What we found in our movie “An Inconsistent Truth” is that belief in man-made global warming is wide but very shallow. Ask people on the street, as we did, if they believe in global warming and you’re likely to get a confident affirmation. Ask them why they believe it and you’re likely to get the dull stare of a dairy cow or the puzzled and confused gaze of Edith Bunker.

The trouble is most people have been spoon-fed only half the story and as Thomas B. Macaulay once said, “Half knowledge is worse than ignorance.” Indeed. People have taken Al Gore’s claims of global calamity at face value despite his propensity to lie. Remember, he’s the man who once claimed to have created the Internet.

It’s a shame but most people are simply incurious creatures. Some may call it intellectual laziness but the fact is people are just too busy living their own lives to devote any serious study to global warming. Being a talk radio host I do nothing but study the issues, and we spent two-and-a-half years researching and filming “An Inconsistent Truth.” We learned there was actually more time spent by the global warming alarmists trying to scare away the curious than actually cementing their argument. Phrases like “settled science” and “consensus” are the parlance of
politicians and political hacks, not scientists.

Curiosity, however, is the mother’s milk of science. Without it, science stops. Science is never settled. If it were then all the poking and prodding that comes with science would stop as well.

And that’s exactly what Gore wants. He wants to stop the innate curiosity of scientists when it comes to studying why on earth we keep warming and cooling. Forget that we’ve been doing both for millennia. All of a sudden it’s our fault. Trust him.

In order to fill in that other half of the knowledge that is so sorely needed we dared challenge the so-called status quo and held Gore accountable for the outlandish fabrications he portrayed in his own movie. The whoppers are so numerous that the High Court of England ruled that English schoolchildren must be alerted to those fallacies before they can be exposed to his propaganda machine.

We only had 90 minutes so we focused on the doozies. Polar bears are not dying off despite what Gore and the Nissan Leaf people might want you to think. (And they don’t hug humans, by the way. They eat them if they can.) In fact, polar bears are thriving.

Here’s another myth: all the ice caps all over the globe are melting. Ice in the Arctic has subsided a bit in the last 20 years but it was doing the same thing in the ‘50s, the ‘20s and for who knows how long before we were actually able to measure it thanks to satellites. Besides, while the Arctic ice was retreating the Antarctic ice was growing at roughly the same pace.

Apparently this warming isn’t so global after all.

And Arctic sea ice is floating so its melting has no more effect on sea levels rising than the ice melting in your Coke causes your glass to overflow. Oh, and that nasty CO2 we breathe and plants take in for food? It’s not really a pollutant unless, of course, it’s coming out of Gore’s mouth. And now they’ve shortened carbon dioxide to just “carbon” to make it sound dirty.

We have been bamboozled. Somebody had to say it. We did. Gore and his henchmen have literally hijacked science and are attempting to use it for their own purposes. What purposes? Ah, well, you’ll have to see the movie. We doggedly pursue the poster boy of global warming, even crashing a book signing. While we wait to be turned down yet again by his press secretary we sit down for substantive discussions with noted scientists like Dr. John Christy who was a lead scientist on the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) that Gore points to as proof of a consensus.

It’s a fun-filled, sometimes humorous, always fascinating and factual journey to the center of the truth. Pick up some hot popcorn and a CO2-injected soft drink and enjoy the show. Just make sure you wipe your carbon footprint before entering the theater.

NIRVANA’S “NEVERMIND” IS 20 YEARS OLD?

All I remember about this album is that it ushered in the grunge era which in turn forced me to stop wearing flannel shirts because I’d rather be dead than trendy. Yep, it’s been two decades since I wore flannel.

Is it safe now?

That music was so depressing, though. I used to call it “Songs to Kill Yourself By.” It seemed like all the fun went out of popular music as it became narcissistic and  angst-driven. Laugh all you want at the music of the 80s, the big-haired metal bands and all that, but at least thet music  was about living, about being young and in love and free. Rebellion is a much more attractive message than wallowing.

KIRSTEN DUNST: ‘PEOPLE WHO DON’T GET DEPRESSED ARE WEIRD’

Actually, people who think it’s weird to not get depressed are weird.

‘PEOPLE FLEE A POLLUTED EARTH BY GOING BACK 85 MILLION YEARS…’

We open in 2149 and things are going just as badly as ‘An Inconvenient Truth’ predicted.

