Emi­ly Yof­fe’s mud­dled expla­na­tion of why she’s will­ing to pre­tend glob­al warm­ing won’t hap­pen is deeply con­fused. Con­sid­er this state­ment (a ver­sion of which is a com­mon part of the denial­ist toolkit):

I refuse to trust a weath­er pre­dic­tion for August 2080, when no one can offer me one for August 2008 (or 2007 for that matter).

Of course we can. In north­ern tem­per­ate zones, August 2008 will be hot. In the Mid­west, there will be mas­sive thun­der­storms bub­bling up, drop­ping sheets of rain, and the clouds will plant mighty roots of light­ing into the prairie soil. In New York, it will be mug­gy. In Chica­go, it won’t be quite as mug­gy, but it will be hotter.

And if we do noth­ing, August 2080 will be hot­ter than the aver­age of August 2008 and August 2007.

What Yoffe means, of course, is that we can’t tell her when it will rain in August. But no one is talk­ing about when it will rain in August 2080. That is weath­er. The broad­er pat­tern is cli­mate, and we are pret­ty good at pre­dict­ing that, which is why agri­cul­ture is able to per­sist, and why peo­ple can make reser­va­tions for vaca­tion spots months ahead of time. In Decem­ber 2008, Flori­da will have nicer weath­er than New York, and in August 2007, New Hamp­shire will have nicer weath­er than New York.