Not So Hot

Over the past couple of weeks a lot of right wing morons we happen to know around the Florida panhandle have been circulating emails and popping off in public about the "Al Gore winter" of 2009-10. They mean it in a sarcastic way, of course. Even the Iowa football coach ("This was Hawkeye weather") knows we've been experiencing a Canadian cold air mass that temporarily has much of the country in its grip.

We're only six days into 2010 and, to be sure, the forecast looks like it might almost (but not quite) rival the cold snap we had here in January, 1996, when the temps dropped down below freezing at night for almost two weeks. But is the winter of 2009 (plus six days of 2010) evidence that undercuts scientists' worries about global warming?

Unfortunately, not a chance. Turns out, the year "2009 is one of the warmest years on record."

That's small comfort if you're feeling chilly right now. It also conveys some very discouraging information about the state of the republic.

If right-wing partisans who cleave to Sean Hannity and get their news from Fox Cable TV succeed in using every little cold snap or cooling breeze to refute the overwhelming scientific consensus that the world is approaching a carbon-generated tipping point from which we will never recover, what does it say about humanity's chances for rescuing the planet?

Not so hot, that's what.