But the dadgum science is SETTLED!

I blame global warming! Or global cooling! Wait, it's because of climate change! Just remember, the science is settled!

As they say, climate is what you want, but weather is what you get.

I blame George W. Bush

April cold threatens 'significant losses' of fruit crop in northeastern US

Because global warming.

Best response to Obama's coal speech

FOFB:

I am glad that no one needs to be concerned about unemployment in this great round world of ours! Thankfully coal workers are independently wealthy and don't need to work.

As usual, Obama didn't get the latest memo. The so-called "settled" science of AGW is that carbon dioxide probably does not cause global warming after all.

Chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) are to blame for global warming since the 1970s and not carbon dioxide, according to new research from the University of Waterloo published in the International Journal of Modern Physics B this week. 

So why make war on coal (as Obama adviser Daniel Schrag put it) when CO2 isn't the culprit? Because coal is not controlled (much) and CFCs are heavily regulated already. No way to expand government going after CFCs. 

But coal? How many thousands more of EPA agents will be hired now? 

So a short rhyme:

Coal control?
It's not about coal.
It's about control.

Update: James Delingpole: "Obama: driving a green dagger into the heart of the American dream"

When it comes to pinpointing the nadir of the Obama administration, future historians are going to suffer a serious case of option paralysis. Was it Benghazi? The NSA? His use of the IRS to harass the Tea party? The various scandals involving his black ops department, the EPA? Obamacare? 

Personally, though, I think the one they will eventually plump for isObama's Climate Action Plan of June 25 2013. The economy, after all, is everything. Without an economy you can't afford a domestic policy, let alone a foreign policy. So you'd think the very last thing any president would do as his country began to show the first vague signs of slow – and quite possibly illusory – recovery after a long recession would be to jeopardise it with a whole new raft of utterly pointless regulation and wasteful government expenditure. Why it would be like seeing a man drowning and, instead of throwing him a life line tossing him a lead weight. 

But that's just what President Obama has done with today's Climate Action Plan whose gory details you can read here.

Oh, that carbon dioxide global warming thing? Never mind.

The United Nations' Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change just released the following statement:

You know all the panic we tried to instigate about how carbon dioxide is responsible for global warming? And how the UN secretary general said that "humanity faces oblivion if it fails to confront global warming"? 

Our bad. Sorry. Seems that CO2 doesn't cause global warming after all. Never mind. 

But we still want your money.

That's right: Global warming caused by chlorofluorocarbons, not carbon dioxide, new study says.

Chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) are to blame for global warming since the 1970s and not carbon dioxide, according to new research from the University of Waterloo published in the International Journal of Modern Physics B this week. 

CFCs are already known to deplete ozone, but in-depth statistical analysis now shows that CFCs are also the key driver in global climate change, rather than carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions. 

"Conventional thinking says that the emission of human-made non-CFC gases such as carbon dioxide has mainly contributed to global warming. But we have observed data going back to the Industrial Revolution that convincingly shows that conventional understanding is wrong," said Qing-Bin Lu, a professor of physics and astronomy, biology and chemistry in Waterloo's Faculty of Science. "In fact, the data shows that CFCs conspiring with cosmic rays caused both the polar ozone hole and global warming." 

"Most conventional theories expect that global temperatures will continue to increase as CO2 levels continue to rise, as they have done since 1850. What's striking is that since 2002, global temperatures have actually declined – matching a decline in CFCs in the atmosphere," Professor Lu said. "My calculations of CFC greenhouse effect show that there was global warming by about 0.6 °C from 1950 to 2002, but the earth has actually cooled since 2002. The cooling trend is set to continue for the next 50-70 years as the amount of CFCs in the atmosphere continues to decline."

Global cooling! Well, even global cooling is climate change, right? So the bureaucrats in the IPCC and like entities will still be in business. But I do wonder how they will transition from warming alarmism to cooling alarmism. And how they will describe the catastrophic portents of global cooling in order to increase their funding.

And don't you love Prof. Lu's description of how CFCs and cosmic rays "conspire" to cool the globe? It's a plot, I tell ya!

But Prof. Lu is not the first scientist to denounce the CO2 theory of global warming.

