The recent harsh winter weather across much of North America (especially the eastern and central U.S. and Canada) in late January through mid-February 2026 has brought record cold, heavy snow, ice storms, and dangerous wind chills.

Fernando del Pino Calvo- Sotelo’s article “Cold, rain, snow: climate change?” (originally published in Spanish as “Frío, lluvia, nieve: ¿cambio climático?” on February 9, 2026, on his blog fpcs.es) directly tackles the very question: what do episodes of cold, rain, and snow actually reveal about climate change claims?

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From Independence, Freedom and Truth

By Fernando del Pino Calvo Sotelo

Climate propagandists are worried. Indeed, the preferred weather conditions for climate propaganda are heat and drought, and since the end of December we have had cold weather and huge amounts of rain. In fact, in mainland Spain, January has been the rainiest in the last 25 years, and many reservoirs have ended the month at 100% capacity. We have definitely left the drought behind, the beginning and end of which, incidentally, the Spanish Meteorological Agency (AEMET) was unable to predict.

We should learn three lessons from this fact. The first is the unreliability of weather forecasts beyond a time horizon of a few days. A well-kept secret is that science is still in its infancy in its understanding of the climate, a nonlinear, complex, and chaotic system. Therefore, meteorologists have no way of knowing with any degree of certainty what will happen this coming spring, or next year, let alone in 2100. They operate in an environment of enormous uncertainty and base their seasonal forecasts on factors that are only partially explanatory, such as ENSO.

Once again, the AEMET

Hence the probabilistic approximations obtained after laborious calculations—that is, by eye—such as that made by the AEMET when it predicted that there was a 60% chance of a warmer-than-normal winter. Such prediction has earned much criticism, tempered by the fierce defense of the Agency systematically carried out by fact-checkers and the left-wing media (almost all), not surprisingly, since AEMET is the main authority for promoting the climate agenda.

In reality, AEMET’s huge mistake lies in not having been able to predict the enormous volume of rainfall recorded in January. In fact, criticism of its temperature forecast distracts attention from this point and is also premature (and certainly naïf, since AEMET holds the monopoly in calculating Spain’s temperature). Indeed, the average temperature for the meteorological winter in Spain is 6.6ºC, so for it to be a “warmer than normal” winter, it would only need to be a few tenths of a degree above that temperature. If we accept that January temperatures were normal, as the AEMET seems to have suggested, for its winter prediction to be wrong February will have to be colder than normal (below the 40th percentile), which is statistically less likely than the opposite scenario. Hence, the Agency is relying on February’s temperature measurements to restore its reputation, or rather, on the statistical estimates that temperature calculations have become, since, following its recent methodological change, most of the data points do not come from direct thermometer measurements, but from interpolations on small grids using multiple regression models[1].

The second lesson we must remember is that the great climate threat that should concern us is the extreme cold typical of Ice Ages, not the milder temperatures caused by the slight warming we have fortunately been experiencing since the end of the Little Ice Age in the mid-19th century. Heat is synonymous with life, and cold is synonymous with death. That is why birds migrate to warmer areas in winter, and citizens of central and northern Europe come on vacation to Spain, and not the other way around.

The final lesson to be learned is that we must be on guard against the relentless, Soviet-style, climate propaganda bombardment. Indeed, if this early winter had been warm and dry instead of freezing and rainy, climate propaganda would have immediately blamed it on climate change. Well, it is just as ridiculous and unscientific to extrapolate a cold, rainy, and snowy month and link it to supposed global cooling as it is to link every heat wave, every drought, or every particularly warm season to global warming. Please remember this the next time climate activists—starting with the AEMET—turn mere local, temporary, and irrelevant weather phenomena into irrefutable evidence of global climate change.

Prophets of doom

For the prophets of climate doom, the bad news keeps piling up, as Bill Gates now claims that “although climate change will have serious consequences (…), people will be able to live and thrive in most places on Earth for the foreseeable future”[2]. After writing a book a few years ago with the alarming title How to Avoid a Climate Disaster, his change of tone (or opportunistic shift) has coincided with the erosion of apocalyptic projections—discredited time and again by observed data—and, above all, with the political change that has taken place in the US, a country that has decided to abandon, and therefore stop funding, all kinds of environmental organizations, including the UN’s IPCC[3].

We must be aware that effective climate propaganda blames climate change for all kinds of phenomena, even those of an opposite nature.

That is precisely why “global warming” came to be called “climate change,” a less restrictive concept that admits everything under its umbrella. This is why those who make a living from the climate narrative try to explain that global warming is to blame for the heat, but also for the cold; for torrential rain, but also for drought; for total calm, but also for gale-force winds. However, although atmospheric physics is sometimes counterintuitive, I trust that common sense tells you, dear reader, that it is usually difficult for the same factor to cause completely opposite results. If not, be careful the next time you put ice in your drink, lest it heat up, or take an antipyretic, lest it raise your fever instead of lowering it.

