It’s been really cold this week in the US northeast, but I have a sneaking suspicion that it’s only cold relative to recent years, and that this chilliness was normal for winter around here decades ago. Despite that, it still feels like it was the coldest week in my life, undoubtedly because I don’t really remember how cold it was on colder days!
No doubt that certain global deniers will bring up the cold as evidence that global warming isn’t happening, although they’ll curiously mention nothing when the weather is really, really hot. To be fair enough, some people do blame global warming when the weather is abnormally hot, even when they shouldn’t: weather ≠ climate! (There are always “abnormal” weather days, and the weather for any specific day can’t be reasonably blamed on climate change: it’s just that there might be more “abnormal” weather, or even the old “abnormal” becoming the new “normal”.)
xkcd says it best:
