In these increasingly tempestuous political times, it seems that each news cycle is trying to win an award for being the most ridiculous to date. Hysteria may be a rather bipartisan commodity now, but craziest of the crazies still hang out with the progressives.

Among that group, the climate change activists may be the most unbalanced. These are, after all, the people who are now using junk science to inform their family planning decisions.

That’s commitment to the cause.

Like all progressives, the climate cultists brook no dissent. When they encounter it, they want it gone.

Conservative mega-donor Rebekah Mercer sits on the board of trustees of New York’s American Museum of Natural History and a New York Times Opinion piece written by a couple of scientists makes it clear that her presence there has upset the climate activist masses.

Ms. Mercer’s crime is that she and “her family were important backers of President Trump,” and they’ve “contributed millions of dollars to climate-change-denying politicians and organizations like the Heartland Institute.”

The post lists every offending party and claims that each is “in clear conflict with the virtually unanimous international scientific consensus on climate change.”

A “virtually unanimous” “consensus” is a bold overreach even by climate hysteria standards.

One of the scientists making this claim is Michael Mann, who has been involved in more than one climate change related scandal, including the infamous email debacle back in 2011.

So why should any of this matter when it comes to the Mercers generously supporting a natural history museum?

It shouldn’t.

The authors even admit that her presence on the board doesn’t mean that she’s “dictating museum exhibitions” and the museum backs that up. They then go on to make the laughable claim that “this isn’t about partisan politics” even though every word typed on the Times Opinion page is only about that.

As Al Gore has found out millions of times over, there is a lot of money in Big Climate right now. They just finished an eight-year run with the Obama administration where the rich got richer. Now we have a president who isn’t friendly to this gravy train and the elders of the Climate Church are not amused. Anyone associated with him who goes against their orthodoxy must be punished and marginalized.

That’s how you end up with scientists taking to the most prominent newspaper in America and lying about consensus.

But President Trump is supposed to be the scary one.