Perhaps because of desperation or just plain ignorance, climate alarmists are now blaming both droughts and floods on global warming/climate change.  Where it rains or doesn't is largely determined by prevailing winds, not atmospheric heat-trapping.  And yet, the chair of the Sonoma County Board of Supervisors recently posted an op-ed in the Santa Rosa Press Democrat stating such nonsense — along with blaming her son's pneumonia on climate change, rather than the opportunistic bacteria that infected him while his immune system was weakened by a cold.

What used to just seem like a hoax no longer leaves any room for doubt.  And yet, there are way too many (ahem) useful idiots predisposed to fear for the end of the world.  I am inclined to say doomsday cults are particularly seductive because they release their adherents from the day-to-day drudgery of going through ordinary life. 

Historically, I like to place the beginning of atmospheric heat-trapping hysteria in 1990, when NASA's Magellan Venus probe sent back telemetry showing the planet's surface temperature to be much hotter than expected.  Sixteen years later, the midterm election of 2006 returned the House of Representatives to the Democrats, and global warming became a major political issue. 

Considering the lust for power that animates ambitious politicians, climate change/global warming is made to order.  Not only can it easily generate fear, but its authenticity or lack thereof defies simple observation.  The geologic oscillation between ice ages and warm periods occurs in a time frame way beyond a human lifespan.

History is fraught with the consequences of various weather trends.  Scientific American, before it became seriously woke, published an article that declared the last 2,000 years to be a period of unusually mild weather.  The evidence of previous severe conditions was fairly clear.  A different article concerned the hydrologic deficit of the Mediterranean Basin.  The rivers that flow into the basin do not provide sufficient water volume to compensate for evaporation.  Primarily, the Sudd on the Nile seriously diminishes what reaches the basin.  The author, with good reason, speculated that the Mediterranean Basin was dry until the Pleistocene ended and the Atlantic rose and flowed over the Pillars of Hercules (Straits of Gibraltar) and flooded the Mediterranean.  He speculated that there may have been human witnesses to this event — the possible origin for the Atlantis legend.

Between 1645 and 1715, there occurred the Maunder Minimum — also known as the Little Ice Age.  This is fairly common knowledge and was the result of the sun taking a nap.  With today's scientific advances, would such a phenomenon be predictable?  Such would be fairly speculative, and, thus, we continue to remain captives to the whims of nature.

Suffice it to say that weather often establishes short-lived trends, which are not necessarily evidence of the overall direction of climate change.  It takes time to connect the dots, although climate has never been constant and is thus always trending in one direction or another.

But the political motives are immense.  Such is the sad commentary on our time.  The same gaggle of demagogues has milked the COVID virus for all it's worth — but that is both a real problem and limited in its significant duration.  The virus will be dealt with, both through technology and herd immunity.  However, the temptation of global warming/climate change will continue to dangle in front of the useful idiots unless, or until, cooling becomes the norm.

On the other hand, perspective may come in handy.  The last ice age, the Pleistocene, lasted about 2.5 million years, and the current warm period, the Holocene, began about 10,000 years ago.  There were, however, warm periods within the Pleistocene, and, as mentioned above, there's been occasional cooling within the Holocene.

Meanwhile, the gal in Sonoma County is sick and tired of waiting for "science" to figure things out.  She's champing at the bit to murder the capitalistic goose that lays the golden eggs, so there won't be anything left to worry about.

Image via Good Free Photos.

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