Contrary to what the propaganda claims, global warming has not yet caused any increase in climate instability or in the frequency or intensity of extreme weather events, as the IPCC itself acknowledges[4]. But let’s imagine for a moment that it did, as its propagandists claim: should we then conclude that global cooling would bring great climate stability? This does not seem to be the case. In fact, the Little Ice Age (13th-19th centuries) was a period of “great climatic instability” that led to severe grain crop failures and, consequently, famines[5]. On the contrary, increased CO₂ and milder temperatures favor plant growth. Thus, cereal crop yields (measured in tons per cultivated hectare) have only grown in recent decades and are now double what they were 60 years ago, which is great news for feeding a growing world population[6]. Bless CO₂.

Global drop in temperatures

January’s cold, rain, and snow have not been limited to Spain, but have been a global phenomenon in the northern hemisphere. Anecdotally, it is worth mentioning that on the night of Epiphany, 30 cm of snow fell on the beaches of the French Atlantic coast[7], that in the US the cold and snow storm at the end of January rivaled the record set the previous winter[8], and that on the Kamchatka Peninsula, in the far east of Russia, there was unprecedented snowfall[9].

But beyond the anecdotal nature of experiencing a cold, rainy, and snowy month, the fact is that global temperatures have been falling for two years, which means that the unusual peak observed in 2023-2025—clearly exogenous and circumstantial in nature, due to its extreme and sudden nature—is subsiding in a typical example of reversion to the mean. Do not forget that in 2023, 42% of the planet’s surface experienced temperatures two standard deviations above average. In this regard, the contrast between the countless news reports publicizing the sudden warming of those years and the deathly silence that has accompanied the subsequent cooling, just as sudden but not fitting into the official narrative, is quite telling.

As I wrote at the time, no serious scientist suggested the sudden rise in temperatures in 2023-2025 was due to anthropogenic forcing (unlike the AEMET). Some linked it to a strong El Niño phenomenon; others to a completely unexplained very low global cloud cover, as science still struggles with moist convection and therefore does not know the factors that control the planet’s cloudiness (how could climate models not fail?). Finally, other scientists pointed to the massive eruption of the Hunga-Tonga underwater volcano, which was one of the largest geological phenomena of the last century, releasing 150 Mt of water vapor, the most important greenhouse gas, into the atmosphere at once[10].

Therefore, it is possible that the recent and sudden cooling of the Earth has been associated with La Niña, a phenomenon which, like so many others, is impossible to predict in duration and intensity except with comfortable probability ranges that do not usually stray far from equiprobability (to protect the forecaster’s reputation). But it is also possible that the main factor explaining the recent cooling has been the gradual disappearance of the temporary greenhouse effect caused by the Hunga-Tonga eruption[11]. Who knows?

As you can see in the graph below, since 1979—a particularly cold year, but the first in which there were satellites in space to measure temperature—it is estimated that the average temperature of the planet has increased at an imperceptible rate of 0.15°C per decade (yes, 15 hundredths of a degree per decade)[12]. You will agree with me that it takes a lot of fine-tuning to detect this centesimal increase in the temperature of an entire planet:

You will also notice that the planet’s temperature barely increased in the period 1980-1995 and remained very constant from 1998 to 2015, approximately, despite the constant increase in atmospheric CO₂ concentration. This latter episode was called “the hiatus”, although climate propaganda would later deny that such a term had ever been used. Really? In 2013, Nature magazine published an article entitled “The recent hiatus in global warming”[13], and the IPCC itself cited “the hiatus” 53 times in its Fifth Assessment Report (2013) and devoted a special chapter entitled “Climate models and the hiatus in global warming over the last 15 years”[14].

Long graphs

The above graph of satellite data is a very short graph, as climate change is usually measured in centuries or millennia. That is why I like to introduce the long graph that the IPCC included in its First Report, which shows the reconstruction of global temperatures over the last 10,000 and 1,000 years. In it, you can see that temperatures at the end of the 20th century were lower than or similar to those in the days when Fred Flintstone drove his log car, that is, when there was no industrialization or anthropogenic CO₂[15]:

Good news

On the other hand, some of my Canadian friends who are concerned about climate change will have been reassured by the recent publication of their country’s summer temperature series since 1900, which shows a gentle cyclicality with no clear trend, equating temperatures at the beginning of the 21st century with those experienced 100 years ago, when CO₂ levels were supposedly “normal” (according to climate propaganda nomenclature)[16]:

They will also be reassured to know that poor Greta’s tearful denunciation at the UN of a supposed mass extinction of species because of climate change was the result of hysteria rather than science. In fact, a recent study published by the Royal Society concludes that the rate of species extinction—irrelevant in any case from a relative point of view—has decreased over the last 100 years[17]. Yes, you read that right: there are fewer species extinctions, which means that the biosphere (the system that encompasses all living beings on the planet) is doing wonderfully well with slightly warmer temperatures and a little more CO₂, a source of life and food par excellence for plants.

