The Great Global Warming Swindle - Full movie

I have referenced elsewhere a documentary produced by the BBC's Channel 4, "The Great Global Warming Swindle," but up til now I had yet to find an online copy that wasn't chopped up. Thanks to GarageTV, we can see the film in its entirety.

As I have observed previously:

Through interviews with internationally prominent thought leaders in climate science, documentarian Martin Durkin takes a balanced look at the available data regarding climate change and CO2's supposed impact thereon to confirm that changes in the temperature of the earth's atmosphere are far too complex to be governed primarily by human activity. The feature then goes on to describe the origins and activities of the environmental movement; some of the most damning testimony against the "green lobby" comes from a co-founder of GreenPeace, Patrick Moore. To be sure, this movie serves as a powerful counterweight to "An Inconvenient Truth," and we can only hope that there will be an opportunity for the film to receive wider international release.

Please enjoy this fine film with my best regards!

An Immoral Document

In the book, "God's Politics" and elsewhere, the Rev. Dr. Jim Wallis has made the case that government budgets are "moral documents," in that they lay bare the underlying moral codes of a nation's citizenry and leadership. While my opinion on the matter of budgets representing morals is somewhat different from Dr. Wallis', let us accept for a moment that he is correct.

We might then ask about the essential morality of a budget that projects an eye-popping $1.75 trillion federal deficit for fiscal year 2009. And while braying incessantly about what he "inherited" in the way of deficits, Barack Obama will create more debt in the next few months than his predecessor created in eight years, with the red ink extending to at least 2015. To put the nation in this level of long-term indebtedness is arguably the most immoral thing that government could do in the midst of economic turmoil.

Of all of the rat holes that the Recovery Act and Obama's 2010 budget will cram with borrowed money, the biggest boondoggle may well be the expenditures for so-called "clean energy." The hymnal from which the Obama Tabernacle Choir sings reads something like this on the matter of clean energy:

The clean energy sector presents us with immense promise - to develop and dominate a new industry sector and to create high-paying jobs here at home. From new, highly fuel-efficient cars to renewable sources of power, there are a host of emerging technologies that can spur the growth of new businesses while creating millions of new jobs.

In his budget overview, Obama also laments that "[w]e have yet to make important policy changes and critical investments in the clean energy infrastructure that we'll need to transform the economy." Obama proposes implementing a cap and trade auction to pay for "vital investments in a clean energy future totaling $150 billion over ten years," providing loan guarantees to leverage billions of dollars in order to increase our renewable energy generating capacity, developing low emission technologies and supporting "electric system transmission projects and carbon capture and sequestration projects."

There is only one catch in all of this. At present, clean energy provides a single-digit percentage of the world's energy, with 81 percent coming from fossil fuels. The problems with renewable energy sources such as wind and solar are legion, as described in an op-ed by Keith Lockitch of the Ayn Rand Center for Individual Rights.

There is a reason why less than 2 percent of the world's energy currently comes from "renewable" sources such as wind and solar - the very sources that are supposedly going to power the new green economy: despite billions of dollars in government subsidies... they have not proven themselves to be practical sources of energy. Indeed, without government mandates forcing their adoption in most Western countries, their high cost would make them even less prevalent.

Consider that it takes about 1,000 wind turbines... to produce as much electricity as just one medium-sized, coal-fired power plant. And that's if the wind is blowing: the intermittency of wind wreaks havoc on electricity grids, which need a stable flow of power, thus requiring expensive, redundant backup capacity or an unbuilt, unproven "smart grid."

Or consider the "promise" of solar. Two projects in development will cover 12.5 square miles of central California with solar cells in the hope of generating about 800 megawatts of power (as much as one large coal-fired plant). But that power output will only be achieved when the sun is shining brightly - around noon on sunny days; the actual output will be less than a third that amount. And the electricity will cost more than market price, even with the life-support of federal subsidies that keeps the solar industry going. The major factor driving the project is not the promise of abundant power but California's state quota requiring 20 percent "renewable" electricity by 2010.

Supporters of clean energy suggest that the same drive that enabled America to put a man on the moon should be applied to breaking America's "addiction" to coal and crude. The problem with the comparison is that while the research and technological wherewithal required to put man into space was already in application - some of it for centuries - the technical leaps required to support clean energy are decades from being actualized on a large scale.

No lesser light than Energy Secretary Steven Chu says as much. In an article published in the Chicago Tribune, the Nobel Prize winning scientist acknowledges that major scientific advances will be required if clean energy is to become more than a line item in a budget. The Tribune piece goes on to cite a government report that specifies the progress that will be required.

A recent Energy Department task force report details the sort of breakthroughs crucial to fulfilling Obama's vision of a "clean energy economy" that could slash dependence on foreign oil, combat climate change and ignite the next great domestic job boom.

The wish list includes cells that convert sunlight to electricity with double or triple the efficiency of today's solar panels; batteries that store 10 times more energy than current models; a process for capturing and storing the carbon dioxide emissions from coal; and advanced materials that allow coal and nuclear power plants to operate at hotter temperatures and higher efficiency.

Researchers are working on all of them. But what's required is more than incremental advances in technology. It is advances in understanding basic physics and chemistry that are "beyond our present reach," the report said. (Emphasis added.)

Despite the lack of available science to support massive expenditures, the Stimulus Bill will spend $8 billion on research, to include "$1.5 billion for carbon-capture research for coal, $2.5 billion for energy efficiency and $2 billion for the Energy Department's Office of Science - featuring... $400 million tagged for breakthrough research." For its part, the 2010 budget will allocate an additional $26.3 billion for the Energy Department, with much of that earmarked for research into renewable energy.

The salient immorality of all of this is simply that Obama is willing to spend money that is not available to pursue scientific goals that are as of yet unachievable. That none of this too-delicious irony breaks Obama from his ideological trance is troubling indeed. What is more troubling is that much of the spending in both the Stimulus Bill and this budget is similarly problematic. Perhaps Wallis is more correct than I previously acknowledged.

Unintended Consequences

As someone who is decidedly lacking in any gift for science, I appreciate the earnest labors of those who display such an aptitude. But beyond the direct largesses that science and scientists have rendered unto man, perhaps the greatest gift provided by the study of the unknown is humility. When researchers concede that they seek to know much and understand very little - and that there are always more questions than answers - their humble efforts bring us all closer to knowing the heart, if not the mind, of God.

It is when science presumes that the scope of the known meets or exceeds the expanse of the unknown that foolishness insinuates itself in the place of true knowledge. The party line among "warmists," both laypersons and researchers, is that increased use of ethanol will faultlessly stabilize or reduce atmospheric CO2 (with the collateral benefit of being derived from entirely home grown sources.)

As has often been the case, the promise of scientists of questionable objectivity has collided head on with the realities of science itself. As much became evident upon publication of two studies in the online edition of Science. Both articles (abstracted here and here) indicate that the current processes involved in producing ethanol actually have the effect of increasing atmospheric CO2.

