Polar Vortices and Cold

Cold weather is the worst. It deceives you with its clear blue skies and glowing sun, teasing you from your window to walk outside. The second you walk into nature's domain, it bites you with the bitterness of cold. The only safe place from the dreaded cold is indoors, where the artificial warmth of space-heaters and oil burners surrounds you.

From your window, the first thing that pops into your mind is "Oh, well so much for global warming!"

That is not the case.

The mythical "Polar Vortex" you hear on the news is responsible for the dreaded cold. A polar vortex (or polar vortices) is the persistent large-scale cyclone on Earths north and south poles, and on every other planet in the solar system. These cold, low pressure areas are caused by the temperature differentials between the equator and poles. Occasionally, they move out of the polar regions and move closer to the equator. (source)

The issue with this is people forget that global warming still exists and disregard it simply because it's cold in their region.

Globally, 2013 was recorded as the 7th warmest year, tied with 2009 and 2006. The average temperature in 2013 was 14.6 degrees Celsius (58.3 Fahrenheit). That's 0.6 C (1.1 F) warmer than the mid-20th century baseline. Over all, the global temperature has risen about 0.8 C (1.4 F) since 1880 (source).

The use of greenhouse-gas polluting fuel sources must be replaced with another means of generating energy if we don't want to boil us right off the face of earth.