Every time we have a milder or less snowy winter in North America, you will find that in Europe and northern Asia they are having a very cold and very snowy winter. And when they are having a milder, less snowy winter over there, we're having a very cold and snowy winter in North America.
The correlating event is the prevailing pattern of the jet stream. We know that ridges and troughs must necessarily be adjacent to each other, so when you see a prevailing ridge in the jet stream over North America, there's a correspondingly deep trough in the jet stream over Europe and Asia. And vice versa. A ridge in the jet stream keeps the Arctic air mass trapped in the polar regions, and a trough lets it spill down far into the middle latitudes.
The eastern Pacific Ocean, off the coast of northern South America plays a key role in all this, the twinned phenomena of El Nino and La Nina. The El Nino warming of the water produces a bulge of warm atmosphere above the ocean, which pushes the jetstream to the north, creating a large ridge over the Pacific and western third of North America. The corresponding trough in the jet stream plunges down the escarpment of the Rocky Mountains putting the eastern two-thirds of North America in the arctic freezer. The La Nina cooling of Pacific waters creates a trough over the Pacific and western part of North America, and a ridge over eastern North America.
So all this crap about a mild winter being proof of large scale climate change is just that, crap. The severity of a northern hemisphere winter is largely determined by whether the polar air masses are being blocked or allowed to infiltrate, and this changes from year to year.
But I guess just to be safe we should give up all our personal liberty and accumulated wealth.
