Eric Zorn is poking fun at those of us making jokes about climate change in light of the nearly record-setting cold of February 2007. Writes Zorn:

Only a fool would see a snowstorm or suffer through a cold snap and think it had any long-term meaning.

Indeed. But Zorn misses the point. When we snicker something like “Well, I guess all this snow and last week’s bitter cold shows that ‘global warming’ is a liberal myth, eh?” The source of the ire is that when the weather is unseasonably mild we’re inundated with story’s about global warming. “Is Mild Winter a Sign of Climate Change?” asked NPR. “Bear facts point to global warming in arctic” wrote The Guardian. Zorn himself even posted on a story from the Tribune tying the warm temperatures of 2006 into global warming.

See, it’s precisely the contention of those skeptical about climate change that our environment is constantly in flux, that short term deviations don’t necessarily make long term trends. But no one wants to hear qualifications like these … at least not until the cold weather comes.