global warming

Ricket free children
Older people can remember when the sun and its antics were considered perfectly normal, if it shone this was good. Some took their shirts off, while others dozed. Then the 'experts', and there's never a shortage of those, decreed it was dangerous. So began the era of anti-sun speak; sun hats became not just fashionable but essential for the growing congregation of sun hating zealots. As with many an organisation the indoctrination of children was deemed essential, think Hitler Youth movement. So children had what looked like white paint rubbed over them when on holiday. Far from being the sort deviant fetishistic behaviour that would get your name put on a giant database it was those adults who did not indulge in this practice who faced being dubbed weird. These were the people who had dangerous habits, they were 'deniers', they failed to admit the sun was going to kill us all.

However, it now seems this is the dawn of a new age.

Fish 'discards'CFP

Watts Up With That reports that:

New Zealand has had its coldest October in 64 years. Such a cold October has occurred only four times in the past 100 years, the last time in 1945.

In the USA the October temperatures were the 3rd coldest in 115 years.

The biggest snowstorm in 25 years hit central Europe with amounts up to five feet atop Zugspitze, the highest peak in Germany. In Austria, two day snowfalls of 2-3 feet caused some ski areas to have their earliest-ever opening day. The Czech Republic, Slovakia and Poland were hit hard. Up to 20″ of snow fell in the mountains of the Czech Republic. Trees and power lines were toppled, with up to 700,000 customers without power during the unusual cold wave. In southern Poland three people froze to death

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It has been suggested that climate change denial could be more of a dangerous 'thought crime' than holocaust denial and our own foreign secretary, David Miliband, has called unbelievers the 'flat-earthers of the 21st century.' We are just beginning to see glimmerings of rational scientific argument being reported in some of our papers but the fable is set to continue long into the future. We find that - twelve public artworks commissioned by the Cultural Olympiad will include a small 'island' which will be tugged from the Arctic to England to encourage discussion about climate change and a pair of 30ft crocheted lions.

dangerous dog

There is a report of a small child mauled by a dog. It is headline news. Hereafter toddlers are frequently mauled by dogs for a while until the press becomes bored. There are then no reported incidents of toddler mauling for a couple of years. Who believes that there have been no attacks for the intervening years? However, when the headlines concern global warming, which has conveniently morphed into climate change, the journalists who write the Armageddon-like headlines do not like to write anything which interferes with the main thrust of their message, even if this is official information.