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.

First of all, the entire basis for green ideology and the ideologues following and enforcing it is based on a sham of a lie. Global cooling led to global warming led to climate change, but the earth hasn’t burned up yet and the Eastern Seaboard hasn’t been swallowed by the Atlantic Ocean.

Yes, there are weather patterns and hot years and cold years and wet years and dry years. But yet, we persevere. Anything out of the ordinary is treated as, well, completely out of the ordinary, when the fact remains “average” meteorological behavior all the time would itself be highly unusual.

The so-called “scientists” at East Anglia who provide data to the U.N. International Panel on Climate Change can cook their books, “lose” facts running counter to their templates and cherry-pick data best supporting their statist diagnoses, but no matter. Their theories and ideas have become so ingrained in the minds of a guilt-ridden public it’s to the point where we must now live under these assumptions, whether or not they have any basis in reality. Their solutions are always the same: tax oil companies, tax the rest of us and force everyone to do with less.

These assumptions are enforced in the office I personally work in (it’s a television show), that proudly proclaims itself a “Green Office”. What makes the office green? Email is used whenever possible in place of memos, scripts are printed double-sided, and other paper-related material is sometimes printed on the backsides of the discarded scripts. This is all well and good, but the office kitchen run by the little green tyrannists seems to offend mostly everyone across the ideological spectrum (and being a television show in New York City, this would consist almost entirely of liberals). There are no paper plates or cups, only porcelain dishes and glasses, all of which require washing by hand upon their return to the kitchen after use.

The sink doesn’t have a garbage disposal (those are illegal in New York City), so whatever doesn’t get caught in the filter drips down the drain and into a compost machine. Signs (printed on paper) are everywhere urging people to return their dishes and glasses, and while you’re at it, please wash them. Unfortunately, many don’t, so it’s left to the poor young interns to embark on a scavenger hunt for those missing items, and they’re the ones who get stuck at the sink for 20 minutes at a time cleaning up after those who rudely ignore the rules.

Multiple times, as someone grabs a dish, I’ve heard: “I’m all for being green, but . . .” But what? When it affects you personally? When you’re the one who must spend more of your daily man-hours not designing a $20,000 set, but washing your own dishes? I’ll respond to the grumbling with “I’m not just not green. I’m anti-green. It’s tyrannical.”  I let that sit for a second before walking out. You see, I –like many others — have taken to hoarding plastic and paper container material for my food and beverages like a squirrel hoards acorns for the winter. These are hot commodities. In fact, I could probably make an extra buck or two by setting up a paper cup stand in the parking lot.

Initially, the film set was still a refuge where one could drink from a plastic water bottle, then discard it when finished. No more. New rules came down from on high: We’re going totally green, and that means no more plastic water bottles! (Who pushed those plastic water bottles on us all those years ago anyway? Wasn’t it the same leftists who were claiming our municipal water supplies were all polluted and contaminated? I can’t remember …)

There were two solutions to the problem of excessive plastic water buildup damming our nation’s rivers and streams: There would now be a water cooler dispensing water on set, and each crew member would receive a company-issued metal water bottle, complete with belt hook.  I had visions of burly stagehands walking around a quiet soundstage with metal water bottles clanking around on their tool belts. The idea caught on with some of the crew, but for those it didn’t, there were now small plastic cups next to the water cooler: Thimble-like small. More than one visiting director, upon learning of our water bottle policy, then seeing the small plastic cups next to the cooler, would say: “So let me get this straight. You banned plastic water bottles, but drink out of plastic cups?” Yeah, that’s what we’re saying. Got a problem with that?

As the greens are ruining our kitchens and making us spend expensive man hours washing dishes and making us thirstier on film sets, they’re also moving further and further into that most personal of sanctuaries: the bathroom.

If you’ve read Mark Levin’s book “Liberty and Tyranny”, you’ll know he rails more than once against the federal government’s regulation of the water level of our toilets. Not only does this result in a less effective toilet, but it also carries the unintended consequence of more flushes, which results in using even more water.