The first study - written by a group of investigators based in Minneapolis - reports that converting land to use in generating corn-based biofuels "creates a 'biofuel carbon debt' by releasing 17 to 420 times more CO2" than the greenhouse gas reductions derived from the use of biofuels in the first place. The researchers reviewed available literature to determine the amount of carbon lost when land is converted to crop production, and developed best estimates for land types as diverse as rainforests, grasslands and abandoned cropland.

Similarly, the second study is presented by Princeton University law professor Timothy Searchinger, et al., and proposes that the use of corn-based biofuels "nearly doubles greenhouse emissions over 30 years and increases greenhouse gases for 167 years." In an interview with Science, Mr. Searchinger explains how this increase in greenhouse gases comes about.

The basic problem is that previous models counted the benefit of using land to grow biofuels, but they didn't count the cost. In other words, the basic reason people think that biofuels can reduce greenhouse gases is that when you grow the feedstock for the biofuels, whether its corn or switch grass, you take carbon out of the atmosphere... Unfortunately, when you dedicate land to growing a biofuel, which is how most biofuels are produced, you're actually using that land to produce the biofuel, but you're not using that land to produce something else. So if that something else was a forest or grassland, and you end up plowing up that forest or grassland, you get a huge release of carbon. And that huge release of carbon is carbon that's been stored over decades, and according to our calculations, greatly exceeds the carbon benefit that you get per year of using biofuels.

Although neither article suggests that biofuels derived from waste biomass would create a similar "carbon debt," both are damning in as much as they show that the headlong rush to mandate the use of ethanol derived from corn in motor vehicles would exacerbate climate change (that is, if we accept the dubious assumption that CO2 is the singular driver of global warming.)

And while the benefits of using ethanol are at best ethereal, the costs of increased demand for corn are real and directly observable, as Searchinger himself attests.

What actually happens is when we divert our grain to fuel, we're increasing the demand for that grain, and the price goes up. And essentially, every farmer around the world sees a higher price, in fact, right now, much, much higher prices than are typical. And because the price has gone up, people try to make more of whatever the price went up, in this case grain. So they will plow up additional lands if they have the opportunity to do that.

So again, the artificially elevated price of corn has the effect of inducing farmers to convert more land to use for growing corn, thus continuing the cycle. Worse yet, the heightened demand for corn increases the cost of everything from canned soda to corn tortillas. And as usual, it is the poorest of the world's poor who are left to bear the brunt.

As stated at the outset, I am not a scientist. But if I were so inclined, I would investigate a research question that comes to me at present. I would direct my attention and talents to determining why so many otherwise reasonable people would believe that a single naturally-occurring molecule could possibly be the cause of impending planetary apocalypse, and how such a notion could ingrain itself so deeply in the minds of the scientific community. I might then attempt to study the effects of such a hysteria on the conduct of scientific research itself in order to determine what the real cost of global warming alarmism has been to humankind.

Crazy from the Heat

With the end of the Bali UN Global Warming summit at hand, it's time to consider all of the things that will come to pass if we don't get a handle on climate change. (H/T: John Brignell)

Significant Accumulations

The Nature Reports article from which this graph was taken suggests that by way of their efforts to assess climate models on their ability to reproduce 20th Century temperature changes, the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) "may give a false sense of [the models'] predictive capability." As becomes evident by observing the levels of scientific understanding (LOSU) and the associated uncertainties for each radiative forcing component, there is a great deal yet to be understood about the elements that comprise climate simulation models.

While the tone of the piece was predictably supportive of the theory of anthropogenic global warming, it did indicate the possibility that "the forcings used in the models did not span the full range of the uncertainty." In plain English, the models may underestimate the uncertainties associated with factors used in their models (or climate researchers may overestimate their understanding of forcing factors.)

The air of infallibility surrounding both the researchers and models supporting global climate change hardly bespeaks what observable data support. As much was expressed in a blog post to Icecap by John Coleman, a founder of the Weather Channel and meteorologist with KUSI in San Diego. Given his extensive background, and his own research on the global warming hypothesis, Coleman saw no need to pull any punches.

[Global warming] is the greatest scam in history. I am amazed, appalled and highly offended by it. Global Warming... it is a SCAM. Some dastardly scientists with environmental and political motives manipulated long term scientific data to create an illusion of rapid global warming. Other scientists of the same environmental whacko [sic] type jumped into the circle to support and broaden the "research" to further enhance the totally slanted, bogus global warming claims. Their friends in government steered huge research grants their way to keep the movement going. Soon they claimed to be a consensus.

The viability of certain models and explanations for observed changes in climate is also being challenged in other venues, with a recent NASA press release indicating that "not all of the large changes seen in Arctic climate in recent years are a result of long-term trends associated with global warming." The press release referred to a paper recently published in Geophysical Research Letters (subscription required) that involved researchers from both NASA and academia measuring changes in the weight of columns of Arctic Ocean water. According to the NASA statement, lead researcher James Morison was quoted as saying "many changes seen in declines in Arctic Ocean circulation in the 1990s were mostly decadal in nature, rather than trends caused by global warming."

I suspect this press release did not pass under the watchful gaze of NASA's James Hansen. One would forgive him for not taking notice; doubtless he was too focused on the dollars flowing his way from George Soros' Open Society Institute. According to an Investor's Business Daily editorial, Hansen received $720,00 in Soros-funded distractions in 2006. (Curiously enough given his present conviction that greenhouse gases inexorably contribute to global warming, a separate IBD editorial describes Hansen's previous involvement in research suggesting that exhaust from cars would cause global cooling.)

In a perfect world, the global warming kerfuffle would manifest itself as an internecine squabble between "quant jocks," with nary a slide rule hurled in anger. In such a scenario, how dangerous could it all be? Alas, we do not live in any sort of nirvana, scientific or otherwise. And if the latest news out of Britain is to be taken at face value, the full court press of global warming zealots can have quite a number of adverse sequela that go well beyond the moral hazards discussed elsewhere.

The U.K.'s Daily Mail informs us of two women who have decided to abstain from childbearing in order to "protect the planet," as one put it. The Mail article profiles Toni Vernelli, a 35 year-old employee of an environmental charity, who describes having children as "selfish" and further condemns it as being about "maintaining your genetic line at the expense of the planet." At the age of 27, Vernelli underwent surgical sterilization in order to ensure that she would remain childless.

For her part, Sarah Irving also concluded that "never having a child was the most environmentally friendly thing I could do." She and her fiance Mark Hudson agreed that he would have a vasectomy, thereby adding to his green bona fides.

Sarah and I live as green a life a possible. We don't have a car, cycle everywhere instead, and we never fly.

We recycle, use low-energy light bulbs and eat only organic, locally produced food.

In short, we do everything we can to reduce our carbon footprint. But all this would be undone if we had a child.

That's why I had a vasectomy. It would be morally wrong for me to add to climate change and the destruction of Earth.

