Bryan White writes at Time also tries to link the polar vortex to climate change:

Climate Change Might Just Be Driving the Historic Cold Snap

An excerpt:

. . .But not only does the cold spell not disprove climate change, it may well be that global warming could be making the occasional bout of extreme cold weather in the U.S. even more likely. Right now much of the U.S. is in the grip of a polar vortex, which is pretty much what it sounds like: a whirlwind of extremely cold, extremely dense air that forms near the poles. Usually the fast winds in the vortex—which can top 100 mph (161 k/h)—keep that cold air locked up in the Arctic. But when the winds weaken, the vortex can begin to wobble like a drunk on his fourth martini, and the Arctic air can escape and spill southward, bringing Arctic weather with it. [. . .]
That disruption to the polar vortex may have been triggered by a sudden stratospheric warming event, a phenomenon Rick Grow explained at the Washington Post a few days ago:
Large atmospheric waves move upward from the troposphere — where most weather occurs — into the stratosphere, which is the layer of air above the troposphere. These waves, which are called Rossby waves, transport energy and momentum from the troposphere to the stratosphere. This energy and momentum transfer generates a circulation in the stratosphere, which features sinking air in the polar latitudes and rising air in the lowest latitudes. As air sinks, it warms. If the stratospheric air warms rapidly in the Arctic, it will throw the circulation off balance. This can cause a major disruption to the polar vortex, stretching it and — sometimes — splitting it apart.
What does that have to do with climate change? Sea ice is vanishing from the Arctic thanks to climate change, which leaves behind dark open ocean water, which absorbs more of the heat from the sun than reflective ice. That in turn is helping to cause the Arctic to warm faster than the rest of the planet, almost twice the global average. The jet stream—the belt of fast-flowing, westerly winds that essentially serves as the boundary between cold northern air and warmer southern air—is driven by temperature difference between the northerly latitudes and the tropical ones. Some scientists theorize that as that temperature difference narrows, it may weaken the jet stream, which in turns makes it more likely that cold Arctic air will escape the polar vortex and flow southward. Right now, an unusually large kink in the jet stream has that Arctic air flowing much further south than it usually would.

I clicked through to Grow’s post (from the WaPost’s “Capital Weather Blog”) and didn’t see Grow making any connection between the cold and climate change. So I reached out to Grow and asked him about the Time piece and his thoughts on any link between climate change and the current cold snap. With his permission, I’m posting his response:

A colleague drew my attention to the Time piece this morning.
There is no definitive link between global warming and the extreme cold that is gripping the nation. Until recently, the climate change scientists have been saying that extreme cold events will occur less frequently as the Earth warms. That sounds rational. Now that we’ve been hit with a big punch of polar air, some of the same people are claiming that this is also a result of global warming. They are calling this weather “weird.”
Let’s simply call it what it is: cold. There’s nothing weird about that. This is weather. It is not an attack from an overwarmed, fossil fuel-loaded atmosphere. The Rossby waves I described are always moving throughout the atmosphere. Random and chaotic shifts in the movement and heating/cooling effects of these waves on the atmosphere do occur. Sometimes, an accumulation of these waves’ heat energy near the top of the troposphere – the layer of air within which most weather occurs – can weaken or greatly disrupt the polar vortex’s circulation. The vortex may then stretch or, in a more extreme case, split apart. A piece of the very cold vortex might drop southward, plunging into the U.S., Europe, Asia, or all three continents, depending on the position and strength of surrounding weather features.
The loss of Arctic sea ice is a suspect contributor to all this. First, as the author mentions, the research in this area is sparse. Second, a “vortex split” event has happened many times prior to the period of rapid Arctic sea ice loss. And third, weather is always in motion and waves develop/decay continually; randomness and occasional chaos results from this. To know the weather is to understand that it is weird in itself.

Bryan White added other links to try to prove his point, but he needs to correct his piece to accurately report what Grow thinks of the connection, or lack thereof.