Right On Columnist Patrick McIlheran, generally a right-wing guy, offers commentary and links to good reading on the Web SHARE

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Michael Graham notes in the Boston Herald how the phrase “global warming” seems to be in eclipse – among its believers:

“Since 1998, temperatures have been relatively flat. We’ve got more polar bears than ever, and Manhattan is buried under snow. For a planet-roasting crisis that threatened the human race with extinction, there doesn’t seem to be much actual warming.”

And so now the correct term is “global weirding” – which is to say, any unusual weather is proof of global warming. Take, for instance, Al Gore’s explanation that our unusually cold winters of late prove that global warming – well, weirding, but it means the Earth is going to cook – really is happening.

Yes, yes: Warmer air, more evaporation, more snow, so on. Though, as scientists at that link point out, things have been hotter and colder routinely in the past without any claim that carbon emissions made the medieval warm period so balmy. And the theoretical basis for global warming did not predict that things would get cooler generally. What Gore is latching onto is explanation for contradictory results.

Which is why his press defenders – see the particularly egregious Cynthia Tucker of the Atlanta Journal Constitution, for instance – do not turn in the end to science but to artists as proof. Tucker’s clincher in saying Gore’s right is to cite a science fiction novel. Fast Company tells of an artist’s plan to install a device to make a power plant give off smoke rings, so as to properly spook you. I’ve pointed out this habit before: Without art to sex up unconvincing data, how ever will the warmists persuade you to agree to their preferred measures, such as punitive taxes on meat or, presumably, even more important things?

Look at the smoke ring, in other words, and ignore the hugely troublesome reality about what Gore is claiming: That no matter what happens with the weather, it proves his theory right. Things get hot? It’s global warming. Really cold and snowy? Global warming. Presumably anything other than an utterly average day, anything but a completely flat trend line on any climate metric is proof that he’s right.

Graham points out the flaw:

“For a theory to be scientific, it must be fallible — capable of being proven false. If every weather condition can be used to ‘prove’ global warming simply by being declared ‘weird,’ then it’s not science. It’s a joke.”