And how long before they come for my precious shower pressure? If they attempted to place thermostat regulation into a climate bill, it’s not farfetched to imagine a day when bureaucrats manage the power and length of our showers. Levin’s point becomes completely relevant: what CAN’T they regulate?

Rob Long wrote a piece several months back for National Review Online entitled ‘Dim Idea,’ on the subject of Japanese toilets, those marvels of luxury and modernity. The Japanese give people everything they want . . . in a toilet. (Didn’t we used to give people what they want here in America?) There are hoses and nozzles and buttons and spraying water (lots of water!). While here in the USA, the bureaucrats tell us how much of that precious toilet water we’re allowed.

Then there’s the current bull’s eye target of the greens: our incandescent light bulbs, which they are currently regulating out of existence and replacing with those curly spaghetti-like luminaries. Mr. Long envisions a dim, badly lit future with fewer and fewer “Eureka!” moments, right here in the country that gave us Thomas Edison. Instead, we’re asked to do with less under ugly yellow lights produced by the Chinese.

Late last year, a green British group called the “10/10 Project” produced a cute little ad called “No Pressure”. The 10/10 Project was launched as an attempt to get Britons to lower their carbon emissions by 10 percent over 10 years.

In the ad, anyone who doesn’t go along with suggestions for lowering their emissions, including school children, are summarily, uh, blown up. I initially thought this must have been produced by a green critic as a parody. Realizing it wasn’t, it suddenly felt like a horror movie, and not because of the gore and exploding bodies.

The horrific part was the zombie-like mentality of the followers of green environmental policies, as well as the ease with which any dissent was dispensed with, in this case, simply by blowing up the free-thinkers in the crowd. (This ad was pulled shortly after its initial airing.)

The little green tyrannists in our midst are invading our most personal spaces, from our kitchens to our bathrooms to the very light we view our world with. They attack luxury, comfort and convenience. Their goal is to make us all do with less. The 10/10 ad actually got it right: Don’t question. Submit. Otherwise we might just decide to blow you up.

But once a global warming alarmist, he’s now a skeptic.

He now believes that “The debate about global warming…is full of micro-thin half-truths and misunderstandings.”

And he blames it all on greed, vanity and careerism.

Because, he says, “the gravy train was too big, with too many jobs, industries, trading profits, political careers, and the possibility of world government and total control riding on the outcome.”

So rather than admit exaggeration, the alarmists chose the path to hysteria.

This reveals a truth I’ve tried to explain to my global warming pals. That the only experts you can trust are the ones who keep their traps shut.

As a health journalist – I learned that the good doctors were the quiet ones. And those guys always viewed the blabbermouths as opportunists who sacrificed science in favor of ego and influence.

And this is why two decent people can read the same article, and reach two different conclusions.

For a person unfamiliar with the professional and personal motives behind the science, you will buy into the dire predictions.

But for a health hack like me, I knew you could extrapolate any possibility into a craze or a panic, for personal gain. I saw it a thousand times with vitamins, fitness gadgets and health scares. Man-made global warming was no different.

The good news: eventually hysteria dies down. the question is, how much damage does it leave behind.

Did overwrought concern obliterate legitimate worry?

My suggestion: restart the debate, and find out.

And if you disagree with me, then you sir are worse than Hitler.

Tonight:

Andrea Tantaros!

Mike Tobin! (first time!)

and comedian Ryan Reiss!

Politics make strange bedfellows and movies can make strange politics…

They might not necessarily further the political ideology of the filmmakers because, when good filmmakers do their jobs and serve their story, agendas you wouldn’t anticipate crop up. How else to explain The Dark Knight’s alleged defense of Bush II era terror fighting tactics or what appeared to be a subtle stay-the-course-in-Iraq-so-we-don’t-duplicate-our-past-mistake-in-Afghanistan epilogue in Charlie Wilson’s War?