I blame global warming

This was caused by Hurricane Sandy and Sandy was caused by global warming - ipso facto:

Professor Piven Gets Her 15 Minutes

So Sociology is finally having its 15 minutes of fame. Frances Fox Piven in The Nation laments the lack of revolutionary spirit in the current age. Where ARE those cannon fodder proletariat anyway.

The problem of how to bring people together is sometimes made easier by government service centers, as when in the 1960s poor mothers gathered in crowded welfare centers or when the jobless congregated in unemployment centers.

Could it be that maybe that’s not the droids we’re looking for? But wait, there’s more.

Second, before people can mobilize for collective action, they have to develop a proud and angry identity and a set of claims that go with that identity. They have to go from being hurt and ashamed to being angry and indignant. (Welfare moms in the 1960s did this by naming themselves "mothers" instead of "recipients," although they were unlucky in doing so at a time when motherhood was losing prestige.) Losing a job is bruising; even when many other people are out of work, most people are still working. So, a kind of psychological transformation has to take place; the out-of-work have to stop blaming themselves for their hard times and turn their anger on the bosses, the bureaucrats or the politicians who are in fact responsible.

Oh, yes, anger. That’s THE ingredient for the Revolution (along with Draino and Prell). After all, that’s been the scenario when Capitalism replaced the Agrarian Modes of Production. Marx and Engels Speak!

But Professors Altman and Taranto dissent and voice a distinct opinion (okay, Taranto is not REALLY a professor—in fact he did not finish college but he IS the opinion editor at the Wall Street Journal and that’s LIKE being a professor since he’s in a position where he doesn’t care if we don’t like him or not—is that like tenure?).

The uproar Frances created generated some angry attacks—apparently people consider HER to be a good target for THEIR anger! This was met by the Four Riders of the American Sociological Association (REAL Professors) professing THEIR support of their fallen angel and returning fire at those ANGRY under educated masses (the Proletariat?). In short, the academic world is turning out to do what they do best—hiss.

This is so much fun! It’s like being back in Gradual School! I get to watch really cool guys and chicks (er, professors) discussing REALLY high level stuff like Marx and Engels. They are oh so hip and cool. When I grow up, I wanna be a sociologist just like them! Still to this day, I wanna be a sociologist, too.



We could pretend its 1979 when all the cool professors were ex SDSers who had made it. And THEY can give over a really powerful sermon on the Gospels of Marx and Engels. REALLY worth your time and they can use the FTE's.

In seminar, the professors sit poised on the divan while we students merit the floor at their feet. Gracefully, Frances (it's her seminar) gives over the Truth of THE Manifesto according to Karl and Fred.

Altogether collisions between the classes of the old society further, in many ways, the course of development of the proletariat. The bourgeoisie finds itself involved in a constant battle. At first with the aristocracy; later on, with those portions of the bourgeoisie itself, whose interests have become antagonistic to the progress of industry; at all times, with the bourgeoisie of foreign countries. In all these battles it sees itself compelled to appeal to the proletariat, to ask for its help, and thus, to drag it into the political arena. The bourgeoisie itself, therefore, supplies the proletariat with its own instruments of political and general education, in other words, it furnishes the proletariat with weapons for fighting the bourgeoisie. [They ALWAYS add the italics and bold print when they lean forward to preach their points!]

Further, as we have already seen, entire sections of the ruling classes are, by the advance of industry, precipitated into the proletariat, or are at least threatened in their conditions of existence. These also supply the proletariat with fresh elements of enlightenment and progress.

Finally, in times when the class struggle nears the decisive hour, the process of dissolution going on within the ruling class, in fact within the whole range of society, assumes such a violent, glaring character, that a small section of the ruling class cuts itself adrift, and joins the revolutionary class, the class that holds the future in its hands. Just as, therefore, at an earlier period, a section of the nobility went over to the bourgeoisie, so now a portion of the bourgeoisie goes over to the proletariat, and in particular, a portion of the bourgeois ideologists, who have raised themselves to the level of comprehending theoretically the historical movement as a whole.

So, we learn the Holy Word that The Revolution comes when members of the Bourgeoisie, like Prometheus, leave their Towers to teach the masses the means and modes of revolutionary technologies. After all, the Proletariat are not up to learning these tools themselves being unemployed factory workers and all.

