Some proponents of climate science are on a public relations drive to restore public confidence in the consensus that Earth is heating up, after critics seized on blizzards in the American Northeast, claiming they were evidence of global cooling.
Speaking to reporters, Jeff Masters, a meteorologist and founder of the Weather Underground web site, said that one extreme weather event, like a record-breaking snowfall, does not change the reality of climate change.
Various U.S. green groups and progressive organizations, including the Center for American Progress, the National Wildlife Federation and the Union of Concerned Scientists, have similarly been working to clear the confusion surrounding the extreme freeze.
That's because from the other side of the debate, global warming skeptics in Washington have used the snowstorms to try to shore up their campaign against climate change legislation in Congress. Relatives of Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.), one of the nation's most vocal climate change deniers, built an igloo last week near the U.S. Capitol with a sign, "Honk if You [Heart] Global Warming."