That environmentalists from the prominent to the picayune refer to global warming as a moral issue does not surprise, as it allows them to avoid discussing the aforementioned dubious science surrounding the issue. If anthropogenic climate change were discussed rationally as a scientific hypothesis, it would hardly be the issue that it has become. By shrouding it in discussions of ethics, global warming aficionados can shape the conversation exactly as they wish. Inevitably, proposed solutions to the "problem" revolve around more robust government regulation and redistribution of wealth as the invigorated government would dictate.

But global warming hysteria also has ramifications in the microcosm. When individuals are convinced that humanity is the obstacle in saving the planet, the logical conclusion is that human life must be sacrificed in order to atone for sins against nature, as well as to prevent further injury. It starts small, with couples deciding to forgo reproduction, but the road is short and straight from that proposition to one that posits the morality of an environmentally friendly euthanasia (what with the absolutely huge carbon footprint created by all those hospitals and nursing homes.)

To be sure, global warming is neither an issue of science - the environmental Left having decided long ago to uncouple its wagon from the horse of objective scientific inquiry - nor an issue of morality. It results from a commingling of greed, hysteria and an outsized self-importance on the part of its adherents. In as much as global warming evangelists have revealed their contempt for human life, their ideations are now too dangerous for the rest of us to ignore.

For Whom the Nobel Tolls

Once again establishing itself as a near-solitary redoubt of opinion page sanity, the editors of the Wall Street Journal gave us a list of worthy nominees for next year's Nobel Peace Prize, all of whom would have made outstanding recipients for 2007. The list includes the Burmese monks who exemplify the power of non-violent social change in their protests against the ruling junta in Myanmar, as well as Columbian President Alvaro Uribe, Britiain's Tony Blair along with Ireland's Bertie Ahern, Russia's Garry Kasparov, Presidents Viktor Yushechenko and Mikheil Saakashvili of Ukraine and Georgia respectively, and the brave citizens of a nascent Iraq.

It also includes many who have gone on to their eternal rest, such as the late Lebanese lawmakers Walid Eido, Pierre Gemayel, Antoine Ghanem, Rafik Hariri, George Hawi and Gibran Tueni, all of whom met their demise at the hands of assassins as they struggled to free their country of Syria's chokehold. Each of these brave souls and many more like them were more than willing to put their lives and fortunes on the line to secure the blessings of individual liberty, self-determination and peace for themselves and their countrymen.

And each of these persons would have much preferred for their people the lifestyle and sense of well-being enjoyed by this year's recipient. While Father Nguyen Van Ly rots in a Vietnamese prison for helping his country's pro-democracy movement, this year's Nobel Peace Prize laureate takes his repose in a home known best both for its opulence and its energy consumption. Even as Morgan Tsvangiriai and Arthur Mutambara suffer beatings and detention for the act of protesting against Zimbabwe's Robert Mugabe, Albert Gore, Jr. will continue to be hailed and feted by the glitterati of the civilized world.

But for Mr. Gore, great renown comes with great irony; beyond the obvious contradiction between his personal lifestyle - with its reliance on private jets and limousines (H/T: Ace of Spades) - and his alarmist rhetoric about the sacrifices required to arrest global warming, Mr. Gore (assuming that he has sufficient self-awareness) will have to reconcile himself with the fact that his contributions to world piece are only slightly less ethereal than those made by his fellow Nobel recipient, Yasser Arafat. While Mr. Gore has surely never personally abetted murder or terrorism, his mounting the ramparts of climate change has done nothing to secure global stability presently.

If there is a Nobel prize to be given vis-a-vis global warming, it will best be awarded in the year 2207, when the full effects of anthropogenic climate change might make themselves manifest. The members of today's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) may yet be worthy of some sort of posthumous Nobel Award for science, should their hypothesis turn out to be correct. In any event, if we take the IPCC's recommendations and implement them as they would wish, it would surely not lead to world peace, but only to more global poverty. Moreover, they would diminish the developed world's ability to address such widespread penury.

And so a Nobel Peace Prize was awarded on the basis of a S.W.A.G. As discussed in mind-popping detail elsewhere, the idea that human activity has had an appreciable effect on the earth's climate is an unprovable theory currently. The abundance of plausible, scientifically supported theories that explain the recent changes in the temperature of atmosphere speaks to the speculative nature of the "science" supporting global warming. On the basis of what we know about the science and the politics surrounding this particular award, it would seem that Mr. Gore was recognized more for giving the one-fingered salute to the West than for contributing in any meaningful way to peace on earth.

P.S.: Mr. Gore's alarmism would fall flat on its preponderant arse were it not for willing accomplices in the media. This report from the Business and Media Institute entitled "Fire and Ice" addresses how the media have been on both sides of the climate change issue - at various times predicting both global warming and cooling - and have been wrong every time.

Terrorism...What terrorism? - I wonder where the New York Times will bury the German terror plot story, given where the Times saw fit to place news about the JFK Airport plot. (Devoted NYT readers will recall that the June 3, 2007 story was buried on page 30 in the national edition, and page 37 in the New York metro edition.)

The Times must have figured out that they stepped in it - and deep. About a week later, the public editor commented on the controversy that resulted from the paper's decision.

My own view is that The Times story was very well reported and written. It quickly made clear that the accused men were a long way from action and that despite the apocalyptic comments of the U.S. attorney, their ability to carry out an attack on the airport was very much open to question.

But instead of being a reason to put the story inside, I think this was a compelling reason to keep it on Page 1. This reporting put the story in an appropriate perspective, far calmer than the day's television coverage. Giving the story subdued play on the front page — toward the bottom, with a single-column headline — would have told readers that The Times knew what they were concerned about, that there was something real here, but that it wasn't anywhere near happening and there was no need for alarm.

For his part, Clark Hoyt went on to note that "[n]ewspapers cannot take sometimes overheated rhetoric from public officials at face value."

That's rich.

If Mr. Hoyt is to be taken at face value, then the same principle should apply to the newspaper's treatment of statements from public officials as it regards topics such as global warming. But at every turn, the Times has erred on the side of hyperbole and alarmism, as its own record would indicate. One could be forgiven for feeling a twinge of skepticism when the Times uncritically paraphrases NASA scientist James E. Hansen in a July 16, 2006 article to the effect that we have 10 years to "alter the trajectory of global greenhouse emissions" before it is too late.

Moreover, given the paper's reporting of Dr. Hansen's prediction that global average surface temperatures for 2003 would be higher than those in 1998 versus the recent corrections that were made to the temperature records (as discussed elsewhere), it would be hoped that the Times would apply a bit of healthy journalistic skepticism to any further "overheated rhetoric" from Dr. Hansen.

As for myself, I hope that I can be forgiven for ascribing a darker motive to the Times' relative sanguineness vis-a-vis terrorism versus the clamor that global climate change inspires in the editorial suites. My personal sense is - as Mark Stein so correctly described it in a December 2003 Wall Street Journal op-ed - that the Left resents the idea of war in Iraq or a struggle against the existential threat of Islamic terror, in as much as it distracts from their "ushering in the era of lots and lots of itsy bits of small government."

