significant climate extremes were more closely associated with interannual temperature variations or particularly severe, isolated cold spells than with prolonged cold spells lasting many years.

During this pre-industrial phase of climate instability, many rebellions broke out, one of the most famous being the French Revolution of 1789.

A key question, however, relates to the precise and often intricate role of climate in precipitating these widespread uprisings and rebellions that profoundly reshaped human institutions, particularly in the European context.

Using data for solar activity, temperature, precipitation, volcanic forcing and the evolution of grain prices, we compared and contrasted the occurrence of rebellions and revolutions across a wide geographical area comprising Europe-Russia-Ottoman Empire with LIA climate and hazards.

We find that climate change primarily affected people’s livelihoods by reducing harvests, lowering food-resource availability and sharply increasing cereal prices. 

Climate therefore played a major role in heightening population vulnerability by exacerbating one of the greatest scourges: malnutrition. 

For the populace, this fuelled social anger towards political authorities for failing to mitigate the impact of climate change. This study primarily reveals that environmental causes did not generate social crises during the LIA but rather triggered a cascade of environmental and human events that interacted, ultimately leading to highly conflictual situations.

The LIA serves as a warning to modern political systems, highlighting the necessity to anticipate the consequences of current climate change to mitigate its impact on societies and prevent social unrest and conflict.

…Read more: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0921818125003479

Given the Little Ice Age was a period of dreadful weather and unstable climatic conditions, and global warming is supposed to bring dreadful weather and unstable climatic conditions, are climate alarmists seriously expecting us to believe the current climate, or perhaps the climate of a hundred years ago, was the perfect balance?

How unlikely is it that out of all the Earth’s climate epochs, through the Earth’s long climate history, we just happen to be living through the century of climate perfection?

Doesn’t it seem more likely if cooler global temperatures bring horrible weather, warmer global temperatures will bring better weather?

We do have paleo evidence warm conditions are more benign. Our monkey ancestors thrived in the hothouse world of the PETM, 5-8C hotter than today. They colonised much of Northern Europe and Russia, only retreating from their new homes when the cold returned.

Fish also thrived during the PETM.

I’m not suggesting weather is a long linear continuum of warmer = better weather across all possible global temperatures, but the alarmist suggestion that we happen to live in a narrow turning point of perfection is absurd.

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, and I don’t see anyone providing evidence to support the implicit claim that our current climate state, or the climate state of the recent past, is the perfect state we should aspire to.