This L.A. Times review of ‘Terra Nova’ lost me with that nonsense until…

…yes, there will be rampaging voracious dinosaurs….

Why didn’t you say so to begin with?

‘JERSEY SHORE’ DIPS TO SEASON LOW, STILL BEATS NBC, CBS

The world of entertainment sure is changing when a cable show beats the broadcast networks. Or it’s a sign of the apocalypse? No reason it couldn’t be both.   

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SCOTTDS’ EPIC LINK-TACULAR 

ANNE HATHAWAY’S FULL CATWOMAN COSTUME REVEALED

THE JASON STATHAM KILL COUNTER

MOVIE CHARACTERS WITH TOM SELLECK MUSTACHES

ALEX PROYAS TO DIRECT ADAPTATION OF ‘PARADISE LOST’ WITH CASEY AFFLECK

6 MOVIE PLOT HOLES YOU NEVER NOTICED THANKS TO EDITING

BELATED BIRTHDAY: CELEBRATING 30 YEARS OF STRIPES

NIRVANA’S ‘NEVERMIND’ 20 YEARS LATER

MOST EMBARRASSING DELETED SCENES FROM SCIENCE FICTION AND FANTASY MOVIES

‘TRANSFORMERS’ RIDE COMING TO UNIVERSAL STUDIOS ORLANDO?

DISNEY READY TO LET ‘LONE RANGER’ BACK ON THE RANGE?

TOP 10 INTERESTING FACTS ABOUT HITCHCOCK’S ‘PSYCHO‘

EPIC INTERVIEW WITH THE MIGHTY LANCE HENRIKSEN

10 THINGS WRONG WITH ACTION MOVIES

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LAST NIGHT’S SCREENING

Arthur (1981) - After thirty-years this romantic comedy/fairy tale hasn’t lost any of its charm. The casting of Dudley Moore is the real key. Even though he’s a spoiled multi-millionaire who refuses to grow up, it’s impossible not to sympathize with his character because — he’s Dudley Moore. Guileless, sad,  and lost are Arthur’s main attributes and thanks to Moore’s Oscar-nominated performance, you never mistake the money and drinking and wonderful toys as anything more than the stuff he tries to fill the empty hole of his life with.

Sir John Gielgud won a no-brainer supporting Oscar as Hobson, Arthur’s butler, best friend and father figure. The way in which he delivers some of his lines is so withering you don’t know whether to laugh or duck.

This perfect film was the debut of writer/director Steve Gordon who, sadly, would die the following year of a heart attack at the age of 43. Gordon also wrote the grossly under-appreciated 1978 wrestling comedy “The One and Only.” He was nominated for his “Arthur” screenplay and rightly so. There are at least a dozen absolutely perfect scenes in the film.

Luckily I’ve managed to avoid the 2011 “Arthur” remake but you can understand why it flopped. Whereas Dudley Moore was all impish charm and pathos (even while driving drunk), Russell Brand is, well, creepy.

If you haven’t seen the original in a while, I can’t recommend it more. Thoroughly charming from opening scene to close.

Moore did star in 1988’s “Arthur 2: On the Rocks,” a sequel he later disowned.  Sometime in 1987, while the wife and I were vacationing in Los Angeles and doing all the usual touristy stuff, Dudley Moore waved to our studio-tour tram from the window of his trailer on the set of “Arthur 2.”  

I’ve never forgotten that.

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CLASSIC PICK FOR TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 27

TCM:

8:00 PM  EST: Spartacus (1960) –  An heroic slave leads a revolt against the corrupt Roman Empire. Dir: Stanley Kubrick Cast:  Kirk Douglas, Laurence Olivier, Jean Simmons. C-196 mins, TV-PG, CC, Letterbox Format.

The sexual chemistry between Kirk Douglas and Jean Simmons is more vital the success of the film than most people realize. Watch it again and tell me I’m wrong.

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--Please send tips/suggestions/requests/complaints/your life savings to jnolte@breitbart.com

Via Reuters:

“We all know we’re going to die every moment of every day,” [director Abel Ferrara] told reporters after a press screening of the movie in Venice. “What you do in the meantime is what life is all about.”

News footage, including a real interview by environmental campaigner and former U.S. Vice President Al Gore, makes clear that the cause of Earth’s demise is man-made.

