Man's conceit is planet-sized

Global warming alarmists are back in force. Global warming, remember, is the idea that the "planet" (a term of art for what ordinary people call the "earth" or the "world") is getting warmer because it is caught in the grip of a "greenhouse effect" caused by burning coal, oil and other fossil fuels that power the homes, vehicles and factories of the modern world.

In the old days, alarmists predicted rapid temperature increases. When the planet didn't get hot enough fast enough, they resorted to public relations, even deceit and fear. Stanford atmospheric scientist Stephen Schneider once counseled his activist friends as follows: "We need to get some broad-based support, to capture the public's imagination.... So we have to offer up scary scenarios, make simplified, dramatic statements, and make little mention of any doubts we may have.... Each of us has to decide what the right balance is between being effective and being honest."

Alarmists now have a new twist that is being prominently covered by national news media: Any capricious weather -- a blizzard, flood, hurricane, drought -- can be "evidence" of global warming. Here we have a new incarnation of Myers Law: When the data don't fit the theory, get new data. It's the "scientific" equivalent of heads, I win; tails, you lose.

This wouldn't matter so much except that President Clinton has signed on
with Vice President Al Gore and the alarmists. In a Feb. 2 speech in Salem,
N.H., Clinton said that "snowstorms were due, in part, believe it or not, to global warming. Why? Because when you upset the climate balance, you have more extremes in weather, including harder winters, as well as hotter summers... So, I tell you, my friends, the jobs of the future...are going to go to those who can find a way to work to preserve what God has given us, not to tear it up."

Hold on for the ride. We are now jumping from global warming, to jobs, to tearing up what God has given us.

In an earlier time, we relied on humorists Will Rogers and Mark Twain to spike our puffed-up views of ourselves. Today, perhaps, we can learn something from the iconoclastic comedian George Carlin: "This planet has been here 4.5 billion years," said Carlin, jammin' in Central Park. "We have been here -- what? -- a hundred thousand, maybe two hundred thousand? And we've only been engaged in heavy industry for a little over two hundred years. Two hundred years versus 4.5 billion. And we have the conceit to think that somehow we're a threat