They loved the '90s because you never heard a thing about macho stuff like war: it was all micro-politics, new regulations for this, new entitlements for that--education, environment, "social justice." For hard-core Democrats, the whole war thing is an unwelcome intrusion on what large numbers of people had assumed to be a permanent post-Martian politics.

To be sure, it might well be easier for liberals to get Americans exercised over gay marriage, "equal" pay for men and women, climate change or any other component of their micro-agenda. But given what is at stake - both here and around the globe - it behooves the civilized world to rally around the only cause that really matters at this point. For all of the other "rights" that the Left so assiduously defends are contingent on the right to exist unmolested by those who would eliminate us without prejudice were they so able.

All the Difference in the World - Yesterday's New York Times weighed in on the recent contretemps between Dr. James Hansen of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) and that friend of science, Steve McIntyre.

A quarter-degree Fahrenheit is roughly the downward adjustment NASA scientists made earlier this month in their annual estimates of the average temperature in the contiguous 48 states since 2000. They corrected the numbers after an error in meshing two sets of temperature data was discovered by Stephen McIntyre, a blogger and retired business executive in Toronto. Smaller adjustments were made to some readings for some preceding years.

All of this would most likely have passed unremarkably if Mr. McIntyre had not blogged that the adjustments changed the rankings of warmest years for the contiguous states since 1895, when record-keeping began.

Suddenly, 1934 appeared to vault ahead of 1998 as the warmest year on record (by a statistically meaningless 0.036 degrees Fahrenheit). In NASA's most recent data set, 1934 had followed 1998 by a statistically meaningless 0.018 degrees. Conservative bloggers, columnists and radio hosts pounced. "We have proof of man-made global warming," Rush Limbaugh told his radio audience. "The man-made global warming is inside NASA."

The most current graphs of U.S. annual mean temperature data can be found at the GISS website.

The NYT article goes on to point out that McIntrye and Hansen have "traded broadsides on the Web," and such has surely been the case, with Dr. Hansen apologizing in an e-mail sent to colleagues for suggesting that the whole controversy was "a tempest inside somebody's teapot dome" and "perhaps a light was not on upstairs," describing such remarks as "immoderate." For his part, McIntyre has spent a good deal of time at his blog lambasting Hansen for suggesting in another e-mail that humans could "in effect, destroy Creation," if efforts to stem global warming are not intensified.

Far be it from me to attempt to weigh in on McIntyre's side; he has repeatedly suggested that he is in no need of assistance from right-wing bloggers, and he himself says that climate change is a "serious issue." But setting aside his confuting Hansen's (and the NYT's) suggestion that a correction of 0.15 degrees Celsius since 2001 is a trivial matter (a statement that is entirely specious on its face, given that the entire global warming story is built on a 0.74 degree Celsius increase in global temperature over the last 100 years), how is it that a retired businessman with no government budget, no suite of supercomputers and no fancy titles like, let's say, "Director: NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies" has been able to successfully challenge so many of the current thought leaders in climate science?

And he has done this not once, but twice. As previously mentioned here, McIntyre - in conjunction with his infrequent collaborator, Ross McKitric - was able to rebut the fiction that "Northern Hemisphere mean annual temperatures for three of the last eight years are warmer than any other year since 1400 A.D." Such was the case made by Dr. Michael Mann, Ph.D. in a 1998 report entitled, "Global-scale temperature patterns and climate forcing over the past six centuries," published in Nature. McIntyre and McKitric presented their own paper, "Corrections to the Mann et al. (1998) Proxy Data Base and Northern Hemisphere Average Temperature Series," which was published in Energy and Environment.

In their report, McIntyre and McKitric contend that, "the data set of proxies of past climate used in Mann … for the estimation of temperatures from 1400 to 1980 contains collation errors, unjustifiable truncation or extrapolation of source data, obsolete data, geographical location errors, incorrect calculation of principal components and other quality control defects." McIntyre and McKitric go on to say, "the particular 'hockey stick' shape derived in the proxy construction – a temperature index that decreases slightly between the early 15th century and early 20th century and then increases dramatically up to 1980 — is primarily an artifact of poor data handling, obsolete data and incorrect calculation of principal components."

In the end, even as global warming fear mongers are easily ignored because of their rank hypocrisy, much of the "science" behind global warming is easily refuted because it is infused with more issue advocacy than scientific inquiry. For the most part, I concur with McIntyre's assessment that global warming is a serious issue, but I would humbly add that - even if man were the primary driver of climate change - there is is little that we can do about it that would not wreak greater havoc than that which would result from a warming atmosphere. Rather than using any impending climate change as a reason to fleece the prosperous nations of the world, we would do better to work to improve the quality of life of the world's impoverished more generally. Sufficient food, clean drinking water and reliable energy sources would be a better start than international fretting about planetary immolation.

"At least Jesse James had a gun!" - To paraphrase what a conservative talk show host (whose name escapes me now) said recently, it is entirely likely that ordinary Americans have gotten bored with global warming even before it has happened. To be sure, it is tough to get exorcised about an event of uncertain timing or magnitude of effect - particularly when it's considered against real and present threats to humanity. This may explain a recent Newsweek cover story that aims to expose the network of global warming "deniers." (Nice job with the objective journalism guys!)

Since the late 1980s, this well-coordinated, well-funded campaign by contrarian scientists, free-market think tanks and industry has created a paralyzing fog of doubt around climate change. Through advertisements, op-eds, lobbying and media attention, greenhouse doubters (they hate being called deniers) argued first that the world is not warming; measurements indicating otherwise are flawed, they said. Then they claimed that any warming is natural, not caused by human activities. Now they contend that the looming warming will be minuscule and harmless. "They patterned what they did after the tobacco industry," says former senator Tim Wirth, who spearheaded environmental issues as an under secretary of State in the Clinton administration. "Both figured, sow enough doubt, call the science uncertain and in dispute. That's had a huge impact on both the public and Congress." (Emphasis added.)

So beyond the ham-handed use of the word "deniers" (lest we not get their intent, the article makes takes great pains to point out that two of the members of the cabal fled the Nazis), global warming zealots compare the give and take on the part of those scientists and others who simply wish to advance an alternative hypothesis to deliberate attempts to lie and mislead. The former is a requisite part of the scientific method, the latter was a means to protect the profits generated by an industry built on a product that is unhealthful at any dose.

Of course if one were to properly flesh out the analogy, it is clear that the aficionados of global climate change are doing the obfuscating. By attempting to tar and feather everyone from climate researchers (S. Fred Singer, Ph.D. and Richard Lindzen, Ph.D.) to politicians (the entire GOP Congress, to include Senators James Inhofe and Ted Stevens) to organizations like the American Petroleum Institute and the Competitive Enterprise Institute, Newsweek - and the global warming mafia more generally - confirm that their cause has little to do with science and much more to do with political agendas.