“This film is about man’s destruction of the Earth,” Ferrara said.

“It’s on us. It’s our responsibility. We did it. This isn’t an accident, or an act of God as they say in the insurance claim. This is an act of man.

“That’s a nightmare. That’s part of the anguish. There’s a lot more further advanced civilizations than ours that have bit the dust … it’s not like: ‘Oh my God, this could never happen’.” …

Asked whether Gore was officially attached to the film, the director said he had “reached out” to the former U.S. vice president and that he was “definitely pro,” although he had not seen it.

Ferrara is responsible for two of my favorite films of the ’90s: “Bad Lieutenant” and “King of New York.” Twenty years later, both still resonate thanks to two amazing central performances that bring to life complicated characters living in Ferrara’s thematically-driven world. Because of the explicit subject matter, these aren’t films I would recommend to everyone, but if you want to learn how to deliver a compelling character study to the screen, you won’t find better examples. The key to their success, however, is the word “theme.” There’s no agenda at work, nothing preachy, no divisive message. Of all directors, you would think Ferrara would know better.

When you create a fantasy world where Al Gore’s nonsense, lies and hypocrisy are proven correct, how does that add to your story?  

When it comes to similar movies, there was nothing partisan or political about “On the Beach.” The scenario there was a very real possibility in a world of mutual assured destruction. As far as a more recent example, ”The Road” did this exactly right. We had no idea what caused the end of the world. You filled in your own blank, you brought your own worldview to the story and in turn the story both fulfilled and challenged that view. Even the openly liberal 1983 television film “The Day After” was wise enough to avoid laying blame for nuclear Armageddon on anyone.

Ferrara’s central idea fascinates me. People dealing with that kind of inevitable is a terrific concept and character device. Unfortunately, I have absolutely no desire to live through the sucker punch of a childish and phony “told ya so” from Al Gore. 

Not because it’s liberal, but because it reeks of  lousy storytelling.

Entertainment Weekly is just another dishonest media outlet disguised as non-partisan and objective, and like too many of their counterparts in the entertainment media, that disguise is their weapon of choice as they propagandize to young readers and kiss Hollywood ass in exchange for the access necessary to keep those lame exclusives coming that only read well in a restroom.

Aubrey Vaughan at NewsBusters busts their biased, partisan double standards red-handed here:

The conservative documentary, which successfully opened last weekend in limited release, was given a snarky review under the headline “Sarah Palin’s ‘The Undefeated’: We saw it so you don’t have to!“.

While ‘The Undefeated’ is admittedly told from a conservative viewpoint, the criticism of it, compared to the warm reception of Moore and Gore’s liberally biased films, is remarkable.

In the ‘Undefeated’ review, Young acknowledges that the director has every right to make it a pro-Palin film, but mocks the quality of the film for that same reason. Palin, whom Young describes as someone “who positions herself as so outside the political system that she can host a reality-television show and somehow get away with it,” had no affiliation with the production of the film, but Young still manages to frequently insult her and the director. …

In contrast, never do the ‘Fahrenheit 9/11′ or ‘Inconvenient Truth’ reviews acknowledge any one-sidedness or disagreements with the films’ content.

Young also complains of a number of biases in the film he sees as conveniently aiding Palin’s case, including glazing over the 2008 presidential campaign, painting her resignation as a result of the distracting bombardment of ethics investigations (ignoring possible financial motivations to move to TLC and Fox News), and only including commentary from “conservative bigwigs like Mark Levin and Andrew Breitbart” who are just “voices to the choir.”

Instead, the ‘Fahrenheit 9/11′ review lauded Moore for his Bush-bashing, leaving no room to explain any factual inaccuracies or the possibility of differing viewpoints.

Reviews of ‘Fahrenheit 9/11′ and ‘An Inconvenient Truth’ never mentioned the possibility of biased omissions or one-sided debates, even though both were released to much wider audiences.

You’ll want to read the whole thing.

Within seconds of Michele announcing she’d decided to launch a bid for the Republican nomination for President of the United States, it became clear that not one iota of liberal negativity toward conservatives has abated.

Over the past few days, the rock world has joined the fun by publicly stepping forward in an effort to send a message to the latest object of targeted political ridicule, Michele Bachmann. The goal is to drive home the point that liberal rock musicians disapprove of both Bachmann’s politics and her audacity in thinking she actually has a chance to send honorary rock star Barack Obama back to Chicago.

