Alright, say global warming is true for the sake of the argument. Why is it that last year was one of the coldest winters we've ever had? It actually snowed in my sunny state of Florida in my hometown. It hasn't snowed since I was a little kid. I'm interested in what you have to say. Since it's off topic you can pm me if you prefer.
To answer your question, here's a comment from my climate science lecturer at Curtin University Perth)
If global warming isn’t happening, how come 2010 is the hottest year on record? Similarly one could point to the hottest temperatures ever recorded in Asia, the heatwave in Russia, massive floods in Pakistan, today’s devastating monsoons in China, the heatwave in the US, droughts in Africa, more droughts in Europe etc. (and no these weren't punishments from God)
The cold temperatures and heavy snow falls of last year were nothing more than an unusual winter caused by quasi-cyclical changes in atmospheric conditions over the North Atlantic leading to strong anti-cyclonic conditions becoming established over the Arctic and feeding cold air down into the mid to upper latitudes of the northern hemisphere.
Such events happen fairly regularly and are pretty much inevitable. There are 15 such instances on in the weather record and last winters episode was the least severe of all of them. Ordinarily temperatures fall by about 2.5°C but this last time they fell by 1.4°C. Winter 09-10 wasn’t a record breaking event, it was the coldest in some parts of the northern hemisphere since 95-96 and the snowiest since 78-79. We will probably see another cold winter of comparable magnitude in about 15 years time.
There is no mechanism on this planet that allows for rapid gain or loss of heat. If it’s cold in one place then somewhere else will be correspondingly warm, and visa versa (heat distribution).
At the same time that parts of North America and Europe had cold conditions last winter, there were devastating heatwaves in Australia, the Winter Olympics in Vancouver were threatened with abandonment due to a lack of snow and in parts of Siberia temperatures were 30°C above the norm. When averaged out over the planet as a whole, the amount of heat present within the climatic systems was effectively balanced.
In fact, when you look at average global temperatures from one month to the next, or from one year to the next, there is very little difference in temperatures; it’s often less than 0.1°C and you have to go all the way back to June 1867 to find an instance when temperatures changed by more than 0.5°C from one month to the next.
Global warming is a very slow process, the average global temperature is increasing by 0.0177°C per year, a change so small that it’s virtually imperceptible from one year to the next and certainly nowhere near enough to eradicate cold winters. They’ve happened in the past and will happen again in the future.
Glen Whisson (climate scientist, Curtin University Perth)
(Also El Nino is a proven quasi periodic weather pattern, occurring around every 5 years. it's pretty easy to believe something is occurring if you can see it approximately every 3-7 years)