—-

But no example (even the ol’ “The Yellow Brick Road” in The Wizard of Oz is a metaphor for the gold standard!) is more bizarre and unexpected than the politics of Rango, opening this weekend.

Yes, I’m talking about the computer animated flick from Paramount and Nickelodeon about a domesticated chameleon who gets lost in the wild wild west of the Mojave Desert, directed by Gore Verbinski (the Pirates of the Caribbean trilogy) and featuring the voice of Johnny Depp.

Much of the plot is unabashedly borrowed from Chinatown, from the pipe mysteriously dumping water in the middle of nowhere, to the character found dead from drowning out in the desert, to the seemingly innocuous old man in a wheelchair (in this case, a turtle voiced by Ned Beatty, channeling John Huston) who is clearly up to no good. If you want to know what he’s up to, well, just see Chinatown.

This is a wonderfully entertaining and spectacularly well-made movie. The sophistication of the animation, the character modeling, their textures, the cinematography, Hans Zimmer’s marvelous Morricone pastiche score (with lively contributions by Los Lobos), everything is first rate. It amuses children while dealing with mature themes that engage adults. In fact, remove the animals and produce this script as a live action feature and you’d have a badass western.

It also contains genuine laughs and some of the most thrilling and blissfully coherent action I’ve seen at the movies in years. It is well choreographed, flawlessly “shot” and edited, the stakes are high, characters are in legitimate danger, and every punch, bullet, and bat-mounted mole (you’ll have to see the movie) lands.

The story pays homage to classic films other than Chinatown, including It’s A Wonderful Life and countless westerns, while the politics at work are distinctly Eastwoodian. The film flagrantly flouts big government, corruption, and cronyism, while still championing law and order and heralding the power of one; celebrating an individual with the courage to stand up to corruption and evil, even in the face of societal cowardice.

It also overtly riffs on modern political and economic calamities, complete with a devastating recession, a foreclosure crisis, a credit freeze, a run on the bank, et al.

The film’s climax, in fact, features a hallucinatory vision of “The Spirit of the West,” who appears in the guise of Hollywood’s most famous libertarian, garbed in his iconic “Man with No Name” wardrobe (Timothy Olyphant, doing a flawless Clint Eastwood impression).

After falling out of his owners’ car and onto the highway, the eponymous character (energetically voiced by Depp) finds his way to the archetypal western movie town, where the people (actually insects, reptiles, amphibians, and rodents) live in Dirt — literally, as they’re suffering from a severe drought, and because that’s the name of the town. As a chameleon in constant search of his own identity and place in the world, Rango seizes the opportunity as the new “stranger in town,” to invent a back-story that casts himself as a hotshot gunslinger who once killed seven men with a single bullet. Immediately sensing Rango’s ruse, Dirt’s all-powerful Mayor (the aforementioned John Huston-inspired turtle) pins a star on Rango’s colorful Hunter S. Thompson shirt and declares him Sheriff.

This is the first appearance of another (familiar) recurring theme: Hope. More to the point, how the powerful exploit hope and faith. The Mayor growls: “They believe it’s going to get better, against all odds and all evidence that tomorrow will be better than today. They have to believe in something… And right now, Mr. Rango, they believe in you.” He can barely hide his disdain for his hopeful, praying flock.

Despite a scene in which a character tells Rango, “Many years ago, this entire valley was covered in agua [water],” the movie somehow avoids turning into a predictable Hollywood alarmist tale, warning of the imminent disappearance of our precious limited natural resources. You see, in Rango, there is plenty of water, but it is being diverted and hoarded in an effort to manipulate, oppress and ultimately control the proletariat.

This is not an environmental film, it is a political film.

In fact, the Mayor is actually using a trumped-up environmental crisis (the drought) to panic the populace and, while an aquatic “cap and trade” policy is never suggested, shades of global warming hysteria are inescapable.

