SACRAMENTO – On August 4, the temperature here was 104 degrees Fahrenheit.  That’s nothing unusual for California's capital in the summer, as residents know full well. What happened next proved unusual indeed.

Within 24 hours, the temperature dropped a full 28 degrees to 74, the lowest "high" temperature for an August 5 since they began keeping records. That would be 130 years ago, in 1877, only a few years after Mark Twain was writing for the Sacramento Union.

The next day, August 6, 2007, the mercury plunged again, to 74 F, another record and the lowest "high" temperature for that day since 1906 — 101 years ago when the reading was 77. Sacramentans donned jackets, duly noted in "Summer chill is one for the ages," a front-page, above-the-fold story in the Sacramento Bee on August 7. The normal high for this time of year, the story noted, is 93. Cooler temperatures continued during the week, to the delight of locals.

"Don't tell Al Gore," the story began, "but global warming is taking a holiday in Sacramento this week."

Mr. Gore is a leading proponent of the theory that the world is rapidly getting hotter, that this change is due to human activity, and that the only way to avert catastrophe is to quash economic activity. The theory is a subdivision of the fundamentalist pantheism that has become a kind of national religion. It admits no possibility of reasonable doubt, and disdains those who remain skeptical as heretics, obscurantists, and pawns of big business.

The amount of overall global warming actually detected by scientists in the past century ranges between one and two degrees Fahrenheit, or 0.07 and 0.08 degrees Celsius. Not much, in other words. Warming theorists warn that there is more to come, but as farmers know, the weather does not always cooperate with predictions.

On July 7, the former vice-president staged the massive multi-venue Live Earth concert to combat climate change, featuring such atmospheric scientists as Bon Jovi and Madonna. Two days later, on July 9, it snowed in Buenos Aires, Argentina, for the first time since 1918, nearly 90 years. That story was not widely covered in America but in Britain the Guardian observed, "The snow followed a bitter cold snap in late May that saw subfreezing temperatures, the coldest in 40 years in Buenos Aires. That cold wave contributed to an energy crisis and 23 deaths from exposure."

In other news ignored by the media, the hottest year on record is no longer 1998. According to new figures from NASA, it's 1934, and the warmest 10 years include 1921, 1931, 1934, and 1938 — all before World War II. These corrections confirm that global warming advocates are not inerrant but entirely fallible. They also tend to be silent when the weather does not cooperate with their theory.

During heat waves, with "hottest on record" temperatures, the warming troops do not hesitate to get apocalyptic. When the change points in the other direction, with temperatures the coldest on record, best to ignore it. So there is clearly a double standard, where one should not exist.  

This is a scientific issue, not a doomsday cult endorsed by government. Pronouncements about climate should be based on facts and observation. The facts are that observable warming is about one degree; the hottest year on record is 1934, not 1998; and a record chill hit Buenos Aires and Sacramento. To be skeptical of global warming prophecy is not just reasonable, but cool.