If you look at the temperature record for the globe over the last six years, it's gone no place. That's usually the way it behaves before it goes down. In fact, I suspect that's why you have this tsunami of exposure the last two years, with Gore's movie and so on. I think that this issue has been around long enough to generate a lot of agendas, and looking at the temperature records there must be a fear that if they don't get the agendas covered now, they may never get them. (Emphasis added.)

The forgoing was taken from an interview with Dr. Richard Linzen, Ph.D., Alfred P. Sloan Professor of Meteorology at MIT. The wisdom of Dr. Lindzen's comments is underscored by a Reuters story on a recent U.N. climate change meeting which "focused on the world's rich countries" such that they should shoulder the majority of the financial burden of dealing with climate change.

British economist Nicholas Stern said poor and developing countries also need to participate in a "global deal" to curb the human-made emissions that swaddle the planet like a blanket.

Stern, author of a path-breaking report last year on the economic consequences of climate change, said the global target for reducing greenhouse gases -- notably the carbon dioxide released by coal-fired electric plants and petroleum-powered vehicles -- should be a cut 50 percent by 2050.

"Because of reasons of past responsibility and better access to resources, the rich countries should take much bigger objectives than that 50 percent," he said. "They should be looking for around 75 percent cuts."

That responsibility could extend to financing cuts in emissions in other countries, said Stern, formerly head of the British government's economic service and now at the London School of Economics. (Emphasis added here too.)

Doubtless, an infusion of new dollars from the West would be a boon to the U.N. (as well as to WMD seeking despots, corrupt kleptocrats and presidents of Swiss banks.) The U.N.'s voracious appetite for revenue is nearly matched by that of grant-hungry researchers. In his interview, Dr. Lindzen points out that "there's a lot of money floating in [global warming hysteria]."

While I cannot speak with absolute certainty as to the factors behind the relative apathy of Americans vis-a-vis global warming, but I do have my own theories. Bureaucracies being what they are, they crave more revenue as revenue equates to power; to be sure, the U.N. is nothing if it is not a vast global bureaucracy. For that reason alone, the global warming power structure has a vested interest in ensuring that paranoia outpaces science. But beyond burnishing its own liberal bona fides, it's unclear what agenda was served by Newsweek's attempt to tip public opinion in favor of those who fear the effects of CO2 on the climate more than the chilling effect of stifled scientific inquiry.

Environ-mentally Disturbed - The hype and hysteria emanating from the ranks of global warming missionaries are beginning to reach a fevered pitch, even as the "science" behind anthropogenic climate change begins to unravel. Beyond the "Live Earth" debacle, climate change proselytizers are stepping up their efforts to put the issue front and center on the agendas of politicians, educators, businesspeople and of course the general public. But despite all of their efforts, most Americans have a low level of concern vis-a-vis global warming. So to, it is a fact that over 50 percent of the British public believes that global warming fears are overstated.

As discussed elsewhere, we are not surprised that the global warming message hardly resonates with the average person, either here or overseas. When considered against global economic concerns, terrorism, the specter of HIV/AIDS and unstable dictatorships (as well as the old standby bete noires of war and famine), climate change hardly merits a yawn. The same apathy seen among the general population is mirrored in the results of the first and second Copenhagen Consensus meetings, where economists and diplomats respectively, gathered to determine how best to expend the world's finite resources to do the most good first. In both meetings, the assembled ranked "initiatives on communicable diseases, sanitation and water, malnutrition, and education" far ahead of dealing with global warming.

It is just as well, given that the last chapter on man's role in rising atmospheric temperatures may not be as settled as Al Gore and others might aver. Given what we know from emerging climate science, increases in solar activity may well prove to be more important than factors such as concentrations of either CO2, water vapor or methane in regards to global warming, although the data seems to conflict more that coalesce. (To be sure, much has been written in regards to the idea that solar irradiance may not be in and of itself a direct factor in the rise in atmospheric temperatures seen in the last 50 years.)

In any event, whatever revelations science may reveal in the future, scientists are presently calling into question some of the models by which warming predictions are derived. In a recent issue of Science, Richard Kerr described the nature of the critiques, all of which derive from an online article entitled "Quantifying climate change - too rosy a picture?"

Twentieth-century simulations would seem like a straightforward test of climate models. In the run-up to the [Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change] climate science report released last February,... 14 groups ran their models under 20th-century conditions of rising greenhouse gases. As a group, the models did rather well. [See figure above.] A narrow range of simulated warmings (purple band) falls right on the actual warming (black line) and distinctly above simulations run under conditions free of human influence (blue band).

But the group of three atmospheric scientists - [University of Seattle scientist Robert] Charlson; Stephen Schwartz of the Brookhaven National Laboratory in Upton, New York; and Henning Rodhe of Stockholm University, Sweden--says the close match between models and the actual warming is deceptive. The match "conveys a lot more confidence [in the models] than can be supported in actuality," says Schwartz.

And when one looks at Schwartz, et al., it appears to be the opinion of the authors that, "a variety of forcings and different representations of these forcings were used in simulations with the different models. As the use of such an ensemble of opportunity led to a narrowing of uncertainty rather than to the expected increase, it would seem that the forcings used in the models did not span the full range of the uncertainty" (not that we should accuse the IPCC of fudging the numbers.) The article goes on to point out why this disparity should matter to the scientific community.

Does resolving this inconsistency matter? Yes, even if only to give a more accurate picture of the range of sensitivities of current models. As it stands, the narrow range of modeled temperatures gives a false sense of the certainty that has been achieved. A much more realistic assessment of present understanding would be gained by testing the models over the full range of forcings. (Emphasis added.)

So we are left to conclude what has been evident all along: namely, that the theory of man-made global warming is only as sound as the models that are used and the data and assumptions that undergird them. As discussed elsewhere, the sheer number of models (14 and counting) "suggests that there are differences in the perception of even the potential impact" of CO2 on the climate. Not that any of this matters much, as the acolytes in the church of global warming have foreclosed any possibility of variance from their infallible authority. Their job is to persuade by appeals to emotion as opposed to reason. Indeed, they have declared as much that scientific uncertainty is their ally, and the objective scientific method their foe.

Credible Sources - Well the jury is in. Woodenfest (as the Live Earth concerts were described elsewhere) were only slightly more popular than the Iraq War, and far less substantial in their aims. We know for sure that attendance was less than stellar in Rio de Janeiro, and there were more than a few empty seats at some of the other venues as a well, as reported by the LA Times.

Exactly how often can you stage a once-in-a-lifetime event? That [was] the challenge Saturday for the organizers of Live Earth, the latest in a long line of huge concerts-for-a-cause. This time the issue is global warming — which is fitting considering the event isn't generating quite as much heat as hoped.

That's despite all-star lineups with such A-list rock, pop and hip-hop acts as Madonna, the Police, Justin Timberlake, Red Hot Chili Peppers, Kanye West and more than 100 others on stages in eight cities around the world, including East Rutherford, N.J.; London; Johannesburg, South Africa; and Sydney.