As a result of the supposed drought, land values are plummeting and the Mayor is buying up property from despondent landowners — who are packing up and leaving for bluer pastures — for pennies on the dollar.

The scene in which the townspeople desperately engage in their Wednesday high noon ritual of a zombie-like choreographed line dance for The Mayor — which includes their slapping each other in the face — in exchange for access to a natural resource that should be freely available to all, is chill-inducing.

When the faucet yields nothing but a dollop of mud, the Mayor addresses the distressed townsfolk, who he refers to as his “acolytes”:

These are difficult times, he tells them. “Sacrifices will have to be made,” echoing President Obama’s familiar refrain, repeated most recently this week.

And then the Mayor eats cake (proverbially), as he and his cronies take to the golf course, enjoying an endless supply of water and chuckling at the naivete of his constituents.

Meanwhile, the town bank’s vault contains a plastic water jug and, when it is revealed that only a 5-day supply remains in “the reserves,” there is a (literal) run on the bank. The Mayor is able to avert the town’s fears, insisting, “As long as we’ve got this water, we’ve got hope.”

All that changes the next morning when it’s discovered that the bank has been robbed — the entire water bottle, snatched by a thieving gang of moles.

The Mayor and his cronies insist that a posse be formed to chase the evildoers, which is little more than sleight of hand on the part of the Mayor, who is sending them on wild goose (mole) chase as a pure distraction, while his diabolical scheme forges ahead unabated.

When Rango and the posse catch up to the culprits, they discover that the water bottle was already empty when the moles stole it.

One astute mole observes: “Someone done robbed that bank before we robbed it.”

It reminded me of the Warren Buffett line: “It is only when the tide goes out that you learn who’s been swimming naked.” And we learned that we were being robbed all along.

When Rango and his dejected crew return to town, this dialogue exchange occurs:

“Where’s the water?”

“There weren’t no water.”

Much like, after the real world financial meltdown, befuddled Americans asked our leaders, regulator and Wall Street: “Where’s our economy?”

The answer, of course: “There weren’t no economy.”

Unlike the actual financial crisis, however, in Rango there is accountability and justice is done. If only life were like a Clint Eastwood movie.

—–

Via Elizabeth Snead at The Dish Rag, who got the video, story and transcript:

“Go home, get online and find out the facts about climate change. And then the next time you hear some crap on talk radio or Fox News, you’ll know the truth. Don’t get your science from demagogues. Get your science from scientists.”

Does James Cameron mean we should get our science from … these scientists?

See, if I’m going to get my Global Warming science from anyone it’s going to be a troop-smearing, anti-Christian, chicken little, environmental hypocrite of epic proportions, cuz that’s how I roll.

But first…

…watch the video below and ask yourself who the real demagogue is.

—–

—–

Quoth the Raffi:

In a well known Greek myth, the very rich King Midas, who loves gold above all else, is granted his singular wish that everything he touches turn into gold. The gift becomes a curse when his golden touch kills plants, food, and even his daughter, who is turned into a statue. Bereft and repentant, forsaking greed, the king begs for deliverance. His curse is lifted by a wash in the river. All he holds truly precious is restored.

The modern version of the story is about a gold rush called globalization, a monetized world order that commodifies everything and poisons all that it touches: air, water, soil, whales, indigenous cultures, mothers’ milk, and babies, now born with a body burden of toxic chemicals. Money, as symbolic reward for goods and services, when elevated above all else, becomes a curse. The symbol turns tyrant and casts a plague on the living. We’re currently in the atonement chapter of the tragedy, praying we have time to write a happier ending.

Just… where does one begin?

Short answer:  penguins. They’re not worried about global warming.  Just take a look at this little guy…!