But, wait! There’s danger in the fields. The wolves run wild in the cold Russian Winter Nights chasing lone horse drawn sleds filled with terrified children and their mothers where Grandmothers leap from sleds to be eaten to save the precious little ones from certain death! Grandma! Don't do it!

Of all the classes that stand face to face with the bourgeoisie today, the proletariat alone is a really revolutionary class. The other classes decay and finally disappear in the face of Modern Industry; the proletariat is its special and essential product. The lower middle class, the small manufacturer, the shopkeeper, the artisan, the peasant, all these fight against the bourgeoisie, to save from extinction their existence as fractions of the middle class. They are therefore not revolutionary, but conservative. Nay more, they are reactionary, for they try to roll back the wheel of history. If by chance they are revolutionary, they are so only in view of their impending transfer into the proletariat, they thus defend not their present, but their future interests, they desert their own standpoint to place themselves at that of the proletariat.

Frances leans forward and whispers that even though a massive coagulation of American humanity is coalescing about Tea Rooms—they are NOT the Revolutionary Ones. They are reactionary POSERS out to LOOK like a Revolutionary Class, aware of itself acting for its own self interest. Oh no! These are the ones trying to roll back the times to some Ancient Order—to a Halcyon Age when White Men gathered to throw off the tyranny of a King, another White Man. Yes—they want to bring back the ancient glory of the Constitution.

But, do not trust them, my pretties.

In the conditions of the proletariat, those of old society at large are already virtually swamped. The proletarian is without property; his relation to his wife and children has no longer anything in common with the bourgeois family-relations; modern industrial labor, modern subjection to capital, the same in England as in France, in America as in Germany, has stripped him of every trace of national character. Law, morality, religion, are to him so many bourgeois prejudices, behind which lurk in ambush just as many bourgeois interests.

All the preceding classes that got the upper hand, sought to fortify their already acquired status by subjecting society at large to their conditions of appropriation. The proletarians cannot become masters of the productive forces of society, except by abolishing their own previous mode of appropriation, and thereby also every other previous mode of appropriation. They have nothing of their own to secure and to fortify; their mission is to destroy all previous securities for, and insurances of, individual property.

All previous historical movements were movements of minorities, or in the interests of minorities. The proletarian movement is the self-conscious, independent movement of the immense majority, in the interests of the immense majority. The proletariat, the lowest stratum of our present society, cannot stir, cannot raise itself up, without the whole superincumbent strata of official society being sprung into the air.

Though not in substance, yet in form, the struggle of the proletariat with the bourgeoisie is at first a national struggle. The proletariat of each country must, of course, first of all settle matters with its own bourgeoisie.

So this cannot BE those frequenters of Tea Rooms. No. The Revolution MUST be violent. That’s what our studies have shown. And, we KNOW.

At this point, the visiting professor, who looks real cool with his tweed jacket, leather elbow patches, thick brown tortoise shell glasses rimmed by his thin balding brown hair, bespeaks from his reclined place on the divan.

"But, Frances," he purrs. "Just what DO these proletariat look like? I mean, is it not an empirical question? Just what is the spark that sets this off? After all, Frances, would not one person’s Revolutionary be another person’s Reactionary? Would we even recognize what they look like? Are they like us just poor and unemployed or do they not bathe and reek of the odiousness of labor, street effluvia, and body odor? What would Frederick Engels say to get this Revolution happening?"

Good question and one that was asked to Frederick Engels over a century ago. His response is classic. But first some background.

The questioner was Isaac Hourwich, an economist and a jurist from Russia who taught at the University of Chicago and Columbia and periodically was an organizer for the International Ladies Garment Workers Union. He was also my great grandfather. [I come from several generations of Gentle Marxists and Marxettes.] He had been a rabble rousing Revolutionary in The Old Country and was sent to Siberia for the Cause. His sister translated the Manifesto into Russian for its first edition there. So, the family was pretty Red. His daughter told me about the wolves. When I teach the Manifesto, I always apologize on her behalf—my fault. I also blame Global Warming.

Anyway, Isaac wrote to Fred in 1893 to see if Fred could say a few things to encourage the Serfs of Russia to rise up against their Oppressors. Fred’s words to Izzie ring true still.

London, 27 May 1893
122 Regent's Park Road, NW

Dr. Isaac A. Hourwich

Dear Sir,

Many thanks for your interesting study on the Economics of the Russian Village, which I read, I hope, not without profit.

