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Comment by Waterluvian | Hacker News Reader

One data point means little but:

This is the first time in my life that my Ontarian city has been completely free of snow until late January. We had a bit at Christmas that lasted two days. We had about 10 days this month that stayed above freezing day and night.

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Here's several thousand data points from our local meteorologist showing less snow in an average winter now than 40+ years ago:

https://www.woodtv.com/weather/ask-ellen/ask-ellen-did-snow-...

Not many are gonna like this, but if we had to choose, global warming is a “better” scenario than global cooling. No one likes a bad ice age.

I suspect what not many like, myself included, is the unsupported assertion that if not for global warming we'd be entering an ice age.

Why do you consider it unsupported? The temperature going a little up and down over the decades has been used as an argument even by the climate change deniers, i don't think anyone would contest that...?

And it was just starting to go down when the industrialization started, which reversed the the direction within 50 yrs.

I consider the assertion unsupported because it was asserted without support, as if no more controversial than to say that water's wet. Generally, when advancing a heterodox claim, one does well to source it so that interlocutors and audience members can evaluate it on some more substantial basis than whether they feel like taking a stranger's word for it, which around here people mostly (and correctly!) won't.

That really wasn't the alternative.

> That really wasn't the alternative.

The Earth's average temperature has trended up and down for millions of years. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ice_age with a trend downward.

So I can concede that there are 2 prevailing trends possible. I happen to think that Global Cooling is preferable.

These prevailing trends happen over hundreds of thousands of years. Over two or three centuries, the most prevailing trend so far has been "basically exactly the same as before".

Up in Vermont over the weekend a local gardener I met at a bar told me over the last couple of decades all his planting has moved up a month. Later that night I read an article by a ski industry analyst that revealed that the ski season is generally considered by those in the business to be 34 days shorter than in 1982.

In Alberta we are skiing a month earlier and a month longer than we did in the eighties. Largely due to snow making. I think they could go longer but it's hard to get the crowds once the golf courses open. Sun angle is what melts the snow at any rate. Has more of a bearing than rain or a couple of degree difference in temps from year to year.

Anecdotally I've shoveled snow literally one time this year (and last) and haven't bothered to pull out the snow blower in the last three years.

Within the last month in the US midwest it got below -50 with windchill and over 2 feet of snow

Coldest and snowiest winter where I live in Colorado for many years.

This is what Colorado used to look like in the winter (source native). Also this: http://www.thorntonweather.com/noaa/snow.php

I dunno. I feel like Iowa classifies as the midwest as well and we've had a couple cold days but that's about it.

Funny, I was in Iowa recently and being unable to shower because the pipes froze + decent snowfall was definitely a meme

The areas near the Great Lakes are one of the few places where Global Warming is expected to actually lead to more stable climates. In large part to the cooling effect of the lakes themselves

My friends in Ottawa and Toronto have sent lots of pics of an especially snowy winter this year.

I live in Toronto. It hasn't been that cold or snowy. There have been 2-3 big snows and it's all melted in between

Huh? It's unusually snowless this year. Toronto and area didn't really get anything of any consequence until earlier this week.

It's also about 5-6 C warmer than average, and we keep getting rain. In January.

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