The following news headline appeared on the internet last week: “Scientists warn global warming will fuel spread of ticks that carry Lyme disease.”
The corresponding article begins this way:
Another effect of climate change may be crawling up your leg this summer as you frolic in the woods.
Scientists say our warming world is speeding the spread of ticks that carry potentially debilitating Lyme disease.
Okay, given that many in the climate change fraternity — including, famously, Phil Jones of East Anglia University — have been forced to concede that global warming has been on “pause” since 1995, how exactly is it “speeding the spread” of disease-carrying ticks?
Don’t read this news article for an answer. In fact, from the third paragraph on, the article is a straightforward discussion of the slow spread of the tick population into various southern regions of Canada, and the new risk of Lyme disease that this brings. There is no further mention of global warming, and no attempt is made to establish a significant relationship — or even a coincidental one — between the movements of the ticks and changes in mean annual temperatures in the relevant regions.
So why mention global warming in this context at all? Because the first rule of all modern discourse related to weather, disease, happiness, poverty, famine, wildlife, or almost anything else is that tribute must be paid to the god Climate Change Theory. One cannot discuss the spread of disease without mentioning climate change. So the article mentions it. No further reason is required. It is simply a matter of faith, of public policy, and of good breeding to acknowledge climate change as a preface to any observation about anything.
(If you think this seems overstated, I recommend this 2007 American Thinker blog post, listing over six hundred nasty effects that have been attributed to global warming. One suspects that if you mentioned that number to one of our sustainability experts these days, he’d earnestly tell you that the list is far too conservative.)
One senses that journalists, scientists, and laymen are afraid to talk about any subject that might be explained by climate change without mentioning climate change, lest they be seen as climate infidels — i.e., as people who do not accept the centrality of climate change to all modern events. This leaves the rest of us reticent to utter casual niceties such as, “Boy, it’s hot this week,” for fear of getting some stupid response about global warming.