With a heat wave currently turning half the country into a steam bath and the next round of Democratic Party presidential debates coming up in just over a week, it’s likely climate change (né global warming) will be at or near the top of the agenda.

For the Democrats, climate armageddon is right around the corner, the only question really open for debate being whether that corner is twelve years away or twenty. Global warming is a religion to them and, as with so many religions, you obey its strictures or else. Just ask Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.

That this isn’t the most scientific approach to climate or anything else should go without saying. Unfortunately, it doesn’t. Any discussion of the subject at the debate will undoubtedly consist of how much money we should throw at the problem and how soon. Biden will be measured and try not to throw out the baby with the proverbial bathwater, while Bernie and the ladies will attack him for being a climate weakling willing to incinerate humanity. Everyone else could well join in. Soon poor Joe will be nodding his head in agreement, begging AOC to forgive him and pledging to retrofit every picture window and storm door from San Diego to Sandusky himself. (Hey, he says he can beat Trump in push-ups.)

Meanwhile, none of the CNN stalwarts conducting the debate will dare ask this simple question because it blows a hole in their narrative worse than any the Iranians will ever put on a tanker. “Has the duration and extent of heat waves gone up or down in the last century?”

Answer: Not just down but way down. According to Chris Martz of Weather Facts (and, yes, he has them, replete with graphs; check it out), the average duration of heat waves is 41 percent shorter than it was in the 1930s. They lasted nine days then to six and a half now. Not only that, average high temperatures in the 1930s, when industrialization was minuscule compared to today, were considerably above (roughly two degrees) what they are now. The thirties were a depressed time — and a hot one on top of that.

Another question neither Andersen Cooper nor Jake Tapper will be posing is: “When was Antarctica warmer — now or a thousand years ago?” Answer: a thousand years ago. Obviously, you realize where I’m going here.

Everyone knows that politicians are basically liars or envelope-pushers, but when it comes to science they are idiots as well, at least the vast majority of them. That we have to listen to them opine about climate is like having our brains drilled.

This is not to say that any of this proves the truth of global warming one way or another. I try to remain agnostic on the subject — keep an open mind — but the conformist drivel promulgated by the left tends to make me shut it. (The views of the Dane Bjorn Lomborg who does a good cost/benefit analysis of these things, are worth a look.)

But the generalized stupidity of the way the issue is treated points toward something possibly more disturbing — the debates themselves. Do they have any meaning other than the obvious entertainment value (for some)? Well, we learn that most of the Democrats are copycats and have pretty much the same (enforced) views on everything with only the slightest nuances. But didn’t we already know that? It’s all a game show, basically. Maybe Ryszard Legutko — the Polish author of The Demon in Democracy — is right. Communism and liberal democracy have some eerie similarities.

As for heatwaves, this has always been my favorite way of getting through them.

Roger L. Simon – co-founder and CEO Emeritus of PJMedia – is an author and screenwriter. His new novel – THE GOAT – will be available for preordering on Amazon next month. He fervently hopes you will.