Longer answer:  poor Raffi is feeling victory slip through his fingers.  It’s 2011, and if he hasn’t heard of Climategate by now (which puts to rest the lie that climate scientists are impartial and objective),  he’s probably noticed how many more people are becoming skeptics puppets of Big Oil as more and more information comes out about climate change, the bullying and apocalyptic exaggeration of its prominent researchers, and the massive profits that cap and trade proponents stand to gain if they get their way.  As the number of studies contesting the conclusions of anthropogenic global warming (AGW) alarmists increases, true believers like Raffi see the vindication for their vain self-righteousness slipping away, and with their backs against the wall, their true colors begin to show.

Raffi continues:

We need a new lens and lexicon for conveying climate change as the greatest threat on Earth, a tragedy of epic proportions, especially for the world’s young. … It’s best addressed with systems change, beginning with belief systems learned very early. To cut pollution and GHG emissions for good, change personal belief systems. Start young.  To grow Earth stewards, steward the children and youth. This is where the restoration must focus–strategically and morally. Not only do kids get sustainability, they have the most to lose or gain. [emphasis mine]

So it’s pretty obvious that he’s watched “Barack Hussein Obama! Mmm mmm mmm,” then.  What’s most disturbing about this is that he’s not necessarily calling for parents to teach their children to care about global warming.  It would make sense that if they’re concerned for their and their children’s futures, they’ve already taught their children, even at an early age, the long-term benefits of not using electricity or water and not driving in cars that can actually protect them in a crash.

So if it stands to reason that parents who believe in AGW will teach their children about AGW, who else but the children of climate skeptics or agnostics is he talking about reaching?  And if these children won’t be reached by their thick-headed carbon-guzzling parents, how else can we teach them but through their education and the media they consume?  The real goal here is to get to the parents through the children, not vice-versa:

It’s the same principle as what I call the Disney Pop Star Combine.  The only way to get a mass audience in music these days is to target kids; there is no “alternative media” nor a demand for one in the children’s entertainment market.  Thus, by holding a monopoly on children’s attention, Disney can convince the kids that so-and-so is cool and awesome and attractive, and those kids will get their parents to shell out money that they otherwise would not have spent on absolute dreck.  This is the last, desperate gasp of AGW alarmism; we can’t reason with adults, so we must indoctrinate the youth so they can manipulate adults into doing what we want.

There’s just one problem.  With the Disney business model, since there’s such a short shelf life for these poor kids who get thrown into showbiz way too early, they’re constantly replaced by new “stars” to make the next wave of elementary schoolers think they’re getting something new and fresh when it’s just a repackaging of what their big brothers and sisters have already wised up to.  I was a child of the late ’80s, and I remember seeing all sorts of PSAs on PBS about saving the environment.  Heck, we received a magazine at school called Time for Kids that showed Planet Earth frying like an egg on a skillet.  Scaring kids about AGW is nothing new.  The youngest generation of climate skeptics are the very children who were targeted by the likes of Raffi over the past two decades; any receptiveness we had to his message died the moment we discovered we could research these issues for ourselves.  His “new lens and lexicon” can only have a short-term effect, while our side is gaining permanent ground by sticking with conclusions reached through the actual scientific method (evidence, not conclusions, first).

It saddens me more than anything to see aging celebrities try to create a positive legacy for themselves by jumping on the eco-awareness bandwagon, thinking they’re virtuous crusaders for a cleaner planet.  It saddens me even more that when they implicitly admit that they don’t have convincing proof for their pet cause, instead of reevaluating which side of history they want to be on, they decide to grasp for vindication even harder by preying on the one demographic that can’t challenge them.  When you’re ready to talk to us adults, Raffi, we’ll still be here… especially if those cold weather ever lets up.

I speak of the U.N Framework Convention on Climate Change that annoyed Cancun, Mexico earlier this month. Mind you, over ten thousand people have been murdered over drugs in that country this year -so this confab seemed about as relevant as a pimple on a griffen’s butt.