Following Alec Baldwin’s Twitter tirade, Tom Petty, a Mad Hatter in sunglasses, decided it was his turn to deny Bachmann, without explanation, the use of one of his hit songs. Petty is so anti-GOP he forbade Michele Bachmann from playing  “American Girl” as a musical backdrop to her announcement to run for president.

Apparently, the last thing Tom Petty wants to be associated with is writing the signature anthem that could accompany a female Republican candidate on the trip from Minnesota to the White House.  So, to prevent that from happening, the rocker sent a three-word message to Michele: “Cease and desist.”

It’s doubtful that Tom Petty would decline $275 per person ticket proceeds based on who concertgoers supported in the last election. Yet, rock musicians who refuse, due to partisan politics, to let conservative candidates use songs for campaign backdrops forget that many of their fans are conservatives.

It’s no secret: Tom Petty isn’t a fan of the Right. When George W. Bush ran for governor of Texas, the genial GWcomplimented the songwriter by using “I Won’t Back Down” as a campaign song. The unappreciative Petty had his publisher warn the campaign that using the ballad could send a false impression (Heaven forbid) that Petty endorsed Bush, and ordered the gubernatorial team to pull the song.

Tom Petty is one of a large herd of liberal singers and songwriters who sell their wares like capitalists on steroids to anyone and everyone, but when a conservative candidate identifies with one of their songs, out of fear of being perceived as leaning to the right hawkers of concert T-shirts and tacky glassware suddenly become all partisan and possessive.

Yet when Democrats like Black Socks Spitzer of New York and John “My-Wife-Has-Cancer-While-I’m-Having-an-Affair” Edwards used Heartbreaker music as campaign anthems, Tom the Petty fully endorsed both Lotharios using the extremely apropos “Won’t Back Down” ditty.

The “You Can Call Me Al” and “Don’t Stop” crews are proud to have signature songs associated with Al “Crazed Sex Poodle” Gore and impeached adulterer Bill Clinton, but Sarah Palin shaking hands and hugging babies in time to “Barracuda” irked female rock group Heart so much that the duo threatened a lawsuit if Sarah didn’t pick another tune.

Truth is, in the world of rock and roll, the liberal malady is endemic. In the 1980’s, Bruce Springsteen took on the Gipper over Reagan’s use of the song “Born in the USA.” During the 2004 presidential election, in an effort to save the USA from a second Bush term, Bruce partnered with über-liberal left-wing group MoveOn.org to headline a star-studded caravan of whiners in a Vote for Change Tour.

The 2004 MoveOn.org/rock-and-roll effort failed and Bush won reelection, which proves there are more Republican voters than liberals realize.  If, as a group, conservatives boycotted downloading music from iTunes and stopped buying concert tickets, many artists who feel comfortable insulting Republicans for sport would definitely take a hit in the pocketbook.

Then again, one has to wonder if someone like Bruce Springsteen even comprehends the concept that the people he slurs with his political invectives have the monetary power to affect The Boss’s bottom line.  After all, didn’t Springsteen say Obama “speaks to the America I’ve envisioned in my music for the past 35 years”?

Even still, the liberal Step Away From the Song list goes on and on: Pretty boy Jon Bon Jovi told Sarah Palin not to use “Who Says You Can’t Go Home.”  The Foo Fighters and Van Halen dissed John McCain; Bruce Hornsby felt Sean Hannity’s use of his song “The Way it Is” shouldn’t be the way it is; and rock group Rush informed Rand Paul he’s no “Tom Sawyer.”

By now, Republicans should know better than to provide ammunition for the left by failing to stringently follow copyright laws and respect property ownership rights. Yet, a politically partisan situation still presents an opportunity to learn a profound lesson for those on both sides of the political aisle.

Liberal musicians should understand that having a fan base largely made up of those without the ability to pay $1.99 to download a song or lay out close to three bills for a concert ticket isn’t going to ensure their rock star lifestyle for very long.

For those heartbroken by Petty Heartbreaker, conservatives must take their eyes off the “Yes We Can” free-for-all where liberal politicians sway and wave in time to music amidst showers of balloons filled to capacity with Democrat hot air.  It’s time to realize the same standard does not and will never apply to Grand Ole or Tea Party candidates. Just because liberal musicians become gazillionaires with the help of Republican fans doesn’t mean those same rich rock stars will show appreciation by treating conservative candidates with respect.

