An article in the UK's Independent today talks about how the fashion industry is adjusting to global warming. Really:

"The whole fashion industry will have to change", Beppe Modenese, founder of Milan Fashion Week, told The New York Times last week. He said the industry "must adapt to the reality that there is no strong difference between summer and winter any more".

Do you know what's really happening here? Retailers are suffering through a sluggish fall. Executives and managers at these companies have people coming up to them every day asking why it's happening. The knee-jerk answer, as it has been for decades and decades, is "the weather". Why blame your product, pricing or promotions when you can blame the weather. It's the ultimate scapegoat! Don't believe me? Check out this article from last March in which retailers blame cold weather for poor sales.

Of course, you might say that maybe now it really is the weather. After all, much of the United States has enjoyed a long, warm Indian summer. Not so fast, my friend. I've noticed that when the weather's hot it's an undeniable sign of impending global doom. Likewise, when the weather's cold or snowy, it's also a sign of impending global doom:

And this is why global warming is such a great theory politically and such a lousy theory scientifically: regardless of what happens — heat waves, cold spells, more snow, less snow, whatever — it is always spun as something that “might be a sign of global warming.”

After all, it was just over two years ago that record cold temperatures in Europe were being heralded as the latest evidence for global warming. The “theory” was that warming the oceans would foul up the Atlantic gulf stream (which keeps Europe warm), thus driving European temperatures down.

Without the Gulf Stream, temperatures in the UK and north-west Europe would be five degrees centigrade or so cooler, with bitter winters at least as fierce as those of the so-called Little Ice Age in the 17th to 19th centuries.

So wrote Bill McGuire in The Guardian, in an article which was headlined — apparently without intended irony — “Will global warming trigger a new ice age?"

So, if you are a global warming believer, then if temperatures go up it’s because of global warming — and if temperatures go down, it’s also because of global warming. There is no conceivable, let alone actual, evidence that might indicate there is not global warming. No matter what happens, it’s because of global warming.

So, the gist of it is that global warming may or may not be causing hot and/or cold weather. Gotcha. Clearly major corporations should be using that kind of insight to make important business decisions.