As to the burning questions of the Russian revolutionary movement, the part which the peasantry may be effected to take in it, these are subjects on which I could not conscientiously state an opinion for publication without previously studying over again the whole subject and completing my very imperfect knowledge of the facts of the case by bringing it up to date. But for that I am sorry to say I have not at present the time. And then, I have every reason to doubt whether such a public statement by me would have the effect you expect of it.

I know from my own experience of 1849-52 how unavoidably a political emigration splits itself up into a number of divergent factions, so long as the mother-country remains quiet. The burning desire to act, face to face with the impossibility of doing anything effective, causes in many intelligent and energetic heads an over active mental speculation, an attempt at discovering or inventing new and almost miraculous means of action.

The word of an outsider would have but a trifling, and at best passing effect. If you have followed the Russian emigration literature of the last decade, you will yourself know how, for instance, passages from Marx's writings and correspon¬dence have been interpreted in the most contradictory ways, exactly as if they had been texts from the Classics or from the New Testament, by various sections of Russian emigrants.

Whatever I might say on the subject you mention, would probably share the same fate, if any attention was paid to it. And so from all these various reasons, I think it best for all whom it may concern, including myself, to abstain.

Yours very truly,
F. Engels

[Source: Karl Marx Frederick Engels Collected Works (Moscow: Progress Publishing Group Corp, 2004) Vol. 50 pp. 144-45.]

Now THIS is how a true Marxist Scholar SHOULD address the issues of the popular uprising in America:

Yo, Dude (or, Dudette as the case may be); I’ve haven’t the FOGGIEST notion of how this is playing out, who the players REALLY are; and I am the very LAST person on earth to ask about such matters.

Are Tea Room attendees the formation of the Proletariat revolutionary force or not? Are the twenty-first century technologies associated with the information the New Mode of Production that the Prophet and his Priest foretold in their visions? There are some social scientists who say yes, some say no, and eventually, when the facts are in, we'll all know a portion of the explained variance. It is, after all, an empirical question.

So, Frances, go back and study your sources and quit posing. You are far too established and Bourgeois to be manning the picket lines—you’ll have to give up your pension. As a sociologist, you may have something to offer but only after the facts are in. That's the problem with science. You have to wait until events have unfolded to assess whether or not your hypotheses are correct. As attractive as it is, the lecturn is not a bully pulpit.

Ice age on the way?

Europe is facing the coldest winter in 1,000 years.

Forecasters say this winter could be the coldest Europe has seen in the last 1,000 years.

The change is reportedly connected with the speed of the Gulf Stream, which has shrunk in half in just the last couple of years. Polish scientists say that it means the stream will not be able to compensate for the cold from the Arctic winds. According to them, when the stream is completely stopped, a new Ice Age will begin in Europe.

I blame global warming! Oh, wait, we don't have global warming any more. It's being remarketed as "global climate disruption."

Global warmism is Euro plot to stay on top

Who says that the whole point behind the global warming (aka climate change) scare is to keep "Europeans in the driver’s seat and developing nations walking barefoot"? Well, here ya go:

Dr. Takeda Kunihiko is vice-chancellor of the Institute of Science and Technology Research at Chubu University in Japan. His most recent 2008 book “Hypocritical Ecology,” has been flying off shelves at the speed of 100,000 a month since being published this June 2008. Kunihiko is one of the world's leading authorities on both uranium enrichment and recycling and is a member of just about every prestigious academic and governmental entity, he has stayed independent and made a career out of challenging the establishment. Here's a pithy taster:

Global warming has nothing to do with how much CO2 is produced or what we do here on Earth. For millions of years, solar activity has been controlling temperatures on Earth and even now, the sun controls how high the mercury goes. CO2 emissions make absolutely no difference one way or another. Soon it will cool down anyhow, once again, regardless of what we do. Every scientist knows this, but it doesn’t pay to say so. What makes a whole lot of economic and political sense is to blame global warming on humans and create laws that keep the status quo and prevent up-and-coming nations from developing. Global warming, as a political vehicle, keeps Europeans in the driver’s seat and developing nations walking barefoot.

For a press report in the Japan Times go here. For more detail go here. 

Please bring back global warming!

A Minneapolis blogger, commenting on the abnormally cool weather there, pleads for global warming to return.

