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Sadly, @wapo Does Anything for a Headline – ‘Climate change is changing the smell of snow’ – Enjoying that?


We’ve seen all kinds of media claims about climate change. Some are Doomsday scenarioothers declare your favorite Holiday food will be threatenedwhile others try to link nearly every weather event for their view of “climate change”. Some, like one of the recent stories in washington articlesare just outlandish claims with no basis in measurable fact that can be proved or disproved by a method of factual research.

A recent story washington articles story, titled, “Climate change is changing the smell of snow,” said the snow now smells bad due to climate change.

You have read correctly.

The article makes a number of claims that could easily be described as silly. Eg:

Parisa A. Ariya, chemist and chair of the Department of Ocean and Atmospheric Sciences at McGill University, says climate change is affecting the way snow smells. As the ground and air warm, that encourages the circulation – and intensity – of odor molecules.

When it snows, Ariya says, it’s “a snapshot of the atmospheric process”. In 2017, she helped conduct a study on how snow absorbs pollution from gasoline engine exhaustcan then contaminate the above ground water and soil as it melts.

Note the phrase, it’s “a snapshot of the atmospheric process.”

The keyword here is “snapshot”. Atmospheric processes that occur on the chronological calendar of winter storm events (hours) are weather events, while for anything in the atmosphere to have a climate component to it, it must be a lasting change. Climate change is generally accepted as something measured over a 30-year period. National Atmospheric and Atmospheric Administration define it as:

More formally, climate is the long-term average of temperature, precipitation, and other weather variables at a given location. Every 30 years, climate scientists calculate a new average. The usually, common, normal The high and low temperatures reported on your local weather forecast come from these 30-year averages.

For the claim that snow has changed its smell due to climate change to be true, a 30-year database of odor measurements needs to exist so that the change can be measured over the long term.

Bottom line – No such database of the smell of snow existswhich means that claims about the smell of snow changing for the worse as a result of climate change are speculative.

Both washington articles and the researchers listed in the paper found no evidence that snow smells differently than it did 30 years ago. They can’t, because no such data exists from 30 years ago.

Furthermore, smell is not a standardized thing that can be reliably measured. A 2013 study Alterations in olfactory receptors affect human odor perception published year Science every day say this:

Researchers have found that up to 30% of human olfactory receptors differ between any two individuals. This dramatic variation is in turn reflected by differences in how each person perceives odors.

In other words, biologically significant differences between individuals mean that no two people perceive the same odor. It is therefore ludicrous to suggest that snow that has influenced climate change in the long run or even in the short term can be reliably assessed by human olfactory responses.

The story seems to be more than just a piece of public opinion headline designed to make you think that climate change affects nearly everything, but in fact there is absolutely no basis for this claim.

Sadly, this is the state of science and journalism today, where the facts are lacking and almost anything happens when climate change is included as a factor. Result? A Snowjob about the readers. The stupid one, it’s on fire!



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