The maddening thing about global warming – or climate change, to use the all-encompassing term - is that it can be used to explain just about any phenomena at any time. Whether it’s forest fires, disappearing honeybees, a warm day in February, or a stick of gum that melted in one’s pocket, amateur climatologists everywhere are quick to chalk it all up to manmade global warming.

From the way they describe it, the signs of our imminent doom are everywhere.

The latest group to claim expertise on the topic is Pets Across America, whose scientific observation was an influx of kittens at the adoption shelters throughout its network. The group announced that stray felines increased by 30% from 2005 to 2006. PAA’s logic is that cats, which are only randy when it’s warm out, have had a longer breeding season due to climate change.

While it follows that a few more weeks of whoopee time for amorous cats would result in more kittens, the data set is not exactly robust, much less convincing. The planet has been warming and cooling on its own for millennia – what conclusions can we possibly draw from one year?

And who is to say that such warming or cooling is a bad thing?

This line of thinking got NASA chief Michael Griffin in hot water last week, when he was asked about climate change during an NPR interview. "To assume that it is a problem is to assume that the state of Earth's climate today is the optimal climate, the best climate that we could have or ever have had and that we need to take steps to make sure that it doesn't change," Griffin said. "I guess I would ask which human beings — where and when — are to be accorded the privilege of deciding that this particular climate that we have right here today, right now is the best climate for all other human beings. I think that's a rather arrogant position for people to take."

While most would view this as a detached analysis of a topic too often dominated by emotion and hyperbole, Griffin’s response drew swift condemnation from his colleagues. James Hansen, NASA's top climate scientist at the Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York, said, "It's unbelievable…I thought he had been misquoted. It's so unbelievable." "It's an incredibly arrogant and ignorant statement," Hansen told ABC News.

The uproar forced Griffin to retreat this week, saying that he was sorry he even touched on the subject. “Unfortunately, this is an issue which has become far more political than technical, and it would have been well for me to have stayed out," Griffin said.

Indeed, Mr. Griffin learned first hand that hell hath no fury like a true believer crossed by one of his own. If anything, Hansen’s response shows the near religious fervor of climate change adherents: he sounds like Tom Cruise after finding out that John Travolta is seeing a shrink and leaving Scientology.

While Griffin was busy taking his foot out of his mouth, other aspiring climate experts joined the growing chorus of doomsayers. Nancy Pelosi, on another of her shadow presidency junkets, visited Greenland recently, where she said she saw “firsthand evidence that climate change is a reality.” “There’s just no denying it,” she added, “It wasn't caused by the people of Greenland — it was caused by the behavior of the rest of the world."

Fair point. With a population of 57,000, Greenland would have a tough time causing a riot, much less climate change. Each Greenlander could drive a Hummer and use five cans of Aqua Net on his hair every day - the whole country would still have the carbon footprint of a turnip. (I’m sure, however, that they appreciate the speaker’s exculpatory comments.)

But who knew that we could “see” climate change, much less its causes? While scientists are pouring over decades of data and running computer models to support their theories, Speaker Pelosi has connected all the dots and solved the case with a quick stopover in Greenland. It was the industrialized West, above the Arctic Circle, with the lead pipe.

In this sort of environment, serious dialogue is impossible. We know we’re in trouble when scientists would rather avoid the topic, lest they incur the wrath of their peers, and pet shelters see fit to opine on climate change. This is insane. Just as watching a few episodes of “CSI” does not make one a forensic pathologist, an extra crate of tabbies left on the stoop doesn’t create a climate expert.

Yet this is what it has come to. The science has taken a back seat to the rhetoric, and woe to anyone who steps out of line. It’s safer to join the ranks of true believers and find climate change lurking in every corner of our lives.

Fortunately, that means I can blame global warming for the VCR tape I left on my dashboard.

Warped the heck out of the thing.