12 FEB 07 / "Global Warming"

At the recent conference of the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) in Paris, climatologists publicly declared their consensus view that human beings are causing global warming, although their report has not yet been released.

Naturally, the media carried the news far and wide, offering little examination of the scientific conclusions and giving no credence of contradictory evidence that exists to refute the claims of the IPCC attendees. There was also little reporting on the actual science behind the group's propositions, one of which was a 90 percent certainty global warming was anthropogenic.

The attention on climate change borders on mass hysteria with no room for debate. There are hundreds of scientists that dispute the findings of the IPCC climatologists, but they are shunned and even fired from their positions for not adhering to the consensus view. Some of them believe the rise in temperatures over the past century may be due to solar fluctuations, volcanic emissions, and possible variations in Earth's orbit around the sun. Others contend we have been in a long warming trend coming out of the Little Ice Age. Whatever the reason, climactic changed had been occurring for billions of years before the rise of human civilization. The warming we've been experiencing over the past century could be a completely natural phenomenon, especially in light of the fact that Mars also appears to be getting warmer.

The concern among most Republicans is that we could soon over-react at great cost to taxpayers and consumers -- low carbon environmental restrictions will result in more expensive goods and services, and undue concern even jeopardizes national security because we are devoting federal resources to an issue that we may have little control over. The United States Supreme Court recently heard arguments in Massachusetts v. EPA in which the plaintiffs want to regulate carbon dioxide as a pollutant.

In addition, oil companies have now been harangued by Hillary Clinton, who has said she wants to confiscate Exxon's profits to subsidize alternative fuels -- fuels that may never have an actual market. The American economy runs on oil and that's not going to change any time soon barring a miraculous discovery. Oil companies deliver a product that we need. It's simply anti-capitalistic to attack a company that employs hundreds of thousands of people and already contributes billions of federal tax revenue. If there were a market for alternative fuel, the research money would already be flowing in, but the market understands there is no profit potential as of yet. In classic liberal fashion, taxpayer money would be wasted.

The United States economy needs oil in order to continue growing. If we were to discontinue the use of fossil fuels, we would experience an economic catastrophe orders of magnitude more dire than the Great Depression. The United States simply is not in a position to use alternative energy to fuel its economy. We are years away from that happening, despite our best intentions.

Make no mistake, we need to protect the air and water from pollutants. We have made great strides in past decades to clean up our environment at the behest of those in the environmentalist movement, but to regulate carbon dioxide as a pollutant at this point in time goes too far and exacts too great a cost to the American economy. Should we have cleaner running engines? Of course, but we shouldn't cripple the American economy in the process.

Global warming fits nicely with the agenda of the political left. Many environmentalists are actually communists who cloak their real intentions under the guise of environmentalism. They want nothing but to put the brakes on the American economy by the means of lawsuits like Massachusetts v. EPA.

The fact that the Earth is warming cannot be disputed, but to attribute it to a byproduct of civilization is altogether another matter. The so-called expert's that say we're running out of oil. There's plenty of oil. We just need to drill for it. Or mine for it in the case of the Alberta oil sands.

Islamic terrorists in possession of nuclear weapons constitute a far greater threat to the United States than  does global warming. So let's keep watch on the weather, but let's also not forget to win the war on terror.