Even more predictable than the actual weather is Mother Nature once again having fun with climate alarmists.  As winter approaches, we see true climate change, also known as changing seasons.  The United Nations conference on climate change is set to begin in just a week, and Mother Nature, as a reality check, threw a giant snowball at the American Midwest.

It’s not even Thanksgiving, and winter is officially a month away, but the Midwest was clobbered with cold temperatures and snow – not just a late fall cold snap, but a major winter storm.  Single-digit temperatures.  Eleven inches of snow in Chicago, the highest November total in 120 years.  Record-breaking snow in South Dakota. 

Not only here, but also in the U.K.  Snowstorms and icy blizzards blanketed the U.K. last week with a “bitterly cold” weekend.  Oh, the irony.

This is not the first time Mother Nature tweaked the climatistas.  In fact, Urban Dictionary already has an entry for this phenomenon.  See the “Gore Effect,” defined as “[t]he phenomenon that leads to temperature decrease whenever global warming or climatic change is discussed having Al Gore's work as important reference.”

Not to be outdone, Wikepedia also has an entry for the “Gore Effect,” which the site describes as “[a] term which alleges a causal relationship between unseasonable cold weather phenomena and global warming activism.”  Climate Depot has a long list of other examples of the Gore Effect.

Beyond the humor of the Gore Effect is mounting evidence that the climate is cooling, not warming.  No need to panic about global cooling, either.  Based on Greenland ice cores, “[a]lternating climatic warming and cooling has occurred about every 27 years since 1470 AD, well before atmospheric CO2 began to increase.”

Following this schedule backward in time, in 1974, the CIA warned that global cooling would cause terrorism.  Now, 32 years later, presidential candidate Bernie Sanders is sounding a similar warning, except he substituted “warming” for “cooling.”  “Feeling the Bern” from nonexistent warming, Bernie warns, “global warming presents the greatest national security threat to the United States.”  What a difference a climate cycle makes.

Is the planet warming or cooling?  Many scientists believe that the Earth is cooling, and some are speaking out despite the personal and professional risks.  The solution is to skip any reference to warming or cooling and just call it “climate change.”

This is lipstick on a pig.  The U.N. conference on climate change freely admits that this is simply a name change.  It’s still global warming, despite a new term.  “Climate change refers to the increase in the average temperature of the oceans and the Earth’s atmosphere.”  The key word is “increase.”

The prudent scientist would follow the scientific method.  Form a hypothesis about future temperatures, observe the data, and modify the hypothesis to account for actual temperatures versus predictions.

Was last week’s Midwest cold and snow predicted by the global warming hypothesis?  Does enlarging Arctic and Antarctic ice levels fit the theory of a warming planet?  As a Nixon defender exclaimed during the Watergate hearings, “Don’t confuse me with the facts.”

The scientists seem to be figuring this out.  It’s the politicians and policymakers who have not.  President Obama believes that "[n]o challenge poses a greater threat to our future and future generations than a change in climate."  Senator Bernie Sanders agrees: “[c]limate change is the greatest threat to national security.”  Not all politicians, however.  Russian president Vladimir Putin believes “[t]here is no global warming, that this is a fraud to restrain the industrial development of several countries including Russia.”  None of the politicians wants to answer a question Erick Erickson posed: “[w]hy does global warming only turn Muslims into terrorists?”

The real threat to national security and future generations is that which cannot be named: “radical Islam.”  Whether ISIS is “contained” or whether it represents the “JV” team, our president views it more as a distraction than a real threat.

French President François Hollande, referring to the U.N. conference in Paris, said that “COP21 will bring hope and solidarity.”  Perhaps it will.  Disconcerting that phantom temperature changes may bring more “hope and solidarity” than a massive terrorist strike killing more than a hundred Parisians on President Hollande’s watch.  President Obama and other terror-deniers chase windmills, but the electorate feels otherwise, here and in France, finding solidarity with candidates who take the threat of radical Islam more seriously than temperature fluctuations.

Brian C Joondeph, M.D., MPS, a Denver-based retina surgeon and writer.  Follow him on Facebook  and Twitter.