One of the planks in the (mostly) Conservative arguments against human-induced climate change is that we, scientists and all interested, focus our attention on short-term weather nuances and are therefore too short-sighted to really know what’s going on with the global climate. If that were the case, it would be a fair point because all of this climate change debate depends on long term patterns - short term, it’s just bad weather.

As the planet warms, mostly by our hands, the weather patterns we’re used to where we live and why we live there are going to become more erratic. That statement has been one of the main planks of climate change scientists since the beginning of this debate over thirty years ago, not that everywhere on the planet the weather will become persistently warmer on a daily basis, just more uncharacteristic.

With those two points in hand, I was annoyed this past winter (northern hemisphere winter that is) that much of the Conservative press went over-board when higher than normal snowfalls hit much of the eastern parts of North America. Their claim was just too obvious: “see, climate change is fake, just look at all of the snow (this winter)”.

I’m not going to get into a detailed discussion at how churlish and unsophisticated that line of thinking is, there are people far more adept than myself for doing that. What I did want to address is that, as of today, it appears that the (northern hemisphere) summer is going to be one of, if not the, hottest summers in recorded history.

What I’m waiting for is to read and hear how the Conservative press will respond this time. I suspect it will put them in a little spin.

On a related matter, that farcical response of the Conservative press to the snowy winter went unchallenged by (their allied) climate change skeptics. Where were they to discredit the press with its short-sighted and unscientific response to a snowy winter, in winter? It was as silent as the snow falling.

When the Conservative press gets their science wrong, climate change skeptics remain quiet, and that’s evidence for an (equally) ideological point-of-view from which they claim to be immune.

And that’s the best part of the hypocrisy.