RUTHFULLY YOURS

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2010/dec/27/ho-ho-hoax/

“It’s also definitive proof that the purveyors of this hokum are not doing real science. It’s one thing to credit a fairy tale to stimulate the imagination of young children. It’s another to use a fairy tale to enact socialist policies designed to give Washington bureaucrats more control over our lives and the economy. No, Virginia, there is no man-made global warming.”

In a blog posting on the Huffington Post website last week, Sen. Robert Menendez expressed his concern that Santa Claus would be unable to continue operating at the North Pole. After all, according to the New Jersey Democrat, the polar ice caps are melting and “scientists project that an ice-free Arctic is possible as soon as 2012” as a result of man’s role in purported climate change. “I am sure we can both agree that on a warming planet, we need to do all we can to save Christmas,” Mr. Menendez urged.

The Garden State senator suggests leftist social policy, such as “cap-and-trade” taxes, would save the North Pole. But it is hardly in danger. About 500 miles south of the North Pole, in Alert, Nunavut, Canada, today’s weather is forecast to dip to negative 23 degrees Fahrenheit (-43 with windchill). It’s clearly not time for Old St. Nick to trade in his sleigh and eight tiny reindeer for suntan lotion and a surfboard quite yet. Of course, a politician’s lame attempt at a humorous Web posting shouldn’t be taken as seriously as the collective wisdom of climate science summarized by the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

This organization’s latest report, completed in 2007, discusses the purported retreat of snow and ice in the Arctic. The document even provides a chart describing projected changes in climate extremes based on the “current scientific evidence.” The group’s models predict it is “very likely” that most continents will see “more warm and fewer cold nights.” The models also predict a “Decrease in number of days with below-freezing temperatures everywhere.” For Northern Europe, South Asia and East Asia, there will be “Fewer cold outbreaks; fewer, shorter, less intense cold spells/cold extremes in winter.”

Apparently, the National Football League was counting on those warm nights. Suits at the NFL canceled Sunday’s Philadelphia Eagles game against the Minnesota Vikings because some snow was expected in Philly, a typically cold place. Embarrassed Keystone State Gov. Ed Rendell, a Democrat, told Fox News, “We’re becoming a nation of wussies.” And so it goes across the globe. In Northern Europe, thousands of travelers trapped by a cold outbreak finally were able to begin their journey home as airports slowly resumed operations this weekend. For anyone living in the Washington area, the current and past winter has been undeniably colder, not warmer.

Because the weather has not cooperated with its predictions, the goal posts had to change from the 2007 IPCC report. Now the so-called “scientific community” of global-warming alarmism predicts the heating of the planet will produce “extremes” that include colder winters and warmer winters. It’s a self-proving “scientific” theory: Regardless of what happens, even if it gets colder, it’s proof of global warming.

It’s also definitive proof that the purveyors of this hokum are not doing real science. It’s one thing to credit a fairy tale to stimulate the imagination of young children. It’s another to use a fairy tale to enact socialist policies designed to give Washington bureaucrats more control over our lives and the economy. No, Virginia, there is no man-made global warming.