For those on the right, the salient point is this: liberal politicians are never denied rights to artists’ theme songs; quite the contrary, they are encouraged to use them. Conservatives politicians should not be so naïve as to assume similar rules apply to the likes of Herman Cain and Michele Bachmann.

With that in mind, Bachmann and Harley-riding Barracuda Palin should rethink forgoing the mud wrestling fight Michele claims the media is itching for and hit the ring to work out which lady will seek permission to claim Carrie Underwood’s “All-American Girl” and whose anthem will ultimately be conservative rocker Kid Rock’s “Born Free.”

Moreover, Olbermann recently announced that Lewis, Burns, and Moore, will all be part of his new show, set to premier on Al Gore’s Current TV on June 20, 2011.

As it concerns Moore, this announcement is very timely because it comes on the heels of Moore’s incredibly ignorant op-ed scribbling – incredibly ignorant even for him – about our actions against the recently deceased Osama bin Laden. It appears that Moore believes our country’s image would have been better served had we captured Osama and brought him back for trial instead of just killing him on the spot.

Yet Moore’s thoughts are so incongruous that in the same op-ed in which he makes his case for a trial, he also wrote that he’s against the death penalty. By extrapolation, this can only mean that if we had in fact brought Osama back for trial, even upon finding him guilty, the most Moore would have wanted us to do for punishment would have been to sentence him to life in prison.

When MSNBC’s Ed Schultz pointed to the inherent foolishness of Moore’s words, referring to them as just so much “intellectual liberal handwringing,” ex-MSNBC employee Olbermann came to Moore’s defense: “For him to…be accused of ‘intellectual liberal handwringing’ by a supposedly liberal commentator on a supposedly liberal television network is outrageous.”f

I say kudos to Schultz for doing something a lot of liberals can’t do: namely, looking beyond political labels long enough to know that Osama’s death was a great thing for America (whether it made Moore happy or not).

As for Olbermann’s defense of Moore, what else should we expect? The guy is so washed up that his new show is going to be carried on the same exciting channel that brought us Al Gore’s 24/7 climate-disaster programming.

If I were that washed up, I might even hang out with Michael Moore.

It seems Springsteen is upset with Christie’s ongoing battle against government expenditures, particularly public entitlements. And as liberals and hard left ideologues like Michael Moore and Susan Sarandon have done against Republican Governor Scott Walker in Wisconsin, so Springsteen is now doing against Christie in New Jersey.

Wrote Springsteen: “[Christie’s] cuts are eating away at the lower edges of the middle class, not just those already classified as in poverty, and are likely to continue to get worse over the next few years.” (If you’re like me, when you read Springsteen’s words all you see is “blah, blah, blah, and blah.”)

Honestly folks, I’m beginning to get embarrassed for him in the way I’ve come to be embarrassed for Larry Hagman’s family and Al Gore apologists.

Springsteen demonstrates no grasp of American political history–particularly the history that proves shrinking the size of government, like Christie is doing, results in greater wealth for all.

And while I’m embarrassed for Springsteen, I’m also appalled by his hypocrisy. I mean, here is a man who takes advantage of the system in order to keep from paying all the taxes he’s supposed to pay in his home state of New Jersey: which means he’s making sure his money isn’t in the system to be distributed to those less fortunate ones whom he’s accusing Christie of overlooking.

When I was an impressionable youth with no direction in life, I went to a couple of Springsteen concerts during the mid-1980s. Like many at that time, I hadn’t grasped the fact that Springsteen’s thematic “Born in the U.S.A.” wasn’t praising this great country but condemning it.  Yet I’ve long since figured it out, and wouldn’t now walk across the street to see Springsteen perform if he was doing a free show in a mall parking lot.

Chris Christie is trying to save New Jersey from the financial implosion politicians before him set in motion. If Springsteen wants more money to go to the impoverished in his state, maybe he’ll put his money where his mouth is and start paying all the taxes he could be paying on his little farm there.

Until then, his rudimentary op-eds will continue to provide Larry Hagman with some degree of cover, as laughter shifts from the loon who thinks solar power will cure the world’s ills to disgust toward the hypocrite who’s calling the rest of us to a standard he’s not prepared to meet.

