And thus it begins:

I am El Niño! All other tropical storms must bow before El Niño! Yo soy El Niño! For those of you who don’t “habla Español”, El Niño is Spanish for.. The Niño! To any of you hurricanes who are listening, step on up! Because nobody can take El Niño! I challenge any of you punk-ass tropical storms to a no-holds barred cage match! Any time! Any coast! I swear to God all Mighty it is time to pay the piper, ’cause El Niño’s coming for ya! And it ain’t gonna be pretty!

As soon as you cherrypick to support your side of the argument, you lose any moral authority to accuse the other guys of impropriety when they do it. See Roger Pielke Jr.’s post today:

Such tactics have been criticized as cherrypicking and misrepresentation by critics of the use of science by those on the political right, and appropriately so. It seems to me that cherrypicking and misrepresentation is improper no matter who is doing it. Advocacy groups and politicians will always make the best case they can for their agenda, at the known risk of being called out by the other side.

In the climate change debate, both sides have an incentive to scientize – to argue about the science rather than the resulting value/political/policy propositions.

Those who advocate greenhouse gas reductions believe that the science is clear and compels a particular policy response. Those who oppose greenhouse gas reductions have found great success by arguing over the uncertainty of the science. In the resulting gridlock, we never really get to the political/policy debate, happily ensconced instead in the furious minutiae of hockey sticks and the role of the sun.

Donald Boudreaux sidesteps that tangle and tackled the issue head-on in a piece last week on Reason that says, in essence, OK, I accept the science, now let’s talk about the economic realities of the proposed policy responses.

Being neither an atmospheric scientist nor a former U.S. vice-president, I haven’t the expertise to judge whether or not global warming is a reality or the extent to which humans cause it. Experts who I trust, however, persuade me that science does indeed show that global temperatures are rising and that industrial activity is at least part of the reason. I’m prepared to believe even the possibility that global warming will eventually kill millions of people.

But I nevertheless insist that science does not unambiguously endorse action against global warming. Put differently – and contrary to today’s elite opinion – ignoring global warming is not necessarily a sign of scientific illiteracy or of ideologically induced stupidity.

You don’t need to agree with the guy to applaud him for getting on with the part of the actual debate that matters. (Hat tip Benny Peiser.)

I’ve said before that Kelly Redmond is something of a national treasure. This interview by Kit Stolz is a good reminder of why.

In an age of scientific generalization, Kelly, deputy director of the Western Regional Climate Center, is the quintessential generalist in a couple of different ways. First, he’s conversant with all the key scientific work anyone’s doing that has any implications for understanding the climate of western North America. Second, he’s always out and about talking to the people who need climate information, giving him a great sense of what’s actually important at the interface between climate science and society.

A friend on the opposite part of the planet sends along this, and wonders whether it’s an outlier or a harbinger of bad ski seasons to come:

The non-profit group that runs southern Tasmania’s ski-tows is facing a loss of thousands of dollars after a snow-free winter.

With the season due to end in three weeks, the ski-tows at Mt Mawson have not opened once this year, and the ski runs are covered in green growth.

Southern Tasmanian Ski Association spokesman Julian Oakes says the group still needs to pay for insurance and summer maintenance, without any income.

“It’s been disastrous really,” he said.

“We have had no tow operation at all this season, and early April it was looking promising but then the weather didn’t follow through and we’ve had very little snowfall and there’s no cover there at the moment.”

This follows a poor season last year.