There's been altogether too much denial and screwing around on this blog, and I think it's high time I took things more seriously. I therefore intend to deal head-on with what Al Gore calls the "most important moral, ethical, spiritual and political issue humankind has ever faced."

It's about time, isn't it? My denial ends -- and my science begins -- right here and now, with this blog post!

We've all heard that all politics is local and we've all heard that we're supposed to, you know, "THINK GLOBALLY, ACT LOCALLY." Well, since weather is politics, and politics is weather, the same local and global rules apply. All weather is local -- starting right here!

On Friday, the temperature here rose sharply -- reaching the mid 50s.

As the snow melted, I thought to document the peculiar phenomenon:

This was one of the last patches of receding snow in my yard, as it looked on Friday:

And here's exactly the same spot on Saturday -- taken moments before it disappeared forever:

Yes, I do mean forever. Those flakes (which by then had become crystalline structures clinging precariously to the ground as if for their very lives!) have literally disappeared.

Never to return again.

I was so upset by the implications of this that I prepared my own scientific chart to document the ominous spike in temperatures.

Here it is, as submitted it for peer review:

Had the warming trend continued at that rate (20 degrees per day), according to my calculations, the planet would have been incinerated by March 26 ( the date at which 451 degrees Fahrenheit would have been reached, of course.)

However, that is not what happened.

Instead, a bizarre invasion of arctic air (doubtless caused by the ushering in of the new ice age triggered by the Notorious Shutdown Of The Atlantic Conveyor Belt System) has swept into the area:

Arctic air, accompanied by snow squalls and strong wind gusts, is sweeping into the Northeast this afternoon. The bone-chilling invasion is setting the stage for dangerously cold wind chills later tonight and early tomorrow. Wind chills in northern New York state and northern New England may tumble to 40 below zero by sunrise. In eastern Massachusetts, including Boston, wind chill factors could plunge to 15 or 20 below. Even around NYC, wind chills are expected to fall below zero. Frost bite can occur rapidly in such conditions, and residents of the Northeast, especially north of the Mason-Dixon Line, are advised to dress for extremely cold conditions tonight and tomorrow morning.

Let's see.... From the mid 50s to the mid teens in a two day period is also a very ominous phenomenon.

This called for another carefully prepared, scientifically peer-reviewed graph, which I assure my readers was prepared with state of the art methods.

If current trends continue, temperatures will hit Zero Degrees Kelvin by March 30(a 20 degree daily drop in temperatures until -459.40000000000003 degrees Fahrenheit is reached.)

Zero degrees Kelvin, of course is "absolute zero" -- "the temperature at which all molecules stop all movement."

All molecules will stop all movement?

Gee, that sounds awful.

That means my computer probably won't work anymore, and I'd have a major problem writing this blog!

Of course, according to certain scientific skeptics (the ones whose opinions Al Gore doesn't think should be reported), my modeling might be off a little:

Formerly of University College London, Dr. Orrell is best known among scientists for arguing that the failures of weather forecasting are not due to chaotic effects -- as in the butterfly that causes the hurricane -- but to errors of modelling. He sees the same problems in the predictions of the recent Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report, which he calls "extremely vague," and says there is no scientific reason to think the climate is more predictable than the weather.

"Models will cheerfully boil away all the water in the oceans or cover the world in ice, even with pre-industrial levels of Co2," he writes in Apollo's Arrow . And so scientists use theoretical concepts like "flux adjustments" to make the models agree with reality. When models about the future climate are in agreement, "it says more about the self-regulating group psychology of the modelling community than it does about global warming and the economy."

In explaining such an arcane topic for a general audience, he found himself returning again and again to religious metaphors to explain our faith in predictions, referring to the "weather gods" and the "images of almost biblical wrath" in the literature. He sketched the rise of "the gospel of deterministic science," a faith system that was born with Isaac Newton and died with Albert Einstein. He said his own physics education felt like an "indoctrination" into the use of models, and that scientists in his field, "like priests... feel they are answering a higher calling."

I'm sorry folks! I know that this is "the most important moral, ethical, spiritual and political issue humankind has ever faced," but my hockey stick got stuck in the conveyor belt. I'll try to lead a more virtuous life in the future.