The cold facts? Forget it!

Whether you like it or not, weather ain’t the same as it used to be.

Seriously, when I was a kid, weather was just one of those things people talked about as a way of making polite conversation and to keep each other informed in a common-sense manner. No more. Weather is now the occasion for scoldings, dire warnings, or outright hysteria.

A few Drudge headlines from tonight:

NYC WINTER WARNING...
UP TO 14" IN BOSTON...
UPDATE...
RADAR...
1,400+ flights stopped...
Cuomo Closes Highways...
Declares state of emergency...
De Blasio: 'Stay home tonight'...
Meteorologist: 'Exposed skin could freeze in 15 minutes'

I’m in Michigan, and single digit temperatures just sort of happen this time of year, as does snow. It’s been snowing steadily for two days and the temperature according to my thermometer is 9 degrees Fahrenheit. Nothing especially unusual about that this time of year, and much as I would like it to be warmer, that will have to wait. Of course, if it did get unseasonably warm, I’d be hearing about how it was Global Warming. No such thing as just weather anymore.

And if you don’t like the hysteria, you’d better just shut the hell up! Questioning whether the computer projections justify massive intervention in all people’s daily lives is now enough to get you labeled as the equivalent of a Flat Earther, and can result in calls for your removal or disqualification from any position of public trust:

Mr Newman said the climate change establishment, led by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, remained “intent on exploiting the masses and extracting more money”.

“The scientific delusion, the religion behind the climate crusade, is crumbling,” he wrote in The Australian. “Global temperatures have gone nowhere for 17 years… If the IPCC were your financial adviser, you would have sacked it long ago.”

Mr Newman, a former chairman of the Australian Stock Exchange, was criticised by the opposition and pilloried by scientists, who said he was expressing “flat earth” views and should be sacked.

“His piece is a mix of common climate change myths, misinformation and ideology,” said Professor David Karoly, from the University of Melbourne, in an article in The Sydney Morning Herald.

“I would not choose a person who believes that the Earth is flat to advise Australian shipping or airline businesses on how to plan routes to travel around the world. It is clearly not sensible to have a person who believes that climate change science is a delusion as leader of the prime minister’s Business Advisory Council.”

Got that? Distrusting the integrity of unproven models is the equivalent of believing the earth is flat.

Oh well. It’s a hopeless argument, because science has been perverted into political polemics.

What’s more important is that scientists are learning why dogs spin in circles!