Where are all the global warming worrywarts now?

So winter finally arrived last Thursday. Did you all really think it would never come? Was Ottawa on the verge of becoming the next Victoria?

Many people would seem to think so. Had I not been sick last week I would have been tempted to head out to a very soggy golf course to get eighteen holes in. I would have been able to brag to my future grandchildren that I, Michael Mason, played golf in Ottawa - the world's COLDEST capital city - in January! I guess I will have to live vicariously through some of my friends who did get manage to get out there.

But I have to ask... if Ottawa was on the verge of becoming another Victoria, what would there be to brag about? Would it not become commonplace to play golf in Ottawa in the middle of January? After all, with global warming having arrived, it's bound to become as common as an old Saturn with 208,000km on it that doesn't want to start on a -26 degree morning, right? OK, so I'm bitter because my wife's car didn't start today. Why? Oh yes - because it was minus twenty-six degrees outside this morning.

Look - over the millions of years this planet has whirled its way around the sun, climate change has been a phenomenon experienced by all living creatures. With some scientists and politicians trying to convince the masses that we're all going to burn up if we don't stop driving cars and using traditional light bulbs in our houses, hysteria was beginning to settle in.

Before January 11, 2007 came along, all people were talking about was global warming. When the cold and snow set in on the 12th, a day that North America tumbled into a week-long (and counting!) cold snap that starts in Texas and seems to trail all the way up through northern Quebec, the doomsday brigade all seemed to wither away into their hovels, presumably curled up in front of their fireplaces.

Odds are excellent that they won't be showing up on any open line radio programs or television special broadcasts any time soon. But as soon as the mercury hits one or two degrees above normal (which has happened on every single day of the year if you check out historical weather data - and records weren't all set in the last fifteen or fifty years either), they will be back out once again.

American "experts" claim polar bears are dying off. The agriculture minister in Nunavut disagrees. Alarmists claim that polar ice is disappearing at a speed never seen before in our history. Tangible data and historical information if read intelligently says otherwise.

Come on, people, I'd be shocked if we regularly saw +12 degree weather over a two week period between Christmas and mid-January again in the next half century. It might happen once or twice, but that won't mean that the sky is falling. It'll simply mean that weather patterns have temporarily shifted once again. Besides... do you think that people in Malibu are worried about buying snow shovels and street graders today because a half-inch of snow fell on the palm trees this morning?

I don't think so.