A prominent research meteorologist shut down claims about the climate from socialist Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) last week after the 29-year-old lawmaker revealed that she did not understand the difference between weather and climate.
Ocasio-Cortez, a climate extremist who has repeatedly insisted that the world will seemingly end in 12 years unless her policies are adopted, claimed that a tornado warning in Washington, D.C., was proof of climate change.
“A tornado watch, issued by the National Weather Service was tweeted 2:47 PM Thursday afternoon for the D.C. area. A watch means conditions are favorable for a particular weather event, while a warning means be prepared to move to a protected area,” HotAir noted. “A warning is issued when a tornado, for example, has been spotted in the sky or radar shows intense low-level rotation. In other words, a person should pay attention to weather conditions and be cautious under a watch but if a warning is issued, that is the time to act.”
“The climate crisis is real y’all,” Ocasio said on Instagram. “Guess we’re at casual tornadoes in growing regions of the country?”
Ryan Maue, who has a Ph.D. in meteorology, quickly fact-checked Ocasio-Cortez, writing on Twitter: “I thought this was fake but it’s from [Ocasio-Cortez’s] Instagram story. No idea what she means with “casual tornadoes” and how this line of severe thunderstorms is proof of any ‘climate crisis.’ It’s just the weather in D.C.”
“The Congresswoman [Ocasio-Cortez] does not know the difference between weather and climate,” Maue added. “Let’s try an easy analogy: Weather is what outfit you wear heading out the door. Climate is your closet wardrobe.”
Even more hilariously, the PBS article that Ocasio-Cortez “referenced in her Instagram story doesn’t concur that increased tornado activity is the result of climate change,” HotAir added.
Prominent climate change scientists have pushed back on Ocasio-Cortez’s extremist rhetoric. Axios reported the following quotes:
- Andrea Dutton, a paleoclimate researcher at the University of Florida: “For some reason the media latched onto the 12 years (2030), presumably because they thought that it helped to get across the message of how quickly we are approaching this and hence how urgently we need action. Unfortunately, this has led to a complete mischaracterization of what the report said.”
- Gavin Schmidt, who leads NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies: “All the time-limited frames are bulls***. Nothing special happens when the ‘carbon budget’ runs out or we pass whatever temperature target you care about, instead the costs of emissions steadily rise.”
- Kate Marvel, a climate scientist at NASA: “12 years isn’t a deadline, and climate change isn’t a cliff we fall off — it’s a slope we slide down. We don’t have 12 years to prevent climate change — we have no time. It’s already here. And even under a business-as-usual scenario, the world isn’t going to end in exactly twelve years.”
Ocasio-Cortez recently backed off her claim that the world was going to end in 12 years if her policies were not adopted by the U.S. government after she found herself on the receiving end of mockery for several months.
“This is a technique of the GOP, to take dry humor + sarcasm literally and ‘fact check’ it,” Ocasio-Cortez tweeted. “Like the ‘world ending in 12 years’ thing, you’d have to have the social intelligence of a sea sponge to think it’s literal. But the GOP is basically Dwight from The Office so who knows.”