QUOTE OF THE DAY – AT 7:39 P.M. ET:  Britain is already having a ferocious winter.  But it wasn't predicted.  In fact, none of the cold winters of recent years was predicted.  Why?  The probable answer is chilling (pun), but a stark lesson for the U.S.  From the Washington Times:

It's the coldest winter on record in Great Britain. Great Britain also has experienced its heaviest snowfalls since the 1920s. The mayor of London, who last year was subjected to a grilling in Parliament over the inability to keep the capital's roads clear, has asked why the government's Meteorological Office ("Met Office") didn't see this coming. The answer is almost certainly an institutional faith in global-warming models that is starting to conflict with reality. The United States needs to make sure it does not go down Great Britain's unplowed road.

Almost 10 years ago, the Independent, a leading national newspaper in the United Kingdom, ran a story that has become a joke, circulated by e-mail and on Facebook even among left-wingers. "Snowfalls are now just a thing of the past," was the headline, and some of the quotes will raise wry smiles among Brits shivering and slipping their way to work. "[T]he warming is so far manifesting itself more in winters which are less cold than in much hotter summers. According to Dr. David Viner, a senior research scientist at the climatic research unit (CRU) of the University of East Anglia, within a few years, winter snowfall will become 'a very rare and exciting event. ... Children just aren't going to know what snow is,' he said." This is, of course, the same CRU that became infamous last year as the source of the "Climategate" e-mails.

This snow blindness manifested itself in the Met Office's predictions for the past three years. In 2008, it predicted a milder-than-normal winter. That winter was the coldest in a decade.

COMMENT:  That is a warning for America.  Writers like Tom Friedman of The New York Times denounce those who question global warming as "anti-science," when in fact they're pro-science.  They demand the highest standards of scientific analysis, and they don't think real science should be mixed with political science. 

There is no such thing as "settled science," also some of the global warming religious community claim that there is.  Science is constantly evolving, and examining its own "truths."  Recently, a physicist at the new superconducting supercollider in Switzerland said that, because of the machine's capability, scientists will be able to learn whether the physics they've been teaching for the last generation is nonsense.

We hope 2011 will see some kind of mechanism set up in this country, perhaps a Challenger-type commission, that will finally examine "climate change" and determine what we actually know, and what we don't know.  Don't hold your breath.  There are too many interests involved, and too much money involved, to let that happen.  But maybe there'll be a very unscientific miracle and we'll get at the truth.

December 23, 2010