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The debate over so-called “global warming” is frustrating.

I am far from an expert, although I do read a fair amount of the science on this topic, and have kept a sizeable file on the pros and cons over the years. My main concerns are the following. I think a good deal of the science is not up to a high standard, not because no earnest efforts are made, but because the subject matter (the entire earth and surrounding atmosphere) is far too vast, the number of fluctuating variables and the time spans too great, and the whole business is so shot through with political sensitivities (primarily of the anti-human, anti-population, anti-industry sort) that serious hypotheses can neither be framed nor tested in a controlled way.

On the political note, it is hard to escape the feeling that a great many global warming proponents are reflex leftists in their political beliefs and anywhere from mildly, to wildly anti-capitalist or even entirely opposed to all facets of western civilization. Spiritually speaking, they usually fall in the camp of neo-romantic nature lovers who, like most of us, despair of seeing their sweet planet earth fouled with human garbage, toxins, effluent, poisons, and the like. So they fight back by clinging to the dream of restoring the Garden of Eden, a beauteous earth as it must have been before humans arrived. There is no harm in this if a cleaner earth can be gotten without harming civilization. The most radical of them, however, are intemperate and to be avoided, for they are green through and through and consider human beings and their materialistic activities to be a kind of biological scourge or plague upon nature that must be eliminated. You can see some startling examples of Radical Green Ideas from their own mouths at the end of this piece.

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THE STARK headline appeared just over a year ago. “2007 to be ‘warmest on record,’ ” BBC News reported on Jan. 4, 2007. Citing experts in the British government’s Meteorological Office, the story announced that “the world is likely to experience the warmest year on record in 2007,” surpassing the all-time high reached in 1998.

But a funny thing happened on the way to the planetary hot flash: Much of the planet grew bitterly cold.

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