The Church Of Global Warming (Liturgy Subject To Change)

Mark Steyn writes about the flip-flopping (its too hot, its too cold, its to wet, its too dry, its too windy, where's the wind?) crisis-mongers who are on the verge of suicide to save the planet. Yes - you heard me right: "Save the Earth! Committ Suicide!"

Oh, and here's my favorite -- Dr. Sue Blackmore looking on the bright side in Britain's Guardian:

"In all probability billions of people are going to die in the next few decades. Our poor, abused planet cannot take much more. . . . If we decide to put the planet first, then we ourselves are the pathogen. So we should let as many people die as possible, so that other species may live, and accept the destruction of civilization and of everything we have achieved.

"Finally, we might decide that civilization itself is worth preserving. In that case we have to work out what to save and which people would be needed in a drastically reduced population -- weighing the value of scientists and musicians against that of politicians, for example."

Hmm. On the one hand, Dr. Sue Blackmore and the bloke from Coldplay. On the other, Dick Cheney. I think we can all agree which people would be "needed" -- Al Gore, the guy from the New Yorker, perhaps Scarlett Johansson in a fur-trimmed bikini paddling a dugout canoe through a waterlogged Manhattan foraging for floating curly endives from once-fashionable eateries.

I'll take my chances with Cheney over the Coldplay dude - at least Cheney can hunt. Steyn goes on to remind us of the last big climatological brouhaha - which I remember from my elementary school Weekly Reader days - Global Cooling...

Here's an inconvenient truth for "An Inconvenient Truth": Remember what they used to call "climate change"? "Global warming." And what did they call it before that? "Global cooling." That was the big worry in the '70s: the forthcoming ice age. Back then, Lowell Ponte had a huge best seller called The Cooling: Has the new ice age already begun? Can we survive?

The answer to the first question was: Yes, it had begun. From 1940 to 1970, there was very slight global cooling. That's why the doom-mongers decided the big bucks were in the new-ice-age blockbusters.

And yet, amazingly, we've survived. Why? Because in 1970 the planet stopped its very slight global cooling and began to undergo very slight global warming. So in the '80s, the doom-mongers cast off their thermal underwear, climbed into the leopardskin thongs, slathered themselves in sun cream and wired their publishers to change all references to "cooling" to "warming" for the paperback edition. That's why, if you notice, the global-warming crowd begin their scare statistics with "since 1970," an unlikely Year Zero which would not otherwise merit the significance the eco-crowd invest in it.

Just remember folks, the world has been "ending" since the day it was created. Now, I'm not saying we shouldn't do what we can to protect the environment. We all love Mother Nature, but lets learn take everything Chicken Little says with a grain of salt, before we rush off screaming that the sky is falling (or the thermometer is falling, or rising...whatever.)