Today, walking down the street in downtown Minneapolis at 5:30, en route from my office to my parking ramp, I saw something I've never seen before: a man wearing a winter coat in July. Well, maybe not quite a winter coat, but definitely a fall/winter semi-parka with an unzipped, faux-fur lined hood. He was carrying a briefcase and looked like a businessman who was tired of being cold every time he went outdoors. In the summer.

I personally don't think that we (all of humankind, let alone we Americans) can control the weather, but for those who do think we possess that Godlike power, here's a request: can we turn the thermostat up a little?

Here in Tennessee, the low last night was about 54 where I live; we slept with the windows open and the AC off. NO AC today, either, since the high is forecast for only 75. It has a long way to go as I type this at 11:15 a.m. - and this is July, heretofore an insufferably hot, humid month.

But we can still blame it on global warming, right? Well, no, since that hasn't been happening since 1998. So let's blame it on climate change - yeah, that's it, climate change!

Torture still endorsed by US government

Geologist Professor Ian Plimer, describing the computer models used by global warming alarmists:

‘I’m a natural scientist ... collecting raw data. And that’s why I’m so sceptical of these models, which have nothing to do with science or empiricism but are about torturing the data till it finally confesses. None of them predicted this current period we’re in of global cooling. There is no problem with global warming. It stopped in 1998. The last two years of global cooling have erased nearly 30 years of temperature increase.’

Meanwhile, two US scientists have explained the severe shortcomings of computer climate models.

Gary Strand, a software engineer at the federally funded National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), admitted climate model software “doesn't meet the best standards available” in a comment he posted on the website Climate Audit.

“As a software engineer, I know that climate model software doesn't meet the best standards available. We've made quite a lot of progress, but we've still quite a ways to go,” Strand wrote on July 5, 2009, according to the website WattsUpWithThat.com.

Strand's candid admission promoted WattsUpWithThat's skeptical Meteorologist Anthony Watts to ask the following question:

“Do we really want Congress to make trillion dollar tax decisions today based on 'software [that] doesn't meet the best standards available?'”

Meteorologist Watts also critiqued the current climate models, noting, “NASA GISS model E written on some of the worst FORTRAN coding ever seen is a challenge to even get running. NASA GISTEMP is even worse.

Another Plimer quote:

Eco-guilt is a first-world luxury. It’s the new religion for urban populations which have lost their faith in Christianity. The IPCC report is their Bible. Al Gore and Lord Stern are their prophets.

See my own post, "Environmentalist religion explained." As I wrote then, it's appropriate to quote the old liberals' bumper sticker: "If you're not outraged, you are not paying attention."

Update: What about 55 million years ago?

A runaway spurt of global warming 55 million years ago turned Earth into a hothouse but how this happened remains worryingly unclear, scientists said on Monday.
Previous research into this period, called the Palaeocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum, or PETM, estimates the planet's surface temperature blasted upwards by between five and nine degrees Celsius (nine and 16.2 degrees Fahrenheit) in just a few thousand years.

The Arctic Ocean warmed to 23 C (73 F), or about the temperature of a lukewarm bath.

How PETM happened is unclear but climatologists are eager to find out, as this could shed light on aspects of global warming today.

I blame the cave men. Don't try to object that there were no cave men 55 million years ago. Doesn't matter. It's still humans' fault.

Oh, and did you know that the earth has had polar ice caps for only about 20 percent of its age? "Normal" temps, on geological scale, are those too warm to support polar ice.

Saturday Photo Funnies

I blame global warming:
















A road for drunk drivers
















Hyperinflation




















Oops, I left my bank vault at home.




















Are you a geek? Need a job?















Oh please, oh please . . .

1st Oct. snow in London in 70 years

It snowed yesterday in London for the first time in 70 years. Read all about it.

I blame global warming. (HT: American Digest)

Related, MIT scientists say that global warming theory contradicts empirical data.

Boston (MA) - Scientists at MIT have recorded a nearly simultaneous world-wide increase in methane levels. This is the first increase in ten years, and what baffles science is that this data contradicts theories stating man is the primary source of increase for this greenhouse gas. It takes about one full year for gases generated in the highly industrial northern hemisphere to cycle through and reach the southern hemisphere. However, since all worldwide levels rose simultaneously throughout the same year, it is now believed this may be part of a natural cycle in mother nature - and not the direct result of man's contributions.

