It seems that I point to Pielke in half my posts, but he's been on a roll. Read this one immediately.

The almost daily use of current weather and climate events to argue for action on greenhouse gases by the media and political advocates is among the most egregious misuses of science in the climate debate. Not only does it redirect attention away from those actions most likely to have an effect on the impacts of weather and climate, but it creates disincentives for action on the longer-term problem of human-caused climate change. . .

The hard reality is that the only justifiable use of current weather and climate events as a tool of promotion for action on climate change is in support of improving adaptive responses and reducing vulnerability.

He supports those assertions by referencing work in cognitive heuristics. The research by John Sterman of MIT and Linda Booth Sweeny at Harvard on MIT graduate students - presumably bright and decently educated folks - shows that people have a very, very hard time understanding natural systems, especially when there are time lags between action and reaction as is the case in spades for climate. In a nutshell:

The belief that emissions, atmospheric CO2, and temperature are correlated leads to the erroneous conclusion that a drop in emissions would soon cause a drop in CO2 concentrations and mean global temperature. . .

We hypothesize. . . that widespread underestimation of climate inertia arises from a more fundamental limitation of people’s mental models: weak intuitive understanding of stocks and flows—the concept of accumulation in general, including principles of mass and energy balance. . .

People of good faith can debate the costs and benefits of policies to mitigate climate change, but policy should not be based on mental models that violate the most fundamental physical principles.

Media, politicians, activists and ideologues exploit this very human cognitive defect - and may well suffer from it themselves. Politics is stupid in all cases but truly deranged in this one. . . and we have some understanding of why this is so.