Not so long ago I was telling you that 2005 was the likely the hottest year on record (at least for the Northern Hemisphere), but that was so yesterday’s news. However, we like to stay current at Booman Tribune, so let me go all 2006 on you with this lovely bit of information:

The average temperatures of the first half of 2006 were the highest ever recorded for the continental United States, scientists announced today.

Temperatures for January through June were 3.4 degrees Fahrenheit above the 20th-century average.

Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, Nebraska and Missouri experienced record warmth for the period, while no state experienced cooler-than-average temperatures, reported scientists from NOAA’s National Climatic Data Center in Asheville, N.C. [Heat Map]

I know what you’re thinking.

How can reasonable person deny the reality of global warming at this point, much less joke about it? Every year hotter than the last. Temperatures 3.4 degrees higher in 2006 (so far) than the average temperature for the entire 20th Century. Each decade since the 70’s significantly hotter than the last one. And, to top it all off, the overwhelming consensus opinion among climate scientists that human activity is the driving force behind this runaway rise in global temperatures.

Well, thanks to the “fair and balanced” procedures employed by our major media outlets (where every truth must be counterbalanced with an equal and opposite untruth), we now have our answer to that question: No reasonable person could deny global warming, but third rate conservative comedians can, and in the pages of the Christian Science Monitor, no less (hat tip to Think Progress):

Cont.

Freud called it displacement. People fixate on the environment when they can’t deal with real threats. Combating the climate gives nonhawks a chance to look tough. They can flex their muscle for Mother Nature, take a preemptive strike at an SUV. Forget the Patriot Act, it’s Kyoto that’ll save you. […]

That’s why in 2004 we got “The Day After Tomorrow” – so we could worry about junk science that may or may not kill us in 1,000 years instead of the people who really are trying to kill us the day after tomorrow.

While the hawks among us worry about preventing the Armageddon that’s coming, our modern-day hippies just want to make sure the planet is pristine when it does. In fact, the more menacing terrorism becomes, the more some people seem to worry about the weather. Scared and unsure how to fight terrorists, they confront “climate change,” which only requires spending trillions of other people’s dollars on something that may not need fixing or may not be fixable. No wonder some of these people chain themselves to trees – they think money grows on them.

Real funny stuff, huh? Sure had me spitting my coffee at my monitor. Yes, my sides still ache from the uncontrollable giggle fit her writing induced. Not because it’s so humorous, mind you, but because it is so blatantly, absurdly wrong in all its particulars.

Yet this is what our media have been reduced to: a place where right wing propagandists (and alleged comedians) can get an opportunity to heap scorn on those of us who think maybe we should be listening to what the climate scientists and their data sets are telling us, rather than mocking them. Yet, instead of legitimate debate of the scientific issues regarding global climate change, we get this ridiculous, cliché ridden screed by someone who knows as much about climate science as I know about standup comedy.

Actually, I take that last point back. I may be no expert on standup, but I know when someone isn’t very funny, and Ms. Gorin, frankly, your routine has bombed big time. I don’t know where you find the humor in insulting the intelligence of your audience, because I sure can’t find any. All I see is a lowlife right wing smear artist, regurgitating stereotypes and bigoted remarks that were out of date when I was in College thirty years ago. A sort of cheaper version of Ann Coulter without the blond hair and anorexia.

The shame of this affair isn’t Ms. Gorin’s attempt to denigrate climate scientists, and other intelligent thinking people who perceive the very real danger posed by global warming, through the use of juvenile insults and outright lies. No, the true shame lies with the publishers of the Christian Science Monitor, and with other news outlets who carry this woman’s column, who have given Julia Gorin a virtual soapbox from which to blare out her inane ramblings.

You want a debate on global warming, dear Christian Science Monitor publishers? Fine, but don’t give us the idiotic pretensions of a right wing stand up comedian and pretend she represents a legitimate side to that debate, or that her opinions and views on global climate change deserve wide dissemination. Because they don’t.

Either find someone with credibility in the field of climate science to present the argument that global warming is a hoax, or stop trying to combat the obvious truth that it is real and we are causing it. But, in any case, please quit trying to foist ill informed conservative pundits off on us as experts on global warming. You do your publication and our nation a disservice when you try to “balance” coverage of this issue with such mindless and idiotic commentary.