As President Obama prepares to deliver his State of the Union address, a long list of public schools and agencies are closed today in the nation's capital owing to extreme winter weather. This comes on the heels of what is shaping up to be the coldest winter in recent memory. So will President announce unilateral administrative actions designed to "combat" the "threat" of "global warming"? If so, he will continue to erode his own credibility, for the American public has largely concluded that global warming predictions are not to be taken seriously.

Roger L. Simon, writing at PJ Media, makes the interesting point that Obama risks coming across as anti-science - precisely the mirror image of the intent of the original global warming hoaxers, who slurred skeptics as anti-science deniers:

Word is that President Obama is going to ignore the freezing weather and say something about "global warming" or "climate change" or "stormy weather," or whatever the euphemism of the moment may be, during the State of the Union address Tuesday night.

It's a sign of desperation - fewer people believe in this now than ever - an attempt to change the discussion and a sop to his left wing.  Also, it's a power grab, in concert with his desire to circumvent a supposedly do-nothing Congress.

But it's worse than that.  If he goes this way, he will be attacking and discrediting, and therefore undermining, something far more important than he , or any other president in history, could ever be - science.

I don't know how much Barack Obama knows about science.  I'm skeptical he knows much.  His college and graduate school grades have been a state secret beyond anything even Eric Snowden could ferret out.  But we can assume they're not terrific in the science area.  They may not be as bad as Al Gore's D in geology, although Obama was attending Occidental, not Harvard, when he was required to study science. No one knows what happened when he was at Columbia.  In any case, he doesn't evince a public interest in science.  He hobnobs with Beyonce and Jay Z,  not Nobel Prize winners in chemistry.

Public skepticism over the pronouncements of government officials, the warmist scientific establishment, and the prevailing elites is at a high point, and shows no sign of abating. It is a fate richly deserved, but it leaves the nation more difficult to lead. What is necessary as a remedy is a new leadership unafraid to call BS. The American p0eople are yearning for honesty and frankness in the leaders. If the GOP nominates another "moderate" get-along-to-go along candidate for president, it will sacrifice more than its electoral prospects. The times, they are a changin'.