Yet snags have developed. The Johannesburg concert has been scaled back after tepid ticket sales, and a show planned for Istanbul was canceled altogether in the face of financial and logistical snags.

This does not surprise, as at best the whole affair was merely a reason to have a concert with A-list performers (although the LA Times quoted Roger Daltrey of The Who as saying "[t]he last thing the planet needs is a rock concert.") A less charitable interpretation of the event would be that it was a grand exercise in psychological onanism, a bloated spectacle of masturbation for the soul. This seems especially the case for the "Goracle," so outsized is his need for validation; he always seems to be saying to the world "I care more than you, therefore I am more special than you."

At worst, the concerts did genuine harm, both to the earth (by way of the massive amount of energy used and waste generated in connection with the concerts) and to the cause of fighting climate change itself. The concerts were roundly panned by no less than Sir Bob Geldof, among others, for having an objective that was unclear at best, as reported by the NY Times.

"Live Earth doesn't have a final goal," he said in May, adding that it would be useful only if it forced politicians and corporations to announce concrete environmental measures.

Arctic Monkeys's drummer, Matt Helders, was also outspoken, saying it would be "a bit patronizing" to think his youthful group could change the world. "Especially when we're using enough power for 10 houses just for lighting, it would be a bit hypocritical," he told Agence France-Presse after a recent concert in Paris.

The Times article went on point out the criticism of "the energy-expending habits of many performers, some of whom, it has been reported, flew their private planes halfway across the world to play in the concerts." (If only the Times would remind us of the energy-expending habits of Mr. Gore.) As mentioned elsewhere, the environmental movement is the most easily dismissed of all movements, entirely because of the rank hypocrisy of its leaders. To imagine that such world-class frequent fliers as Snoop Dogg, Metallica, The Pussycat Dolls and Ludacris would be able to inspire anyone to act in support of the climate is, well, ludicrous.

Now on to more enviro-lunacy. Speaking of the Times, the online version of a recent article in the British daily The Times went on to discuss "Ten predictions about climate change that have come true." Among the prognostications that have supposedly become manifest was that "Australia would start drying out," with a proof source of scientists from the U.K.'s Hadley Centre for Climate Change. The anthropogenic "drying out" of the landscape allegedly seen down under must be of a piece with the type that global warming supporters would contend is contributing to the wildfires seen in the Lake Tahoe area presently. The San Francisco Chronicle certainly seemed to suggest as much with this comment.

The Forest Service's [regional ecologist Hugh] Safford noted that even the climate has come under human influence, as evidenced by global warming and increased forest fires in a dryer, warmer West.

A study being prepared documents what Safford described as a significant increase in Sierra fires during the past 21 years, which clearly goes beyond any naturally occurring cycle.

Of course there are more than a few who would contend that the fires that have been seen in the last few years out West are as much a result of the efforts of the environmentalist movement as anything else. A resident of the area says exactly as much in a video from NBC Nightly News. And it has ever been thus; environmental regulations on forest management have clearly served to jeopardize both forests and the humans living in their vicinity, resulting directly in the damage and loss of life and property from wildfires that we have witnessed in California, Nevada and elsewhere.

To be sure, even if the earth's climate has been getting warmer over the past 50 years - a debatable proposition, as global temperatures have plateaued since the late 1990s (as discussed here and here), we are surely more at risk from liberalism's "solutions" to the problem than we are from any increase in either CO2 or global temperatures themselves. Especially given that the remedies will consist of little more than the solutions the Left proposes for every problem, no matter the type or complexity (as noted by former-Congressman Tom Delay.)

Tell me, has any Democratic politician ever - ever - proposed something innovative, original or even clever to solve the hot environmental issue of the moment? No matter whether it's the ozone, the ocean or anything in between, the response is always the same: more government, more regulation, higher taxes, more spending, less freedom. I don't doubt that liberals care about the environment, for the simple reason that everyone cares about the environment, but their environment agenda is just their labor agenda, their education agenda, their fiscal agenda, their trade agenda, their social agenda and their health care agenda packaged under a different name.

In truth, the real question is not whether Democrats have better ideas regarding climate change than Republicans, but rather why the gloom and doom scenario is taken seriously by so many people of various political persuasions. To be sure, the case for anthropogenic global warming gets more tenuous all the time, especially in light of research presented in American Scientist on melting ice on Mt. Kilimanjaro. While the glaciers on Mt. Kilimanjaro are routinely cited as evidence of man's impact on the earth's climate, it appears that "Kilimanjaro... has gained and lost ice through processes that bear only indirect connections, if any, to recent trends in global climate."

On Black and Green - At no point since 1850 have blacks exceeded 15 percent of the total U.S. population; the African American population reached its high-water mark in 1790 with 19.3 percent of the total. During the 1950s to the 1970s, approximately 10-11 percent of Americans were of African descent, as contrasted with approximately 13 percent presently. Percentages notwithstanding, a small but dedicated cadre of liberation-minded blacks and others struggled to surmount both internally and externally imposed obstacles. Their efforts reached a crescendo during the 1960s Civil Rights Movement, and continue at present - although in a significantly altered form, as much of the heavy lifting done these days is done by black conservatives (if not by name, then certainly by attitude and behavior.)

Contrast the historic changes in the attitudes and behaviors of Americans vis-a-vis race with those displayed by Americans as it regards the environment. Data from a recent CNN/Opinion Research poll (as seen on PollingReport.com) of 1,028 adults notes that 54 percent of Americans believes that "[g]lobal warming is a fact and is mostly caused by emissions from cars and industrial facilities." Similarly, 33 percent of 1,002 respondents to an ABC News/Washington Post/Stanford University poll said that global warming/climate change "is the single biggest environmental problem the world faces today."

That same poll indicated that 70 percent of Americans believe that "the federal government should do more than it's doing now to try to deal with global warming." (53 percent of respondents said that they trusted the Democrat Congress to do a better job of handling "the environment overall," with 59 percent feeling that Congressional Democrats would handle global warming better.) Gallup data from 1,009 respondents indicates that 66 percent believe that the environmental movement has "definitely" or "probably done more good than harm."

The interesting paradox underlying all of this is the fact that despite Americans being aware of the environment as an issue, they still seem personally unmotivated to act in any meaningful way beyond sorting paper from plastic. To be sure, fossil fuel consumption has remained steady or increased as gasoline has shot above $3.50 a gallon in many areas. And according to data from the Pew Research Center, global warming and the environment seem to rank behind other priorities for both Republicans and Democrats.

Roughly twice as many Democrats as Republicans say that dealing with global warming should be a top priority for the president and Congress this year (48% vs. 23%). However, the issue is a relatively low priority for members of both parties, as well as for independents.

The issue of dealing with global warming rates near the bottom of the priorities list for both Democrats and independents, and is the lowest priority for Republicans. Notably, there is much greater support, across the political spectrum, for the broader goal of protecting the environment. Two-thirds of Democrats (67%) view protecting the environment as a top priority, and it ranks near the middle of their policy priorities list. Many more independents and Republicans also rate protecting the environment an important priority than say the same about dealing with global warming.

