by Dave McGill

Take the first 23 days of July, 2010, for example.

Only 52 people needed medical treatment in Germany when a grueling heat wave shut down the air conditioning equipment in three high-tech trains leaving dozens of cry-baby passengers near collapse in temperatures of up to 122 degrees.

After weeks of heavy rain in Yunnan Province in China, a torrent of water washed through a mountain town leaving only three dead and 56 unaccounted for, a number that represents less than 4 one millionths of 1% of the Chinese population.

The Little Missouri River in Arkansas, which is normally three to five feet deep, rose to a depth of 20 feet, ravaging the Albert Pike campground, killing just 18 people and leaving dozens unaccounted for. But, let’s face it. Most people in Arkansas are unaccounted for.

Dozens of people in Minnesota pretended to be injured and just three were killed by a turbulent system that spawned reports of a mere 36 tornado sightings. The number was misreported to have exceeded the previous state record of 27 in one day, set in 1992.

Torrential rains inundated the provinces of Fujian, Zhejiang, Hunan, Guangdong, Sichuan, Jiangxi and Guizhou, as well as the autonomous region of Guangxi, in China, forcing the evacuation of only 1.4 million people, about 1/10 of 1% of the Chinese population. Rainfall was reported to be only three times normal levels.

A piddling 40,000 people were evacuated on Hainan Island, China, and 20,000 more scaredy-cats were evacuated in the already ravaged Guangdong Province as Typhoon Conson hit the area.

In Chicago, powerful winds broke a number of obviously second-rate windows in the Willis Tower, formerly known as the Sears Tower, and knocked out the power for just 215,000 Chicago-area customers, as well as for only 150,000 in Michigan, only 60,000 in Indiana and only19,000 in Wisconsin.

In Connecticut, 25 sissies were taken to the hospital in the Bridgeport area as a severe storm tore through the area.

A heat wave across much of Europe was fantasized by the L.A. Times to be “causing crops to wither, forests to catch fire and roads to melt, while refrigerators and fans are buckling” from the high temperatures.

Yesterday, another report out of China said that flooding from the torrential rains was the worst in more than a decade, killing 700 and displacing millions – yeah right. Complain, complain, complain!

Today, the hyper-emotional Russian Grain Union said the drought that has hit the Moscow region, described as the size of Portugal, was the worst in 130 years and has shriveled grain on 22 million acres. It neglected to mention that shriveled grain is a delicacy. In another example of negative Russian reporting, the Fobos forecasting center announced that the heat wave showed no signs of abating.

An independent research team at the University of East Anglia found no evidence that the researchers who sent the now famous, catty e-mails to each other had undermined scientific findings by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change or any other group and that they neither withheld access to data nor tampered with it. And we’re supposed to believe them?

Meanwhile, figures released by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration show that June was only the hottest since record keeping began in 1880, that the first half of 2010 was also only the hottest such period ever recorded, and that the Arctic sea ice melted at only a record-setting pace in June.

See? That settles it. Would Fox lie or distort the news?

Dave McGill