My wife and I managed to return to the Washington DC area this morning just behind the two feet of snow that fell over the weekend and just ahead of another storm that’s expected to produce a foot-and-a-half of snow. Earlier last week, the area apparently got half a foot of snow. This followed a comparable snowfall two days before we left,
Throw in the nearly two feet that landed here on a mid-December weekend and, if we in fact receive a substantial accumulation tonight, this will become the snowiest winter ever recorded in Washington (records have been kept here since 1884).
This development tells us nothing about whether or to what extent the earth’s climate is changing. But it does make Robert F. Kennedy look rather foolish. As David Freddoso reminds us, 15 months ago Kennedy argued, in the pages of the Los Angeles Times, that snow had become virtually obsolete in the DC area. According to RFK Jr., “snow is so scarce today that most Virginia children probably don’t own a sled; but neighbors came to our home at Hickory Hill nearly every winter weekend to ride saucers and Flexible Flyers.”
The nostalgia portion of this statement conflicts with my recollection of Washington area weather and, more importantly, with the data. If Kennedy’s memory were right, it’s not likely that we’d be on the verge of setting a record for snowfall this year. Apparently, the Los Angeles Times was so dazzled by images of John F. Kennedy and his brother Bob frolicking in the snow that it neglected to fact check RFK Jr.’s remembrances of things past.
Freddoso concludes that Kennedy “should leave weather analysis to the meteorologists instead of trying to attribute every global phenomenon to anthropogenic climate change.” Unfortunately, though, Climategate has shown that some meteorologists are no more reliable than the hysterical Hickory Hill heir.
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The campus intifada, cont’d
When Israel’s Ambassador Michael Oren took the stage to speak at the University of California, Irvine, on Monday night, the audience was salted with apparent students who were determined not to let him speak. According to the Jerusalem Post report, eleven people were arrested as Oren was repeatedly interrupted while trying to deliver an address on campus.
A young man began the outbursts with the slogan “Michael Oren! Propagating murder is not an expression of free speech!” As the Post’s report indicates, the man’s words echoed a statement released by the university’s Muslim Student Union prior to Oren’s appearance, which said, “As people of conscience, we oppose Michael Oren’s invitation to our campus. Propagating murder is not a responsible expression of free speech.” I rashly conclude that the agitators who disrupted Oren’s address were taking their cues from the Muslim Student Union.
Roger Simon comments that UCI has a severe free speech problem of long standing. I think that is an unduly narrow assessment of the problem. In any event, take a look yourself via the video below.
JOHN adds: Actually, the UCI students were relatively moderate. Mark Steyn points out that when Israel’s Deputy Foreign Minister tried to speak at Oxford yesterday, he was met with shouts of “slaughter the Jews.” Which, no doubt, is what the UCI “protesters” had in mind but weren’t quite honest enough to say.
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