“Everybody talks about the weather but nobody seems to do anything about it” was a quip that was funny in the 1800s because we did not have a widespread understanding, as we do today, that greenhouse gases cause climate change.

We are writing these words as snow is falling.

We are weary not so much of the endless shoveling this winter but of the endless comments that the repeated cold spells and snow falls show that, as our president has said, global warming is a “hoax.”

Earlier this month, Donald Trump ended the federal government’s legal authority to control the pollution that causes climate change. While the swift and unfounded shift may benefit the coal, gas, and oil industries, it will harm many species on our Earth, including humans.

Put simply: The burning of fossil fuels causes the Earth to warm. 

So why are we getting more snow and cold?

The lake-effect snow that has blanketed much of our state this winter has increased because, due to global warming, the Great Lakes are staying warm longer and freezing later in the season.

Also, through additional evaporation, global warming has increased the amount of water vapor in the air, which can increase snowfall in cold regions.

Paradoxically, scientists have also linked cold snaps to global warming because the Arctic over the past four decades has warmed two to four times as much as the rest of the Earth, known as Arctic amplification.

The Arctic warming has reduced the temperature difference between temperate latitudes and the once-cold Arctic, which causes the jet stream to meander. 

The jet stream is the high-altitude current of wind, five to seven miles high, where jets fly, circling the Northern Hemisphere, which steers weather systems from east to west.

The wavier jet stream now swings north and south as it moves east, which has allowed pools of cold polar air to go as far south as Texas this winter.

At the same time, the meandering jet stream has sent warm air far north, creating winter heat waves in places that are typically cold. The Arctic and Greenland have had unusually mild winters this year.

With large meanders, the jet stream travels east more slowly, making cold plunges here — and warm waves in the far north — more persistent.

Heating in the Arctic and melting sea ice have also made disruptions of the polar vortex more frequent, which furthers the meandering of the jet stream, bringing more cold air into temperate regions.

Computer simulations paired with meteorological observations predict that, as Arctic air continues to warm, we’ll have more cold snaps in the years ahead.

Scientists have warned for decades that global warming will cause more weather extremes. This winter, we’ve seen the school closings, the closed businesses, the widespread power outages, and the deaths caused by snow and cold in places not used to dealing with such winters.

And the winter suffering pales besides the destruction, drought, and death caused by extreme heat in places around the world.

Climate change should not be political. Republican presidents — Richard Nixon and George Bush among them — have understood the perils of climate change as well as Democrats and worked to reduce emissions.

Although our current president has called climate scientists “stupid people,” their work, an overwhelming consensus, is based on fact. 

The 2009 endangerment finding concluded that greenhouse gas emissions pose a danger to Americans’ health and welfare and became the bedrock on which the federal Environmental Protection Agency regulated pollution. The repeal of the endangerment finding was an objective of the conservative blueprint for overhauling the federal government known as Project 2025.

 Its repeal, according to the Environmental Defense Fund, is expected to increase gas emissions in the United States by 10 percent over the next 30 years. The advocacy group said that the added pollution could lead to as many as 58,000 premature deaths and an increase of 37 million asthma attacks between now and 2055.

Deaths in the United States from extreme heat have more than doubled in recent decades. And, in just one example of global warming endangering human health, recent research has shown that, if the planet continues to warm at its current rate, exposure to wildfire smoke will kill an estimated 70,000 Americans each year by 2050.

In the cold of winter, can you remember the heat of summer in 2023 when wildfires raging in Canada made it difficult to breathe here? When our commissioner of environmental conservation at the time spoke of the “Dickensian skyline” and said the air quality was “certainly the worst in memory?”

While we’re gratified that our state, our county, and even some of our towns are doing what they can in the midst of crumbling federal safeguards to protect our environment and human health, a piecemeal approach won’t protect us.

The solution needs to be global. The United States, under President Trump, is the only nation among 200 to have withdrawn from the Paris Agreement. 

The United States has been one of the world’s worst polluters. Denying scientific fact and wreaking havoc on our citizens and the rest of the world to further enrich wealthy industrialists is unconscionable.

Unlike the 19th-Century quip, we have progressed in the 21st Century to understand that we humans can do something about the weather. We need to elect leaders that will put our planet’s health ahead of profit.

As you’re shoveling snow, think about how you’ll vote on Nov. 3.