English weather is proverbially lousy partly because it’s so wet all the time. But January 16 of 1362 was especially bad, the onset of the Grote Mandrenke which if your low Saxon is in good working order will alarm you because it means the "Great Drowning of Men".

Also known as the "Second St. Marcellus Flood" because it peaked on his feast day, January 17, the Grote Mandrenke took at least 25,000 lives in the British Isles and northern Europe from Denmark to the Netherlands. A previous "First St. Marcellus flood" had hit in 1219, drowning some 36,000 people in northern Europe, which surely indicates that extreme weather did not begin when Al Gore hit middle-age.

In fact the Grote Mandrenke was the result of a massive southwesterly Atlantic gale that sent a storm side surging far inland, sweeping away islands, cutting off parts of the mainland and wiping entire towns off the map to the point that some cannot now be located even through archeology. And it was, as the "Second St. Marcellus flood" business indicates, far from unusual in that period.

Wikipedia notes blandly that "This storm tide, along with others of like size in the 13th century and 14th century, played a part in the formation of the Zuiderzee, and was characteristic of the unsettled and changeable weather in northern Europe at the beginning of the Little Ice Age." But hang on. Doesn’t that sound exactly like "climate change"? But hardly "man-made" or, if you like long words, "anthropogenic."

OK then. If drastic, menacing climate change has been clearly happening since long before humans invented factory mass production, and has been known to have been happening, it tells you what?

The politically correct answer is nothing. Everybody contemplating any issue other than the current panic knows climate has always varied, often suddenly and with dramatic consequences, and says it openly. Glaciers suddenly advance and suddenly retreat. The Earth warms and cools repeatedly. But never mind. Pay no attention. The science is settled. It’s all our fault.

Except the science is no more settled than the climate itself. The famous "Little Ice Age" itself, which brought the Middle Ages to something of a screeching halt and lasted into Victorian times, was not caused by humans. But nor logically then was its end, which set off the warming trend that persisted through most of the 20^th century. Indeed most of that warming awkwardly preceded the large increase in atmospheric CO2 to which it is attributed by those who do not believe that causes must precede effects for science, or life, to make any sense.

Blaming humans for unstable weather is about as rational as blaming St. Marcellus. Which people in the Middle Ages were too sensible to do, I might pointedly add.

In my latest National Post column I say that neither Jane Fonda nor the rest of us can reach low-carbon nirvana just by really nicely really wanting it.

In my second video for Canadians for Energy East, a project of the Economic Education Association of Alberta, I explain what opponents should not say about them and what supporters should.

In my new video for Canadians for Energy East, a project of the Economic Education Association of Alberta, I explain why Energy East is the right practical answer to the actual choices we face in energy policy in Canada.

In my latest National Post commentary I reproach the government for the huge carbon footprint of its delegations to international climate conferences.

Another strange item from my "at last we can begin to live" files: a story in today's National Post says a new GMO potato has been approved for use in Canada that "is less likely to bruise or turn brown when cut." A solution to which, again, I search in vain for the problem. I'm not convinced that all the criticisms made of GMOs are entirely rational. But I do think that when we're messing with nature for reasons as trivial as this one we're risking trouble for nothing.

To be fair the story says the "Innate" potato has less asparagine, and that this "amino acid found in many starchy foods produces acrylamide, suspected to be a human carcinogen" when you cook potatoes above 120 C which many people probably do. But honestly, whose life was really rendered less fulfilling because potatoes turn brown when cut or produce trivial quantities of something "suspected to be a human carcinogen" when cooked?

In the entire history of mankind, how many lives have been lost because of the difference between the quantity of asparagine in a natural potato and the quantity in an Innate potato?

Either we're using science for such trivial purposes because we've run out of real problems that can be solved through science, as could arguably also be happening with the latest breathless improvements in smartphones, or because we don't know what real problems are.

So again, don't run screaming into the woods, or out of the fields, because of this new GMO potato. It won't eat Etobicoke. But it also won't solve any problem that matters.

In my latest commentary for the National Post I argue that the debate over carbon taxes as a key environmental policy is pointlessly obscured by bickering over whether this tax, and only this one, should be “revenue neutral”. Especially as a number of leading politicians seem to have no idea whatsoever what the term even means, let alone why it matters.

In my latest National Post commentary, I warn that the Liberals may be creating a pipeline policy where approval is impossible.