To which I say, “Stop—you’re both wrong!”

This, in a nutshell, is the message of the new documentary about me and my work that opens nationwide on Nov. 12. It’s called “Cool It” and, yes, the title is meant to be clever. The idea is that we do need to cool down the planet, but in order to do it sensibly we first need to cool it ourselves. That is, we need to dispense with both the anti-scientific denialism and the Al Gore-ish fear-mongering. Instead, what we should be doing is facing facts—and responding to them not with rhetoric but with smarter, more rational policies.

The first fact we need to acknowledge is the reality of global warming. Like it or not, the data is abundantly clear that man-made greenhouse gases have been building up in the atmosphere for decades if not centuries, with the result that global temperatures are rising. Yes, the “Climate-gate” emails and the disclosure of funny business at the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change exposed some deeply disturbing academic chicanery and prejudice at some supposedly prestigious institutions. However, these revelations did nothing to undermine the fundamental scientific basis of global warming. What they did call into question were many of the more extreme predictions about global warming’s likely impact—such as the idea that all the Himalayan glaciers were about to disappear (they’re not) or that half the Amazon rain forest would soon be destroyed (not likely).

Of course, these extreme predictions are at the heart of the mainstream environmental movement’s position on climate policy. And this brings us to another set of facts we need to face: that while global warming is real, it is not quite the imminent catastrophe so many climate activists would have us believe. There may be some truth to the notion that in order to get people to focus on a problem, you need to scare the pants off them. But while worst-case scenarios may be a great way to get the public’s attention, they are a terrible basis for making public policy. If you believe that the southwest U.S. is about to become another dustbowl (as Paul Krugman has insisted) or that Greenland and Antarctica are on the verge of becoming huge piles of slush (as Al Gore would have us believe), of course you’re going to argue that we should do everything we can to eliminate carbon emissions as quickly as possible—even if that means amazingly costly and ineffective government policies.

And make no mistake about it—the kind of carbon cuts called for in the Kyoto Protocols and the European Union’s recently adopted 20/20 policy (under which carbon emissions are supposed to be cut to 20% below 1990 levels by 2020) are hardly a recipe for success. Not only would they rob us of trillions of dollars worth of economic output—the EU effort alone would cost an estimated $250 billion a year in lost GDP—but they would do astonishingly little to solve global warming. According to the DICE climate-economic model, if the EU plan were to be implemented every year for the next 90 years, the resulting reduction in temperatures would be too small to measure. (To be precise, the figure is a miniscule 0.1 degrees Fahrenheit.)

The good news is that there is another, better way to deal with global warming—a cure that is most assuredly not worse than the disease. As I have noted elsewhere, the big problem with the Al Gore approach to global warming is that it ignores the fact that despite all the hopeful talk about solar, wind, and other green energy technologies, we are still overwhelmingly dependent for our energy needs on carbon-emitting fuels like coal and oil. Why? Because coal and oil are far cheaper and more efficient energy sources than the alternatives. For two decades now, we have been putting the cart before the horse, pretending we could cut carbon emissions now (by taxing them) and solve the efficiency problem later. Unfortunately, this makes neither economic nor political sense. What we should be doing isn’t trying to make carbon-emitting fuels too expensive to use, but rather figuring out how to make green energy cheaper. If we could do that, we wouldn’t have to force (or subsidize) anyone to stop burning coal and oil. Everyone, including the Chinese and the Indians, would shift to the cheaper and cleaner alternatives.

This of course is a big if. But it’s not impossible. As the Breakthrough Institute has pointed out, we didn’t promote the digital revolution by taxing slide rules or restricting the supply of typewriters. We did it by investing massively in R&D. We could—and should—do the same with green energy technology. As we point out in “Cool It,” devoting roughly $100 billion a year to green energy R&D would likely produce the kind of game-changing breakthroughs needed to fuel a carbon-free future. Not only would this be a much less expensive fix than trying to cut carbon emissions directly, it would also reduce global warming far more quickly.

So why aren’t we doing this? I blame polarization. What’s keeping us from getting anywhere is the lack of any middle ground in the climate debate. As far as the alarmists are concerned, you either believe global warming poses an imminent threat to our continued existence or you are a denier. Deniers can be just as bad: in their view, if you don’t believe global warming is a nefarious hoax, you must be an empty-headed “warmist.” It’s time to retire the old shibboleths of both left and right—and stop branding anyone who dares question them a crackpot or worse.