Indeed, global warming - and the environment more generally - rank behind things such as terrorism, education and the economy for Republicans and health care costs, the economy and terrorism for Democrats.

So what gives? What accounts for the disconnect between the attitudes and behaviors of Americans as it pertains to the environment? My sense is that most Americans are well aware that many if not most of today's environmental thought leaders are in fact rank hypocrites. This is especially so when environmentalists are considered in contrast to, let's say, civil rights workers who offered their livelihoods and (sadly for far too many) their lives in order to break the back of racial hegemony in this country. To be hectored about all things environmental by the likes of Al Gore, Laurie David, Sheryl Crow or Leo DiCaprio is to know that God sometimes has a wicked sense of humor. Given what we know about Gore's global warming related business interests in particular, listening to his preachments allows me to imagine what it would be like if it was discovered that MLK had slaves working as domestics in his home.

Whatever their specific credentials, environmentalists in general, and global warming advocates more specifically, seem to be the least credible - and therefore the most ignorable - spokespeople for their respective causes. When a rock star tells us that we should only use one square of toilet paper per trip to the loo, we dismiss her as an out of touch rock star. So to when a multimillionaire chairman of an international investment company tells us that we need to reduce our CO2 "footprint" so that he can expand the footprint of his bank account, we ignore his entreaties out of hand. It appears that the days when environmentalists would hoist themselves into trees to make their points are long gone. This crop of environmental all-stars comes across as not much more than, well, hot air.

10 More for Consensus - Fortunately, great ideas often find their purchase in more than one mind at any given time. As much appears to be the case when one considers the duo of interrogatory decalogues recently served up for global warming zealots, to wit: a recent post from this page, and a similar commentary rendered on March 30, 2007 by John Hawkins at TownHall.com. I mention this convergence of thought more to assuage my own sensibilities than out of a genuine concern about plagiarism on my part. Nevertheless, a reader of both posts would be forgiven for suspecting that the apparent similarities are beyond chance, as both address the melting ice caps on Mars, the period of global cooling between the 1940's and 1970's and the ice age of the Ordovician Period.

To be sure, conservative critiques of global warming theory - however they are formulated - share a common axis of doubt: that is, the earth's climate is far beyond man's ability to predict, let alone control. Both posts generated considerable, ahem - heat, particularly from progressive quarters, and both pieces also engendered feeble attempts to answer some of the questions posed to those who embrace the idea of anthropogenic climate change. In any event, Brother John is best left on his own to deal with his detractors; I suspect he is more than up to the task. And in as much as great minds seem to be alike, I will tend to my (lone) critic.

In response to my question about global warming theory predicting "that temperatures in the upper atmosphere would be higher than lower atmospheric temperatures," while temperature observations have recorded exactly the opposite, austinwiltshire - as seen on MySpace and OKCupid (get 'em while he's hot ladies) - wrote that "global warming theory predicts slightly lower temperatures in the upper stratosphere." While my question may have been imprecisely worded, it is easily verifiable that there have been significant "discrepancies between observed and simulated surface and lower atmospheric temperatures since 1979," as discussed elsewhere.

In the Spring of 2006, the U.S. Climate Change Science Program (CCSP) published the first in a series of 21 reports "aimed at providing current evaluations of climate change science to inform public debate, policy, and operational decisions." The April 2006 report entitled "Temperature Trends in the Lower Atmosphere: Steps for Understanding and Reconciling Differences" scrutinized discrepancies between observed and simulated surface and lower atmospheric temperatures since 1979. The 21 authors, who included global warming believers and skeptics, were able to reexamine previously recorded temperature observations and compare them with simulations from climate models.

Although they were able to conclude that correcting errors in the observed data allowed for a reduction in the divergence between observed and predicted temperatures, the models showed a significant lack of predictive value for warming in tropical areas. According to the report, "[i]n the tropics, most observational data sets show more warming at the surface than in the troposphere, while almost all model simulations have larger warming aloft than at the surface."

Similarly, when replying to my query about global warming theory's inability to predict cooling oceans, austinwiltshire - let's just call him John, shall we - glibly replied that "[m]elting ice caps will do that to an ocean." This comment is more than sufficient evidence of the rampant confusion and double-speak that emanates from the climate change community. While describing himself as "a pretty big skeptic," he credulously accepts the idea that melting ice caps explain why the oceans are cooling. If melting ice caps were known to be a primary cause of decreases in the ocean's temperature, surely this would have been incorporated in the models used to predict climate change from the get-go. In any event, the ocean is far too dynamic a system to have its temperature influenced solely, or even largely, by melting ice.

Not to border on gratuitous nitpicking, but when John set out to expound on the ideal global climate for human habitation, he conceded that as far as the historical record for Europe, "warmer weather tends to be better." He then went on to comment that "it'd be much safer to speculate and look for evidence in the historical record as to the 'ideal' temperature for human existance [sic]." This attitude is best understood as borne of a sense that man can decide an ideal climate that will suit the planet's diversity of populations and locations, and can implement steps to establish said climate. Given the Earth's history of warming and cooling, even if we were miraculously able to sufficiently manage our CO2 output such that greenhouse gases were no longer a concern, what would stop some other poorly-understood factor (such as cosmic radiation, water vapor, precipitation, airborne aerosols, land use and clouds) from causing the newly perfected climate to change again?

In the end, it is indeed interesting (to put it charitably) that a belief in an incompletely understood higher power or a supernatural entity is considered to be a sign of a deficit of reason (as discussed elsewhere), but belief in a theory that espouses man's ability to affect something equally incomprehensible - such as the climate of the entire planet - is understood to be an unmistakable sign of intellectual heft. Perhaps the truest sign that there is some sort of "intelligent designer" at work in the universe is the fact that He lights our benighted corner of the cosmos with a glint of wisdom.

A Green Haze - There is a reason why the language is called English. Leave it to our friends across the pond to stand out as some of the best practitioners of communicating simple yet resonant truths. In this case, the truths pertain to global warming, an area where truth is in short supply and hysteria is rampant. An excellent "for instance" comes to us by way of a documentary recently broadcast on Britain's Channel 4, entitled "The Great Global Warming Swindle." (The documentary can be seen in its entirety on YouTube.)

Through interviews with internationally prominent thought leaders in climate science, documentarian Martin Durkin takes a balanced look at the available data regarding climate change and CO2's supposed impact thereon to confirm that changes in the temperature of the earth's atmosphere are far too complex to be governed primarily by human activity. The feature then goes on to describe the origins and activities of the environmental movement; some of the most damning testimony against the "green lobby" comes from a co-founder of GreenPeace, Patrick Moore. To be sure, this movie serves as a powerful counterweight to "An Inconvenient Truth," and we can only hope that there will be an opportunity for the film to receive wider international release.

