

© Matt Davies

The science behind global warming predicts that all the extra energy in the atmosphere will stimulate more extreme weather, both hot and cold. Just because it is snowing now doesn’t mean this hasn’t been the hottest decade in thousands of years. Likewise, just because it sometimes rains in the desert doesn’t mean that deserts don’t exist and aren’t (generally) dry. Or as Colbert put it, “It is dark outside, so we can only assume that the sun has been destroyed”.

In related news, one of the scientists at the center of the “climategate” email scandal has been cleared of any wrongdoing. One of his stolen emails mentioned a “trick” used to manipulate data, and this was claimed to be evidence of scientific fraud. But the investigation concluded that “The so-called ‘trick’ was nothing more than a statistical method used to bring two or more different kinds of data sets together in a legitimate fashion by a technique that has been reviewed by a broad array of peers in the field.” There was no falsifying of data.