Then there's the record cold in Florida this week. And the heaviest snows in Switzerland since record-keeping began.

Charles, there's a reason you're not king

And the reason is that your mum isn't a batbelfry like you are.

Prince Charles urged the world Tuesday to fight climate change, saying that while the global credit crunch will be temporary, the effects of the "climate crunch" were irreversible. ...

"Given the current turbulence in the international financial system and the immediate and damaging effect it is having on the whole world, the credit crunch is rightly a preoccupation of vast significance and importance," Charles said.

"But we take our eye off the 'climate crunch' at our peril," he said in a speech at Japan's National Museum of Emerging Science and Innovation. ...

"The scale of the challenge is clear, nothing less than an urgent, full-scale transformation to a low-carbon society is needed," he said.

So don't get too exercised about the looming worldwide recession, folks, because Charles wants to plunge the worldwide economies into the abyss by urgent transformation into a "low-carbon" society.

Meanwhile:

A nor'easter into Wednesday will continue to slam the Northeast with snow, rain and wind, causing more headaches for Major League Baseball. ...

Expert Senior Meteorologist Brett Anderson says, "This is a big storm by October standards." More a foot of snow will fall in the Pocono Mountains of northeastern Pennsylvania and the Adirondacks in upstate New York.

And also meanwhile:

Near-record cold, and mountain snow

Snow is accumulating this afternoon in the North Carolina mountains, and the rest of the Carolinas is shivering in the first cold outbreak of the season.

Temperatures that are more than 15 degrees below normal for this time of year, combined with strong northwest winds, are making today uncomfortably chilly in the Charlotte metro region.

I blame global warming and the "Charles effect."

Earliest snowfall ever in Boise

The Idaho Statesman reports,

Big snow flakes fell early Friday evening, turning Downtown Boise into a giant snow globe for people on their way home from work. The snow caught many people off guard, including this bicyclist heading down Idaho Street between 8th and 9th around 5:45 p.m. Across the Treasure Valley, tree branches heavy with wet, snow-covered leaves fell on power lines, causing scattered power outages. This is the earliest measurable snowfall in Boise since recordkeeping began in 1898, according to the National Weather Service.

I blame global warming.

New Zealand snow pack deepest ever

Turoa claims largest snow base ever:

Mt Ruapehu is claiming the biggest snow base ever recorded for a New
Zealand skifield with over 4.5m of snow on the ground.

Ruapehu Alpine Lifts, operator of Mt Ruapehu ski area, was celebrating
what it called a major milestone today.

The snow measuring stake at Turoa previously only stood at 380cm so had
to be extended to measure today's 455cm snow base.

The Whakapapa side of the mountain also had 350cm of snow, the biggest
since 1995.

I blame global warming.

All time low expected for Denver

No, I'm not referring to the upcoming DNC convention. It's the temperature.

Around the metro area, Friday may be rainy with a high predicted to plummet to a
record-low high of 61 degrees — that’s 26 degrees below the normal high of 87 degrees for mid-August.

The previous record minimum high temperature for Aug. 15 was 69 degrees in 1933, according to the National Weather Service.

“That will be a significant cool-off,” said Bob Koopmeiners of the National Weather
Service in Boulder.

I blame global warming.

More: "... over the next two decades, global temperatures may fall by about 2 degrees C — that is, to a level lower than any we have seen in the last 100 years."

Global warming alert

Record cold:

The return of the trade winds should temper the temperature extremes that occurred around the state over the weekend, but it will be increasing the wildfire threat, Maui weather analyst Glenn James said Tuesday. ...

It may appear to be an abrupt change in conditions, after Maui County experienced a record low 64 degrees on Sunday that combined with steady afternoon showers to provide another near record 65 degrees on Monday, before the daytime temperature zipped up to a high of 91 degrees that afternoon.

I blame global warming.

Related: Suddenly being green is not cool any more.

Alaska's shivering summer

Alaska is on track for the coldest summer on record.

I blame global warming. (HT: Don Surber)

Sea levels are falling

Sea levels have been falling for the last two years. Tigerhawk has the charts.

I blame global warming.

Growing glaciers?

Let's blame global warming. No, really.