Fifty shades of mad

This headline could not be helped

It’s not often that a prediction one has only just made turns out to be trailing actual developments, yet this is exactly what has happened to one of my highly informed, expert predictions for the year, namely, that climate catastrophists will start catastrophising much harder than before.

Indeed, with the transition ideal slipping further from their grasp, worshippers have cranked up the emotional heater as far as it would go, blaming climate change for earthquakes and, of course, the Los Angeles fires. That’s a positive development for the rest of us. It confirms hopes that reason is returning, and not a moment too soon. Also, we’re going to be getting even more free entertainment than we got last year.

Now, about those earthquakes. A while ago, some TV anchor or some such individual suggested that climate change had an effect on seismic activity and, if I recall correctly, she received the support of similar individuals in the studio. Now, there’s a study that, per Euronews, supports “a growing body of evidence that climate influences seismic activity.”

The body, you wonder? Well, there’s this one study from Colorado State University that claims “glacier retreat” causes increased seismic activity because as the glaciers melt, their weight on active faults declines, freeing up trapped seismic powers. “Climate change is happening at a rate that is orders of magnitude faster than we see in the geologic record,” according to the lead author of the study, for whom the paper is a master’s thesis and I don’t want to bad-mouth master’s theses but I’d rather hear it from a PhD.

Obviously, there are plenty of PhDs ready and willing to deliver but perhaps none is more appropriate than Michael E., The Hockey Stick, Mann, who was lighting fast in blaming climate change and the consumption of oil and gas for the devastating fires in L.A. this month.