By Joseph D’Aleo, CCM

In the latest in a series of predictable news stories gobbled up by an all too willing media, an environmental group Clean Wisconsin today claimed that the disastrous floods that ravaged southern Wisconsin this week are consistent with global warming predictions in the January 2007 Clean Wisconsin report. The report, “Global Warming Arrives in Wisconsin,” forecast that global warming would lead to increased instances of severe droughts, more intense floods and increased snowfall.

Alarmists have adopted the can’t lose position that all extremes of weather - cold, warm, wet or dry are all due to global warming. They blamed the frequent tornadoes of the late winter and spring on global warming even though the number was not at all atypical of a La Nina year. Southern Wisconsin and much of the Midwest has had a rough winter and spring but it has been the antithesis of global warming.

Wisconsin had its 33 coldest winter on record, nearby Iowa its 19th coldest in 114 years. The cool weather continued into the spring with the 22nd coldest spring on record in Wisconsin and 24th in Iowa.  Madison, Wisconsin had the snowiest winter on record, topping 100 inches for the first time ever. See summary and map here

The record snows, severe weather and heavy rainfall has been the result of rapid COOLING in the northern tier of the United States and Canada not global warming. The flooding exceeded the floods of 1993 following the eruption of Pinatubo which produced a similar cooling with a strong suppressed jet stream that brought a steady stream of storms and flooding.

Rapid warming as took place in the 1930s and again around 1980 leads to drought and record heat. The alarmist movement is reeling after the warming stopped in 1998 and cooling began in 2002, accelerating in the last year. Their claims have now morphed from warming to focusing on the extremes typical of La Nina and the colder decades to try and keep their hoax alive.

See larger map here.