The following is an excerpt from OpinionJournal.com’s “Best of the Web” written by the editor, James Taranto.

Bottom Stories of the Day

  • “Ukraine Took 68th Place Regarding the Best Quality of Life”–headline, For-UA.com, Jan. 8
  • “Comments by Fox’s Brit Hume Upset Some Buddhists”–headline, Associated Press, Jan. 7
  • “Body Scanners Don’t Faze Canadians”–headline, Globe and Mail (Toronto), Jan. 7

Hot Enough for You?
The Associated Press assures you that it is:

Beijing had its coldest morning in almost 40 years and its biggest snowfall since 1951. Britain is suffering through its longest cold snap since 1981. And freezing weather is gripping the Deep South, including Florida’s orange groves and beaches.

Whatever happened to global warming?

Such weather doesn’t seem to fit with warnings from scientists that the Earth is warming because of greenhouse gases. But experts say the cold snap doesn’t disprove global warming at all–it’s just a blip in the long-term heating trend.

It is indisputably true that cold weather doesn’t disprove global warming, any more than a short-term rise in the stock market proves the economy is booming, or the Colts’ and Saints’ late-season losing streaks prove that they’re lousy teams.

It is equally true that heat waves, hurricanes and other extreme but nonfrigid conditions don’t prove global warming. Yet journalists routinely include warmist propaganda in their reports on that kind of weather, as the Washington Post’s Andrew Freedman confesses:

It’s absolutely true that extreme heat generates coverage of climate change, whereas extreme cold does not. But where skeptics see a media conspiracy to ignore cooling, I see an effort to accurately communicate climate science to the public. Of course there is a “possibility” that the earth is cooling, but virtually every peer reviewed climate study has shown the opposite to be true.

Freedman does not note that the “Climategate” emails have demonstrated the warmists’ corruption of the peer-review process, but never mind. He goes on to recommend a different approach to weather coverage:

What, then, should the press be doing differently today? In my view, journalists should make an effort to include the broader climate context whenever it is scientifically justified. That means that it might be unnecessary to mention climate change in a story about a short-term cold snap, but could be integral to a story on heavy snowfall.

For perspective on how this might be done, I turned to Joe Romm of the liberal Center for American Progress . . .

To figure out how to cover a disputed and highly politicized area of science, Freedman turns to an advocacy group on the left. He thereby reinforces every suspicion global-warming skeptics have ever had about the media. He may thereby have unwittingly done a service to the truth.

For more “Best of the Web” click here and look for the “Best of the Web Today” link in the middle column below “Today’s Columnists.