Major guffaws! (via the NY Times)
Hundreds of tourists and locals packed the ice-skating rink at Rockefeller Center yesterday, pretending that it really was a cold, snowy day in early January as they circled the ice beneath the giant Christmas tree. In Brooklyn, eight members of a cold-water-braving organization known as the Coney Island Polar Bear Club walked toward the waves, some wearing nothing but swim trunks.
And so the make-believe winter collided with reality: People wore T-shirts as they ice-skated on the wet and slushy rink at Rockefeller Center, and the Polar Bears held a moment of silence, turned their backs on the Atlantic and headed toward the boardwalk, a protest, albeit an underdressed one, against global warming, they said.
What's next, petitions? I'm sure Mother Nature will listen
Although global warming is a popular theory for the Northeast’s warm winter, the Weather Service cited a specific meteorological cause. “We have a mild air mass that we’re in right now, kind of tropical in nature,” said John Murray, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Upton, N.Y. “The cold air masses in Canada have stayed up there.”
How'd that sneak in to the article?