Why does anybody care what Harold Camping says? Why does anybody even know who he is? “Doomsday Cult Leader Predicts End of World” is the biggest “Dog Bites Man” headline since the dog bit the man. And yet the news has gone nuts over this guy. I couldn’t really put my finger on why I do not care about this story, until I read something James Taranto wrote yesterday:

Why are only religious doomsday cultists subjected to such ridicule? Reuters notes that “Camping previously made a failed prediction Jesus Christ would return to Earth in 1994.” Ha ha, you can’t believe anything this guy says! But who jeered at the U.N.’s false prediction that there would be 50 million “climate refugees” by 2010? We did, but not Reuters.

That’s it right there: The end of the world only counts when they predict it. Taranto calls Camping “the Christian Al Gore,” and he’s exactly right. Well, Camping obviously has better control over his between-meal snacking, but other than that.

Now we’ve got Al Roker yammering that global warming is making the sky gods angry. And Noel Sheppard at Newsbusters has this:

ABC’s “World News” on Monday did a segment attempting to tie this year’s tornado season to global warming.

I guess the folks at “World News” didn’t read the report filed at their own website Monday:

ABC News spoke with lead forecaster Greg Carbin of the National Weather Service’s National Severe Storm Laboratory and asked him why the 2011 tornado season has been so extraordinarily devastating.

Is the death toll in 2011 significantly higher than previous years?

Short Answer: Yes. The average death toll is normally 60 to 70.

Meteorologist Greg Carbin: “In the past decade the average annual death toll from tornadoes has been around 60 to 70 people. The average killer tornado claims about two lives and so what’s going on this year is something well above that. … We’re now approaching about 500 fatalities for the year to date, just under that. That is something we have not experienced in this country in over 35 years and it still looks like we’re still around the number nine as far as the deadliest year on record. So there have been many years in the past over the past couple of generations in which we’ve exceeded 500 fatalities in a year, it’s just that they haven’t occurred recently…”

Have there been more tornadoes in 2011 than previous years?

Short Answer: No, the tornadoes are just hitting populated areas.

(Emphasis Noel’s.) So global warming is causing more tornadoes, and more people are dying in them than ever before… Except there have been 8 worse years on record, and it’s been 35 years since the last one, which was way back when everybody thought we were going to die from global cooling. Oh yeah, and also, there totally aren’t more tornadoes.

Everything bad that happens is due to global warming. And if you question this truth, you hate science. Shut up, blasphemer.