Jonah Goldberg notes, “I’m sure this isn’t the first, but I just caught this on Drudge. The Midwestern floods? Global warming. What else?”

Is it actually so absurd to suggest that a phenomenon linked to a greater likelihood of extreme weather events by scientists for some time might have something to do with extreme weather events now occurring? For anyone paying attention, there is a disturbing trend developing over the last few years: a deadly European heat-wave, droughts in the Southeast, the West and Australia; Midwestern floods and tornadoes, powerful tropical storms like the one that killed tens of thousands in Burma, etc. No weather event, however, is ever going to be accompanied by a footnote stating that “I am caused by global warming, just like Al Gore said.”

When environmentalists start saying that global warming causes tooth decay and the heartbreak of psoriasis, I’ll be sneering along with Golberg; but to suggest that climate change might affect the weather seems entirely reasonable.