Global... What Exactly?

When I was in high school in the seventies there were three big scares that environmentalists were trying to get young minds to fear. Each one of them had a capitalized name. The Population Explosion, Nuclear Winter, and The Next Ice Age (which could be, just to make it double-scary, hastened by Nuclear Winter).

Now the same groups are focused on Global warming. Using questionable science (not necessarily wrong, but definitely questionable) and bad analogies such as "greenhouse gases" (an oxymoron if ever there was one) they have spent the last decade building up a case for an ever-increasing temperature on Earth ending with, presumably, the grilling of humanity.

Lately there is a new wrinkle in the works for the global warming Chicken Littles. Not only is Global Warming going to cook the Earth, apparently Global Warming is also going to cause the Next Ice Age.

...How Global Warming May Cause the Next Ice Age
If enough cold, fresh water coming from the melting polar ice caps and the melting glaciers of Greenland flows into the northern Atlantic, it will shut down the Gulf Stream, which keeps Europe and northeastern North America warm. The worst-case scenario would be a full-blown return of the last ice age - in a period as short as 2 to 3 years from its onset...

Most scientists involved in research on this topic agree that the culprit is global warming, melting the icebergs on Greenland and the Arctic icepack and thus flushing cold, fresh water down into the Greenland Sea from the north.

But wait! Not all parties have been heard from yet. In addition to causing the Next Ice Age, Global Warming is also going to prevent it.

Rising Sea Level and the Next Ice Age
Sea level is the highest it has been in 250,000 years, and a warming climate may be stalling Earth's natural cycle of hot and cold periods.

When Will the Next Ice Age Begin?
The next ice age almost certainly will reach its peak in about 80,000 years, but debate persists about how soon it will begin, with the latest theory being that the human influence on the atmosphere may substantially delay the transition

So there you have it. Absolutely irrefutable proof of... something irrefutable.

Amy Ridenour has some good ideas for dealing with these purveyors of confusion who are planning to sue energy companies because of "Global Warming."

* "Global warming," in colloquial usage, refers a theory predicting certain things about the future. The future has not occurred. Imagine the court testimony: "Your Honor, in the future, we expect to be injured... but we want the money now."

* Energy companies sell nothing without customers, so if it genuinely cares about the environment more than deep-pockets plaintiffs, Friends of the Earth should sue these customers, who often actually (gasp!) are the ones who burn the oil. (Of course, it would have to sue itself, and Greenpeace, and the Sierra Club, and Al Gore, but the environmentalist war on capitalism is serious business, and some collateral damage is inevitable.)

* Friends if the Earth thanks a European outfit called the "Minor Foundation for Major Challenges" for paying for their work on this. That's a new wrinkle on the global warming debate, which previously had been funded by major foundations chasing a minor challenge.

* As a defensive legal strategy, energy companies should stop selling to anyone planning to sue them. After a week or two, prospective plaintiffs will recall that energy has its uses, and want to use some more. (It should take less than a week in regions affected by the current uncommonly cold "global warming" weather, or, during summer, when it is over 78 Fahrenheit in France.)

* Friends of the Earth's director boasts their "global warming report should send shivers through the boardrooms." Anyone using the term "shivers" in connection with "warming" is not to be feared.

* Evidence of shivering in a boardroom may be used in court as evidence against global warming.

* Friends of the Earth says it singles out ExxonMobil because it "has repeatedly attempted to undermine the scientific consensus on climate change and actively resisted attempts to limit carbon dioxide emissions through law." In other words, it has disagreed with Friends of the Earth on scientific and legislative issues. Mediating such disagreements is not the purpose of courts.

Note to self: Plan the mother of all lawsuits -- one against environmentalists.

First up in the docket: The next-of-kin of millions of Third Worlders, very many of them children, who have died needlessly from malaria because environmentalists won't admit they are wrong about DDT.

Second up: The half million kids who go blind in the Third World due to a Vitamin A deficiency that could have been addressed with agricultural biotechnology -- technology opposed by wealthy First World environmentalists.

Third up: The next-of-kin of the 2,000 extra people killed in the U.S. every year since 1975 (National Academies of Science 2002 estimate) because environmentalist-supported fuel economy standards reduced the safety of passenger vehicles.

Fourth up: Any American who lost someone or something in forest fire because the environmentalist belief that land should be left untouched by humanity stopped forest thinning projects and other sane fire control measures. (Governor Schwarzenegger, call your office.)

I could go on. Anyone know a good lawyer? Humanitarians should apply.

Global Warming either exists, or does not exist, but it is not Tinkerbell. Beliving REALLY HARD will not make it so. And beliving is all we have to go on at this point because all of the facts are obviously not in.