Australian Dust Devil

Australian Dust Devil

The NY Times wants to know whether a dry, dusty spell in Australia is evidence of global warming.  That Australia was prone to dryness and dust before the Dutch stumbled upon it doesn’t factor.

When the Guardian reported last year that snow was blanketing the Middle East, they didn’t ask whether this showed we were all in for global cooling.

Cooler heads of course know that neither event tells us much about our climate.  Weather varies and history records the average of extremes.  If the press reports unseasonable heat as warming and takes unseasonable cold in stride, it  heads down the slippery slope from news to propaganda failing its readers, viewers and listeners.

A busy tropical storm season is sure to bolster the warming cry, while this year’s quiet tropical storm season has raised few eyebrows and is treated as just a stray point on the graph.  Angela Merkel has frequently mentioned the devastation wrought by Hurricane Katrina as evidence of global warming, rather than evidence of the poor maintenance of New Orleans’ levees.  Few recall that a century ago a hurricane struck not far from New Orleans and destroyed Galveston Texas.  The tropics have always dissipated their energy through storms taking no notice of world opinion.  Of course soon after writing the above we learn that a strong Typhoon in the Phillipines ” is clearly a manifestation of the consequences of global inaction in addressing the immediate impacts of creeping climate change,”  or so said The Philippines’ chief climate negotiator Secretary Heherson Alvarez.  How exactly Typhoon Ketsana learned of the IPCC prediction that the world will warm by 1.1 to 6.4 degrees by 2100 in time to intensify 100 years early remains unclear.

Snowfall in Jordan

Snowfall in Jordan

Is the world warming?  Will any trend last?  Is mankind responsible and can it do anything about it?  These are serious questions.  How can we trust the answers if government officials, left-wing environmentalists and the media go on misrepresenting normal weather events?  Do they think we’ve never seen weather before?  Do they think we’ll gladly pay their bills after they affront our common sense?