The scam that will not die -- By Wesley Pruden, The Washington Times

We were all supposed to be dead by now, fried to a toasty potatolike chip. Or doomed to die with the polar bears. It was to be a soggy end for the most beautiful planet in the cosmos and for all the passengers riding on it. The global alarmists never quite got their story of fright and fear straight, whether by now we would be fried or frozen.

First they warned of global warming, and when they needed a new narrative "global warming" became "climate change." They finally settled on something they could prove because the climate does, in fact, change. First it rains, and then the sun comes out. Then it rains again. Rain, sun, rain, sun, drip, drip and dry. The narrative is ever new.

There was always a scarcity of evidence that the globe was on a wild tear, but there was never a scarcity of alarm. We got bedtime stories of ghosts and goblins from the graveyard, wild monsters from Boggy Creek, even a creature from a black lagoon and all kinds of other things that make the night a time of fearsome fun and games. Al Gore, who had a lot of time on his hands after his White House gig was aborted, even made a movie about it. It's still popular in certain circles on Halloween night.

Only 13 years ago (and 13 is the unluckiest of the numbers, which is pretty scary, too), a scientist at the climate-research unit of Britain's University of East Anglia predicted that "within a few years' time" a snowfall would be "a vary rare and exciting event. Children just aren't going to know what snow is." Some of the newspapers eagerly cooperated with spreading the "news." One of them reported that for the first time a well-known toy shop on London's Regent Street had no sleds on display. Who needs scientific evidence when you have a story like that?

That was then, and this is now, and Britain is huddled against predictions that 2013-14 will be one of the coldest and wettest winters in a very long time. "Worst winter for decades," cried the Daily Express. "Record-breaking snow predicted for November." And so it came to pass. By the end of November, British teeth were chattering, and snow, ice and plummeting temperatures were at hand all across "the sceptr'd isle," and it wasn't yet winter. The kids were getting lots of lessons in "snow," the snow they were never going to see.

(Click link below to read more)
READ MORE Sphere: Related Content