The same week, Saudi authorities reported that it had rained in Mecca...

The same week, Saudi authorities reported that it had rained in Mecca despite a temperature of 109 degrees, the hottest downpour in the planet's history.

And, again, forgive me if I'm not signing on to this alarmist dreck that's being published, purely coincidentally, on the eve of an election where Obama is on the ropes and grasping at reasons to be re-elected.

Uh, no. It's rained in the summer time in Death Valley where the temps typically run around 115F to 125F in the summer.

It can also fall below freezing there, so it can snow. But was it 125F and raining at the same time like Mecca? No. Relative humidity normally forbids it.

To make matters worse, a new record was set in Needles, California, on August 12, 2012, when it rained during 115F temperatures(11% humidity, also a record).

About a month after that article was posted.

Why is it that, of all the things I've read, watched and listened to over the past couple of months, you're the only one among those several hundred sources seeing things that way? What am I missing, 'cause you seem to be the only one grasping?

Instinct is certianly a valuable asset. I'm just not sure it's the best tool for making scientific inquiry.

I agree. However, my gut and my amazing powers of observation coupled with a sound grasp of the obvious tell me that this particular article is more about politics than it is about science.

Why?

1. It's election season and it is no surprise that a New York magazine is agitating to support Obama and the Democrats.

2. This is coming from Rolling Stone which manages to be to the left of the People's World.

3. It's on the Politics page of Rolling Stone and not the Science page - a Freudian slip on their part, no doubt.

I agree. However, my gut and my amazing powers of observation coupled with a sound grasp of the obvious tell me that this particular article is more about politics than it is about science.

Why?

1. It's election season and it is no surprise that a New York magazine is agitating to support Obama and the Democrats.

2. This is coming from Rolling Stone which manages to be to the left of the People's World.

3. It's on the Politics page of Rolling Stone and not the Science page - a Freudian slip on their part, no doubt.

Not that our leaders seemed to notice. Last month the world's nations, meeting in Rio for the 20th-anniversary reprise of a massive 1992 environmental summit, accomplished nothing. Unlike George H.W. Bush, who flew in for the first conclave, Barack Obama didn't even attend.
...
Copenhagen failed spectacularly. Neither China nor the United States, which between them are responsible for 40 percent of global carbon emissions, was prepared to offer dramatic concessions, and so the conference drifted aimlessly for two weeks until world leaders jetted in for the final day. Amid considerable chaos, President Obama took the lead in drafting a face-saving "Copenhagen Accord" that fooled very few. Its purely voluntary agreements committed no one to anything, and even if countries signaled their intentions to cut carbon emissions, there was no enforcement mechanism.
...
Barack Obama, for instance, campaigned more aggressively about climate change than any president before him – the night he won the nomination, he told supporters that his election would mark the moment "the rise of the oceans began to slow and the planet began to heal." And he has achieved one significant change: a steady increase in the fuel efficiency mandated for automobiles. It's the kind of measure, adopted a quarter-century ago, that would have helped enormously. But in light of the numbers I've just described, it's obviously a very small start indeed.
...
Last month, the Obama administration indicated that it would give Shell permission to start drilling in sections of the Arctic.

Bill McKibben is the author of a dozen books about the environment, beginning with The End of Nature in 1989, which is regarded as the first book for a general audience on climate change. He is a founder of the grassroots climate campaign 350.org, which has coordinated 15,000 rallies in 189 countries since 2009. Time Magazine called him 'the planet's best green journalist' and the Boston Globe said in 2010 that he was 'probably the country's most important environmentalist.' Schumann Distinguished Scholar at Middlebury College, he holds honorary degrees from a dozen colleges, including the Universities of Massachusetts and Maine, the State University of New York, and Whittier and Colgate Colleges. In 2011 he was elected a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

I have a tendency to look past what people want me to see or think. It is a tendency in my nature that has kept me alive on many an occasion and I go with it by instinct.