We also have reassuring data regarding rising sea levels. A study published in the Journal of Marine Science and Engineering has compared the increases predicted for 2020 by the IPCC for a multitude of coastal locations around the globe with the actual measurements obtained at those locations. Its conclusion is categorical: “Approximately 95% of locations show no statistically significant acceleration in the rate of sea level rise. Our research suggests that in the remaining 5% of locations, local non-climate phenomena are the plausible cause of accelerated sea level rise.” It concludes: “On average, the IPCC’s projected rate of rise is biased upward by approximately 2 mm per year compared to the observed rate”[18]. Given that the latest IPCC report projects a 4 mm/year increase until 2100 in its most plausible scenario, this means that its flawed models double the actual rise in sea levels. Don’t rush to sell your beach apartment.

Consensus or censorship?

Climate propaganda claims that there is almost complete consensus among the scientific community regarding the anthropogenic origin of global warming and the apocalyptic consequences attributed to it. This is patently false: what has happened is an asymmetrical media treatment of both sides of the debate and an aggressive communist or Orwellian-style censorship that has actively silenced the multitude of scientists who are skeptical and outraged by the political hijacking of science.

Such is the case of an editor of the American Journal of Economics and Sociology, who allowed the publication of an article that would soon become the second most read article in the publication’s 83-year history. The article criticized the IPCC’s alarmism, never corroborated by empirical evidence, that is, it dared to commit blasphemy against the prevailing dogma with commendable clarity. Well, the editor was fired[19]. Please read the conclusions of this article carefully:

“The IPCC claims that extreme weather events are now worse than in the past, but observations do not support this claim. Some extreme weather events, such as the land area affected by extreme droughts, are decreasing rather than increasing (Lomborg, 2020). Globally, the incidence of hurricanes shows no significant trend (IPCC, 2013, p. 216; Lomborg, 2020). Observations also show no increase in damage or danger to humanity today due to extreme weather or global warming (Crok and May, 2023, pp. 140-161; Scafetta, 2024). Therefore, given that the current climate is possibly better than the pre-industrial climate and that we have not observed any increase in mortality from extreme weather events, we conclude that we can plan for adaptation to any future changes. Until a danger is identified, there is no need to eliminate the use of fossil fuels”[20].

Amen.

[1] For a more detailed explanation: HEAT WAVES 2024 – Fernando del Pino Calvo-Sotelo
[2] A new approach for the world’s climate strategy | Bill Gates
[3] Withdrawing the United States from International Organizations, Conventions, and Treaties that Are Contrary to the Interests of the United States – The White House
[4] IPCC AR5, WG 1, Chapter 2.6, p.214-220 and IPCC AR6, WG 1, Chapter 12, p. 1770-1856
[5] A climate of conflict: How the little ice age sparked rebellions and revolutions across Europe – ScienceDirect
[6] Crop yields have increased dramatically in recent decades, but crops like maize would have improved more without climate change – Our World in Data
[7] Snowfall: the Atlantic coast under a white blanket, a rare event that calls for caution
[8] Dangerous winter storm, extreme cold on the way for large portion of U.S | National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration
[9] Weather tracker: Record snowfall in eastern Russia leaves people stranded | Russia | The Guardian
[10] Failed predictions – Fernando del Pino Calvo-Sotelo
[11] The 2023 climate event revealed the greatest failure of climate science – Climate Etc.
[12] Latest Global Temps « Roy Spencer, PhD
[13] Recent global-warming hiatus tied to equatorial Pacific surface cooling | Nature
[14] IPCC, AR5, WG 1, p. 61.
[15] IPCC, AR1, The IPCC Scientific Assessment, fig. 7.1, p. 202.
[16] Canada Summer Daily High Temperature Trends, 1900-2023 « Roy Spencer, PhD
[17] Unpacking the extinction crisis: rates, patterns and causes of recent extinctions in plants and animals | Proceedings B | The Royal Society
[18] A Global Perspective on Local Sea Level Changes
[19] Orwellian Sacking of Editor for Allowing Debate Over Climate Change – The Daily Sceptic
[20] Carbon dioxide and a warming climate are not problems – May – 2025 – The American Journal of Economics and Sociology – Wiley Online Library