THE UNEARNED SMUGNESS OF GLOBAL-WARMING DENIERS

They say, "See, it's cold today, and it was really cold yesterday. Therefore, global warming is a myth."

Call this the Sen. Inhofe Effect.

If it gets unexpectedly cold (their 2nd grade logic demands), there can be no such thing as global warming. Therefore, our weather of the last four or five nights proves that Al Gore's wrong, that the tree-huggers are trying to deprive us of our SUVs, and that it's all a left-wing conspiracy.

But climatologists have warned all along that the effects of global warming would produce unusual extremes of both high and low temps, often out of synch with "norms" or averages. Hence, the unusual warmth of March tempts out buds and leaves that are then assassinated by an unusual April cold snap. That IS global warming, in both its parts and in its sum.

"Extremes that used to be rare will become more common," says Ray Bradley, director of the Climate System Research Center at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and author of several books on climate change. He means both extremes, oh you dittohead deniers.

Same goes for extremes of drought and flood, but there's no need to get ahead of ourselves.