The claims of two bloggers who said the earth was racing into a "global climate emergency" because of a dramatic shift of the Northern Hemisphere's Jet Stream made it into several mainstream news media sources earlier this week.  The problem is, it appears to be utter crap.

Robert Scribbler and University of Ottawa researcher Paul Beckwith warned of the "weather-destabilizing and extreme weather-generating" consequences of the jet stream shift, which they said was caused by global warming.  They pointed to the Jet Stream's crossing of the equator, which they claimed was "unprecedented". 

Shrilly warning of the "death of winter", Scribbler said:  "As the poles have warmed due to human-forced climate change, the Hemispherical Jet Streams have moved out of the Middle Latitudes more and more. You get this weather-destabilizing and extreme weather generating mixing of seasons."

"Welcome to climate chaos.  We must declare a global climate emergency," warned Beckwith.  "The behavior of the jet stream suggests massive hits to the food supply and the potential for massive geopolitical unrest.  There's very strange things going on on planet Earth right now."

Holy Crap!  We're doomed!  I was already on the way to going-out-of-business sale at the sporting goods store to stock up on football pads to wear with leather jackets and feathered boas so I could roam the Wasteland in a Holden, battling Immortan Joe and his War Boys while holding off the memories of those I couldn't protect, running from the living and the dead, reduced to one instinct:  Survive.

Well, it turns out that global warming is very real, but this stuff is not.  After being picked up by a few major newspapers, some journos decided to put the claims of impending "climate system mayhem" to actual climate scientists.  It turns out that the "unprecedented" had plenty of precedent.

"This is total nonsense," said Cliff Mass, a professor of meteorology at the University of Washington.  "Flow often crosses the equator."

"Cross-equatorial flow at both upper and lower levels is part of the seasonal transition of the Western Pacific monsoon through boreal summer," said a thoroughly unimpressed Dr. Ryan Maue of WeatherBell Analytics.  "This fear-mongering helps no one," he added.

Even the originator of the hypothesis that global warming is changing the polar jet stream said Scribbler and Beckwith misapplied the idea.  "“I’d say cross-equator flow cannot be unprecedented, maybe not even all that unusual," said meteorology professor Jennifer Francis of Rutgers University.