Global Warming to Blame for Coming Ice Age

I abandoned the Food Channel to watch a National Geographic program on the disastrous effects of a possible ice age. The program started logically enough with the observation that the earth has gone through several cooling and warming cycles. It then went on to illustrate the effects of cooling on modern civilization with a report of an ice storm in Montreal, a city which is by nature prepared for cold weather.

People were reduced to burning the wooden legs of their dining room tables in wood stoves before the power came back on.

But as the program neared its conclusion, National Geographic made the case that global warming would be the trigger for the next ice age! You see, ocean current would be disturbed by melting ice which would lead to global cooling and bring in a thousand year ice age. It was all neatly scientific with diagrams of ocean currents and pictures of the British Houses of Parliament shrouded in ice with snowmobiles in the foreground. It was all sweetly scientific until your drew back and realized the ridiculousness of it all.

And Tigerhawk says:

Whatever your personal weather, around the planet January 2008 was the second coldest in 15 years. The linked post, complete with graphs and everything, does not suggest that this says anything in particular about the climate or the long-term direction of local temperatures.

To me, the most interesting thing about this story is the complete absence of discussion in the mainstream media, which manages to induce a scientist or politician to blame anthropogenic global warming for any bit of idiosyncratic weather. See, if you can stand it, the latest comedy gold from John Kerry.

If you are going to live by idiosyncratic weather, you should die by it. The cherry-picking of specific weather events to bolster the case for greenhouse gas regulation actually makes the advocates and their propagandists in the media look like fools. Among smart people, at least, there would be less skepticism about climate change if the media and activists were not so disingenuous and opportunistic in their publicity of it. But maybe they are not trying to persuade smart people.