I was also made suspicious to some of the claims about climate change by the fact that in Italy we've had, since I was a child, two common sayings: "Summers ar

I was also made suspicious to some of the claims about climate change by the fact that in Italy we've had, since I was a child, two common sayings: "Summers are not as they used to be" and "there are no autumns and springs anymore" They were used as examples of empty cliches that old people repeat - something to absolutely avoid. Somehow it was known that while everybody feels that it is so, it's also a form of mis-perception, much like "Nowadays young people have no manners any more". Then the climate change issue became prominent, and immediately everybody was transformed again in its own legitimate one-person weather station, complete with long and accurate temperature records. In the "Dictionnaire des idées reçues", a long and hilarious list of vacuous cliches that Flaubert compiled in the 1870s, you can read the following line: "Hiver. Toujours exceptionnel"