Tackling global warming smartly is not (or at least it shouldn’t be) a political issue. Being smart is something we ought to be able to find bipartisan agreement on. For the politically conservative, the attraction of this approach is that it is a clear-headed, fiscally responsible response – and one that would actually fix the problem it is meant to solve.

I did so because to honest students of Hollywood’s history, the very name Charlton Heston conjures up visions of greatness. He filled every room he entered, and spoke with a voice that commanded audience after audience, generation after generation.

Although he’s remembered for staring roles in “The Ten Commandments” (1956), “Ben-Hur” (1959), and the “Planet of the Apes” (1968), those are just the tip of the iceberg. During his lifetime he “earned two Academy Awards, a Golden Globe Award, three Emmy Award nominations, …the Kennedy Center Honors: Lifetime Achievement Award.” He “was a six-time president of the Screen Actors Guild, president of the American Film Institute,” and he “received the Presidential Medal of Freedom from President George Bush [in 2003].”

A renaissance man if ever there was one, Heston is also famous for marching with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. in 1963, for serving as president of the National Rifle Association (NRA) from 1998 to 2003, and for being an unapologetic warrior for decency and tradition in America’s “cultural war.”

And let’s not forgot that he was also a veteran of World War II. That’s right: he not only talked the talk, he walked the walk as well.

Unlike many of today’s Hollywood elite, Heston loved this country so much that he couldn’t remain quiet when he saw liberals and radicals (often one and the same) trying to rip it apart. Even when it hurt his career, he spoke and by speaking sought to stir in others “the courage to be free.”

It didn’t take his cultural opponents long to realize that Heston could not be shamed into silence. Even when they fell to their usual (childish) tactic of name-calling, Heston wore as a badge of honor the fact that Leftists called him a “ridiculous, duped, brain-injured, senile, crazy old man.” Instead of backing down, he stood before Harvard’s Law School Forum in 1999 and, as an unapologetic throwback to the Greatest Generation, said: “As long as you validate [political correctness]…and abide it…you are…by your grandfathers’ standards – cowards.”

Of course, I can’t go without mentioning those most memorable of words spoken by Heston at the NRA’s convention in 2000. Al Gore, an infamous anti-gunner, was running for president and Heston decided it was time to stir in gun-owners the courage to be free once more: “For the next six months…Al Gore is going to smear you as the enemy. He will slander you as gun-toting, knuckle-dragging, bloodthirsty maniacs who stand in the way of a safer America… [So] I want to say [these] fighting words for everyone within the sound of my voice to hear and to heed, and especially for you, Mr. Gore: ‘From my cold, dead hands!’” (I can remember watching the video of that speech and, upon hearing those words for the first time, thinking only Ronald Reagan surpassed Heston as the greatest communicator to grace America’s cultural scene in the last half of the 20th Century.)

Heston loved this country and the principles upon which it was founded more than he loved his own life. You would think the least we could do in return is to honor him for being a great American.

To sign the petition to see Charlton Heston featured on a U.S. postage stamp, click here.

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The Dennis Miller Show is now accepting submissions for its “Time Capsule Accountability Project.”

Tired of certain celebrities and politicians making outlandish, baseless claims (Al Gore, we’re looking at you), Dennis Miller has decided to archive these proclamations for posterity.

“We need to put together the most outlandish, overstated arguments from the Left,” Miller said of the time capsule during his talk radio program, “and bury them in a safe for 100 years.”

Sarah Ricard, Digital Content Manager of the Dennis Miller Show, writes:

Phase 1 of the project is occurring online at DennisMillerRadio.com. Listeners are encouraged to submit predictions on the website, and the best ones will be noted on air. “The Time Capsule Accountability Project is really the only thing of its kind,” said the show’s co-host and producer, Christian Bladt, “but, we can’t do it alone. We really need our listeners help to make this a success.”

Once the online submissions are in, Westwood One, the parent company of the Dennis Miller Show, will hire an archivist to compile materials related to each prediction. The artifacts will be entombed in a safe donated by Gary Haneberg at Superior Safe in Chicago and then buried for 100 years in a plot of land, donated by a listener, Dan Banks in Jasper, AL.

Submit your predictions here.