The Left thinks it has found the perfect gambit. Let's make the weather the instrument of statist ideology, they say to themselves. But the plan will boomerang. The vagaries of weather patterns (sensitive dependence on initial conditions) will prove, and indeed already are proving, to be too chaotic for an indeological straightjacket, and human consciousness, steeped as it is in a long evolution of coping with weather, is not as easily deceived by chicken little descriptions of a falling sky as the statists would hope.
The NY times article or the papers?
There's a lot of documented evidence of ecological shifts over the 20th century due to warming. I don't see where it is dishonest to report that. If they attempt to use these observations to influence policy, then they are stepping out of their scientific bailiwick.
Here in the greater Washington, D.C. region, three months ago we were being indundated with drought stories. Now, after three months of heavy precipitation, we are actually experiencing flooding along the Potomac.
What we need in this country is more separation of science and big government. The problem is that you just can't sponge off the taxpayers by saying "this has all happened before, and everything is going to be O.K."