The Global Warming Crescendo Has Passed

As the cold of winter settles in on the northern hemisphere, all of the hysteria of "global warming," or its less specific alternative "climate change," rings increasingly hollow to the general public. Weather patterns of the past decade indicate that the planet has been in an undeniable cooling trend since prior to the new millennium. So the panicked prophesies of cataclysmic upturns in the earth's average temperature simply do not carry the emotional impact that they once held.

Specifically, the "global warming" debate has now advanced out of its dire predictions phase. It is no longer sufficient for celebrated professional alarmists to get in front of news cameras and prognosticate as to how quickly the world will incinerate. Such discussions are entering the observable evidence stage, in which those melting icecaps had better start inundating Manhattan or else people will begin to suspect they were being hoodwinked. To date, the scientifically quantifiable data show nothing but the normal warming and cooling cycles, easily attributable to the fluctuations in solar activity that have been the fate of the planet since its creation.

To the dubious credit of its advocates, the entire "global warming" controversy, along with the mountains of legislation and regulation that resulted from its promotion, amounted to perhaps the largest and most successful example of royal nudity in the modern era. Entire industries have sprung from the public pressure brought against oil companies and other large-scale manufacturers who face increasingly outrageous demands to curtail their dastardly assaults on mother earth.

Even now, though its supposed ill effects are proving fraudulent, the reputation of carbon dioxide (ostensibly the principal "greenhouse gas") as a threat to the future of all life on the planet is widely, if not universally accepted among the nation's highest social and political circles. Admittedly, neither group has a lock on intellect or rational judgment, but their collective impact on the perceptions among the general public cannot be ignored.

The ensuing 2012 deadline for the end of sales of incandescent light bulbs in America reminds us all that government will happily seize any situation as a means of expanding its control on society. In what may first seem to be merely a bad joke, over at the Environmental Protection Agency, a "greenhouse gas" tax on livestock, reaching as high as $175 for a dairy cow, is being contemplated. Main Street America is threatened with forced fundamental changes, implemented in deference to an unfounded fable.

Most ominous of all, the coal industry, which makes up the backbone of America's ability to produce electricity, is being openly targeted for eventual eradication by the left-wing political establishment. So universally vilified is it among the liberal elite that some "progressive" jurisdictions are currently refusing to buy electrical power produced from coal.

Instead, they opt for "green" sources of energy, not realizing (or perhaps deliberately ignoring the facts) that the utilitarian efficiency of coal-fired electrical production is the primary reason that such alternatives can be selectively employed at the whims of the enviro-extremists.

Were their livelihoods and well-being truly reliant on the fickle supplies of wind energy, for example, the green ideologues would find its inconstancy and impracticality starkly enlightening. A few cold dark nights with no wind, and thus no power, and they would quickly learn to temper their idealism. Currently however, they bask in the luxury of railing incessantly against their cheap, reliable electricity, while remaining fully confident that the next time they flip the nearest light switch, the darkness will flee.

Yet despite their relentless efforts to maintain the worldwide panic over rising temperatures and all of the supposed calamities that will ensue in the wake of the expected planetary heat wave (and many of which should have befallen us by now), a growing cadre of skeptics, supported by a bulk of research data, suggests the possibility that the "global warming" scam may be in retreat.

No less a world leader than Vaclav Klaus, incoming President of the European Union, denounces climate change hysteria as a hoax. News from the Arctic is that the ice pack this winter is as large as it was in 1979. In other words, during the intervening years the world has warmed and cooled, cyclically and irrespective of man-made "greenhouse gases," just as has been the case throughout the millennia.

Of course, if allowed to advance their agenda unchecked, the left will continue to exploit "climate change" fears for as long as it can garner political capital from them. Then, as it does in the wake of all of its other dismal failures, it will simply move on to some other topic the moment the public grows suspicious and weary of the always impending but never materializing climatic catastrophes.

Until such time, Al Gore will continue his lucrative practice of giving speeches addressing the "end of the world," for as long as sycophantic crowds are willing to ignore his insincerity and continue paying exorbitant sums of money to be propagandized about the impending apocalyptic heat waves. And the network news apparatus will persist in its attempts to convince the American people that only through the expanded powers of government can humanity hope to survive the ordeal.

Yet many among the scientific and political communities are recognizing the need to distance themselves from the climate change alarmism. Others, who pragmatically supported the ruse despite having access to empirical data that refuted it, will suffer long-term credibility deficits that inevitably befall such shameless opportunism.

Despite the seeming sea change in the political landscape last November, or the eagerness with which the incoming president intends to exploit environmental fears to his advantage, "global warming" may soon take its place along side Bigfoot, Y2K, and the Bermuda triangle on the ash heap of fabricated history.