CONFRONTING THE NEW RELIGION - AT 9:52 P.M. ET:  The great Michael Barone takes on the church of global warming, whose parishioners are being confronted by a growing army of infidels:

I am open to arguments on this issue, but as I have written several times it seems to me that many global warming alarmists are motivated by something that is more like religion than science. It makes sense to try to mitigate negative effects of any change in climate or weather, as we are quite capable of doing, technologically and economically...But imposing huge costs on our private sector economy on the basis of computer models of something as complex as climate, and which have not done a good job of predicting the present or recent past, seems the height of folly.

There are people in the ludicrously called "global warming community" who believe that views like Barone's are the equivalent of Holocaust denial, and stating them is a criminal act.  I can see Barone in stripes in Sing Sing. 

"Whaddaya in for, Bud?"

"Aiding and abetting global warming through thought and publication."

"Lucky you didn't get solitary."

As for global warming, why assume that every affect will be negative? I grew up in Michigan and would have been grateful for some global warming as I waited in the dark for the school bus. As (Australian geologist Ian) Plimer explains in the opening chapter of Heaven and Earth, climate has been much warmer and much cooler at various times in the past. Human beings have adapted—and it’s been a lot easier to adapt to warming than cooling.

That does it.  We're demanding that Sonia Satomayor swear out an arrest warrant before her confirming hearings for the Supreme Court start tomorrow.  What we have here is a crime wave.  Or a heat wave.  Or a 20-foot wave.  Or some kind of wave.

July 12, 2009