But global warming's assaults on prudence and reason stem not only from the intellectual dissociation required to accept the "science" behind it, but from the confused behavior such dissociation induces. In order to reduce their so-called "carbon footprint," corporations have taken to purchasing carbon "credits." These credits allow companies to pollute above a certain threshold, with the understanding that the money that the companies pay would be spent on projects that balance the environmental impact of the company's CO2 production. But as reported at FT.com, much of the money spent yields much that is of questionable value.

Companies and individuals rushing to go green have been spending millions on "carbon credit" projects that yield few if any environmental benefits.

A Financial Times investigation has uncovered widespread failings in the new markets for greenhouse gases, suggesting some organisations are paying for emissions reductions that do not take place.

Others are meanwhile making big profits from carbon trading for very small expenditure and in some cases for clean-ups that they would have made anyway.

The article goes on to describe a U.S.-based offsetting company, Blue Source, which allowed its customers to offset their carbon emissions by investing in pumping CO2 into depleted oil wells to help secure the remaining oil. But due to the high price of oil, "this process was often profitable in itself, meaning operators were making extra revenues from selling 'carbon credits' for burying the carbon."

The kicker to all of this is that one company that purchases offsets, Generation Investment Management LLP, is chaired by none other than Dr. Doom himself. Al Gore is a co-founder of the London-based GenerationIM (as it is known by insiders), and has served as chairman since its founding in 2004. I'll leave it to my new best friend Bill Hobbs to describe how Mr. Gore's involvement in the purchase of offsets for "personal" use serves to enrich himself and his partners.

Gore is chairman of the firm and, presumably, draws an income or will make money as its investments prosper. In other words, he "buys" his "carbon offsets" from himself, through a transaction designed to boost his own investments and return a profit to himself. To be blunt, Gore doesn't buy "carbon offsets" through Generation Investment Management - he buys stocks.

And to be sure, as Gore's operation invests in companies that are supposedly environmentally responsible (and thus more in vogue), and as his own efforts to heighten the public's awareness regarding climate change bear fruit, the profits of GenerationIM - and by extension his own renumeration - will grow considerably. All this while he does next to nothing to reduce his own footprint by way of reduced energy consumption, as reported in The Tennessean.

So if all of this seems to be more than be bit - to use a British aphorism - "dodgy," it should. Global warming evangelists bend "science" to their advantage to create undue panic, then unscrupulous companies play upon those gullible enough to buy into the anthropogenic climate change fable in order to enrich themselves. We might turn to the Brits once more for a ray of hope; perhaps if the upper lips of Mr. Gore and his confederates were a bit stiffer, they would not be able to create the "green smokescreen" that obscures their questionable activities.

Two for the Show - It was the Sunday of Earth Day weekend. I was in a back row of a Protestant church in a nondescript Midwestern suburb when I heard the good news about God, man and nature, and the responsibilities thereto. I was reminded then of what I have always acknowledged, which is that God entrusted man with stewardship over the Earth. God's intention as I understand it is that we - all of us - accept our solemn responsibility to tend to all of God's creation, that we might reflect our love for Him whom we cannot see by caring for all that we see all around us. All of this is plain, simple and noncontroversial.

Predictably perhaps, given that I was in a church that is part of a liberal Protestant denomination, the sermon sped beyond a simple didactic about caring for the earth and conserving its resources. The speaker waxed rhapsodic about how many tons of coal would not be burned if everyone began using compact florescent lights. The trajectory of the message arced towards confronting man's responsibility for saving the planet from mankind itself; he reached his crescendo as he impugned man for contributing to his own immolation, and that of the planet, by way of global warming. As I recall it now, he said something to the effect of, "Global warming is not a political issue, it is a moral issue."

I suspect that I was the only one in the congregation that sensed the dissonance inherent in the idea that man is responsible for saving that which man did not bring into existence. The assumption that man is capable of such a thing is evidence of an arrogance of Gibraltarian proportions. But this hubris is overshadowed by that which would propose that there is no more to be said of a political or scientific nature vis-a-vis global warming. As Dr. Thomas Sowell recently pointed out, "[t]he political Left's favorite argument is that there is no argument." The speaker of the hour in that suburban church was no more or less guilty than so many of today's progressives in moving beyond discussing global warming as a hypothesis yet to be proven to pressing their case that man-made climate change is a forgone scientific conclusion.

But beyond the commentary of Protestant clergy, the effort to position anthropogenic global warming as a fait accompli has lead to the publication of two reports that speak to climate change as a U.S. national security issue. Both reports are at least in part born of one of the Left's oldest shibboleths, namely that poverty (read income disparity) leads inexorably to crime, violence and instability. The first, Impacts of Climate Change from the Global Business Network reads like a whimsical exercise in "what if" hyperbole, the subject matter notwithstanding. The second, National Security and the Threat of Climate Change from the CNA Corporation, is chock-full of preternatural gloom from retired generals and admirals - augmented of course by the scientific guidance of such global warming stalwarts as NASA's James Hansen, Anthony Janetos of the Heinz Center for Science, Economics and the Environment and Richard Moss, who chairs a task group for the IPCC.

While both reports aver that a diminished water supply due to increased frequency and severity of droughts would lead to regional instability, the former suggests that civil disorder will rise as governments are unable to meet citizen expectations, and that new political coalitions may be "reformed around different attitudes to social risk-sharing." The imaginative thinking comes into play when the reader is asked to consider what would happen "as local wells run dry," "the Yucatan peninsula is devastated" or "a new airborne virus spreads through Turkey."

For its part, the second report attempts to take a more "just the facts, Ma'am" approach as it frets about global warming's impact on population displacement, food production and unstable governments providing a haven for terrorism. As we might expect from a document that came from the mind - if not the pen - of James Hansen, the CNA document recommends that the U.S. "help stabilize climate changes at levels that will avoid significant disruption." According to the authors, we would also do well to "commit to global partnerships that help less developed nations build resiliency to better manage climate impacts."

Of course, the fatal flaw in the sort of thinking that would prioritize helping "stabilize climate changes" above, let's say, dealing with plagues and pestilences that already beset mankind is the acceptance of the as of yet unproved belief that global climate change is the single greatest threat that mankind will face anytime soon. But we are left with no explanation of how this could be the case. Indeed, to swallow this dollop of credulity straining gobbledygook, we would need to place more emphasis on dealing with relatively modest rises in CO2 that on the combined effects of malnutrition, HIV/AIDS, SARS, Avian flu, malaria, diptheria, hepatitis, tuberculosis, polio, shortages of potable water, genocide, war and terrorism.

To be sure, if we want to help achieve the necessary goal of reducing the risk of global instability, we must address real and present risks rather than hypothetical ones. Protestant clergy and others would be well served to consider that the moral issue of our day is not that of managing CO2 levels, but addressing the ethical hazard of ignoring current threats to deal with undefined or ethereal threats to man's future, as discussed elsewhere.

P.S.: As a global warming activist, Sheryl Crow is a really good singer.