The global warming hysteria marches on. The latest victim? Baseball. Well, baseball bats. Or so says this NYT’s headline: Balmy Weather May Bench a Baseball Staple.

First, the article builds up with some dire warnings about the future of the ash tree:

Careers at stake with each swing, baseball players leave little to sport when it comes to their bats. They weigh them. They count their grains. They talk to them.

But in towns like this one, in the heart of the mountain forests that supply the nation?s finest baseball bats, the future of the ash tree is in doubt because of a killer beetle and a warming climate, and with it, the complicated relationship of the baseball player to his bat.

Wait. Did you catch that? Who said anything about a killer beetle?!? The headline promised me balmy weather was to blame! But I’m getting ahead of myself. After all, surely they are going to tell us that warmer weather is what has brought about the introduction of this new beetle threat to America’s pastime. Let’s find out:

Some scientists, however, do see a threat to the quality of the northern white ash posed by rising temperatures over a period of decades. Ash that grows in the warmer Southeastern States is held to be softer, in part because of the longer growing season, said Ron Vander Groef, who runs a factory in Dolgeville, N.Y., which make Rawlings bats.

There are also some concerns that the numbers of white ash trees in the North could significantly decline. Louis R. Iverson, a research landscape ecologist with the United States Forest Service, has helped map how habitat changes could affect 134 tree species by the end of the century. In a worst-case scenario, the white ash (and the sugar maple) diminish in numbers and shift farther north.

Still, the emerald ash borer, or Agrilus planipennis Fairmaire, is the most immediate threat. Discovered in the United States near Detroit in 2002, the beetles, which are shiny green, will destroy a tree in two to three years. The larvae tunnel inside the trees, cutting off water and food.

The ash borer is native to Asia, where the trees are naturally resistant to it.

?It just doesn?t look good,? Dan Herms, an associate professor of entomology at Ohio State University, said of the prospect of stopping the beetle in this country. ?The current technology won?t be able to stop it.?

Dr. Herms strongly disputes any link between the ash borer and climate change, saying that the beetle has survived in a wide range of temperatures in Asia.

Story: “the emerald ash borer . . . is the most immediate threat”
Headline: Balmy Weather May Bench a Baseball Staple

Got it? Didn’t think so.

So, since we were given no evidence that temperature has anything to do with the introduction of this beetle bearing baseball bat bane into America, what is climate change doing in this story? In the context of this article, it’s really doing nothing. But that’s not a complete answer, or it wouldn’t be included. It must be doing something. But what?

What you are seeing here is a very subtle form of indoctrination. The MSM is attempting to make a back door argument that it is incapable of substantiating if it were simply to talk about the subject in an honest and direct fashion. Every time this or any other article talks about the “impact of rising temperatures” they are buttering you up to accept an idea that they are incapable of substantiating. So while you’re watching their little puppet dance around the stage, they are hoping and praying (to the Great Goracle, no doubt) that you won’t ask about the man holding the strings. Unfortunately for them, I’ve trained myself to weed through their propaganda and am capable of seeing the man behind the stage; and I know what he’s doing. So I’ll ask that question they don’t want you to realize even needs asking.

What rising temperatures?

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