Culture & Celebrity

After weeks of hearing about New York’s warm winter--okay, the warmest winter in the U.S. ever--I was a bit dismayed to arrive in my hometown in the midst of a cold spell. What a doozy! Sure, I could take comfort in today's report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which announces that our latest spate of global warming, supposedly caused by us, will be a centuries-long trend. But, really now, what do a bunch of scientists know? They're all just a bunch of un-patriotic treehuggers who are good at speculative musings at best. Does El Nino not mean anything to you nerds! If, like me, you're looking for a more reliable (and frankly, more adorable) measure of "climate change", forget the White House: Bush ain't as cute as Punxsutawney Phil. The famous groundhog (along with Staten Island Chuck) just announced that they didn't see their shadows, which means that the winter this year will be over soon. As some trustworthy researchers at Penn State observed a few years ago, Phil's an ideal tool for measuring these climate aberrations. Yes, the great oscillation of the groundhog's predictions in the past decades shows something serious is going on. But thankfully, Phil can't be influenced by those damn liberals or some stupid climate report. As he knows, the weather's obviously got nothing to do with cars, or airplanes, or factories, or greenhouses (not sure what they could possibly have to do with it!). And anyway, if by some small chance we are somehow responsible for the weather, well, nobody wants to go to Bolivia to ski anyway, and the same winter, over and over again, can get quite boring.