It was somewhere around 3-4 years ago that “global warming” suddenly morphed into “climate change” in vernacular speech. Soon previously antithetical events, from floods to draughts, forest fires to ice storms, record lows and unprecedented heat, windless days and violent gusts — hitherto known by our parents as “the weather” and “stuff happens” — suddenly became symptomatic of the horrible middle-class habits of burning carbon to go places and keep either warm or cool. One could not lose an argument, since on any given day something other than clear and 75 degrees was attributed to carbon footprints and global changes. When undetectable the problem was “insidious,” when a Southern California canyon went up in wildfires it was, “You see! We warned you!” — as if the newer “climate change” fulfilled some deep-seated psychological need in many in the media.
In the methodology of phrenology or astrology, any natural disaster was hyped in magnitude (the locus classicus was Obama’s claim in May 2007 that “10,000″ had died (actual death toll: 12) in a tornado in Kansas (apparent proof, he further claimed, of what happens when Bush diverts the Kansas National Guard to Iraq and leaves the depopulated state short-handed while thousands perish).
I just spent a few days in the Sierra in May during freezing cold temperatures and snow; a week ago it was quite cool and raining in New York; each time I have passed through Phoenix this spring it seemed unseasonably cool; and just gave a talk on the Russian River and about froze. Meanwhile the grapes look about ten days behind due to unseasonably cool temperatures. Any empiricist would be worried, as Newsweek once was, about global cooling. Will the planet boil, if we slow down a bit, review the science and dissenting views, and consider the wisdom in a recession of allotting nearly a trillion dollars to changing our very way of life (while the Chinese absorb market share)?