The comic reacts to a simplified view of global warming by amateurs, including media, who fail to understand the difference between climate and weather. Short, random weather fluctuations like the Polar vortex are taken as examples or counter-examples of climate change and global warming. If you want real evidence for or against global warming, you need to look at global (not local) and long-term (not short-term) temperature trends.

0 °F (Fahrenheit) is -17.8 °C (Celsius), which is brutally cold. The city of St. Louis is roughly at the same latitude as Lisbon (Portugal) and Beijing (China). But at Lisbon those low temperatures never do happen because of the proximity to the ocean that acts as a temperature damper. Gulf Stream is sometimes brought into this explanation but the similar damping effect exists at the other oceanside locations far from any warm currents. St. Louis is located in the continental climate with much higher temperature differences between the summer and winter. Another special feature of the North American climate is that the direction of the mountain chains tends to channel the cold air from the Arctic regions to the middle of the continent.

One dispute on global warming is whether humans are the main factor in this change. Alternatively it may be natural change, as happened in the past. The vast majority of scientists agree that the current global warming is anthropogenic (i.e. man-made).

The title text suggests that gathering data about global warming is time-consuming and is the kind of stuff only a real nerd would do. Most people would rather hang out with friends, or at least spend their time with some more fun nerd activity.