It was only a year ago that the Copenhagen Summit was kind of a big deal, but that faded faster than my Ed Hardy denim underwear. So it’s no surprise that the experts here have turned to the gods for help. Christian Figuera, the executive secretary, desperately invoked the ancient jaguar goddess Ixchel – for she’s not only goddess of the moon, but also “reason, creativity and weaving.”

Yes, weaving. Because, “you are gathered in Cancun to weave together the elements of a solid response to climate change…” blah blah..time for a break:

Uganda’s First Action Movie Trailer – Watch more Funny Videos

—–

So anyway, what was once almost policy is now parody. You’ve got every climate change model in dispute – thanks to the climategate emails, lies about hockey stick graphs and phony Himalayan glacier meltdowns. As someone willing to seriously discuss global warming – it’s a relief to see the hysteria die, but it’s also sad to think that maybe some of the science might have had merit. They screwed the pooch. And the planet.

Still, our American climate ambassador (yeah, there’s such a thing) Jonathan Pershing has pledged billions of our tax money to help promote provisions that won’t do crap after all that money has been spent.

Me, I’d rather spend it on an ancient jaguar goddess. She could weave me a Navajo blanket. My houseboy has to sleep somewhere.

And if you disagree with me, you’re a racist, homophobic Cancunophobe.

Which, I always thought, was to scare the hell out of us.

Yep, according to Cal-Berkeley shrinks, dire predictions about global warming can “backfire if presented too negatively.” Of course that raises one question: how to do present dire predictions, positively?

“Hey, were all gunna die. LOL.”

Which leads me to a theory: these Berkeley researchers are dopes.

Look the fact is, people like me questioned global warming evidence because we’d seen this hysteria before – with emotional warnings about the coming ice age, the dangers of nuclear power, artificial sweeteners and DDT.

And this caused us to grow cold to such crap, and overlook real threats like terrorism, the resurgence of malaria, and of course, the rise of Ed Hardy t-shirts.

Worse, with global warming, we saw that anyone who dare to question the hysteria would be labeled a “skeptic,” and treated like a “leper.”

And never get “laid.”

But the climategate scandal proved that inevitably, these cocky GW experts would overstep the science, get humbled, retreat into therapy. (Have you seen Gore lately?)

So now, finally, shrinks are saying these experts should rethink their messaging.

Of course, this is still not tackling the real problem. Note that the shrinks aren’t telling experts to stop exaggerating consequences – instead, they say, “present solutions to global warming.”

Meaning: just assume your lies were right all along and push the curly light bulbs.

That ain’t gunna work either.

And if you disagree with me you’re a racist homophobic globalphobe.

TONIGHT:

Brooke Goldstein!

Jill Dobson!

Nick Di Paolo!

and my mom (i believe, though not sure yet)

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’m remembering his 2008 campaign litany “Y’all fired up? Ready ta go? …Fired up?”

Call and response does energize a crowd.  Obama wasn’t the first to deploy it, only the first to deploy it with such momentous success.  In the unknown future of our constitutional republic, call n’ response is as here to stay as rock n’ roll.  Crowds still matter, even in the cyberspace age.  Acting together physically is still how the homo sapiens do it, and any ruling class of the species still takes heed.

The method of call and response and of group chanting or singing may be powerful, even dignified, as in “We Shall Overcome.”  Or may be lame, even embarrassing, as in “Whadya want?”… “When d’ya want it?” and the like.  People participating in call and response or in sing-along reveal things about their character:  Faith?  Anxiousness?  Selfishness?  Opportunism?

What did you experience in the character of the last throng you got next to?  Mine would have sneered back at Obama’s call “Fired Up?” with the response “Hell, yeah!!”  And yet there was gloom.  Not always competing well against the gloom were joy, faith, or any of the quite rational exuberance or lightness of being with a just cause. 

C’mon!  The issues may be solemn, but that’s not what we’re entitled to be.  For your consideration, for your next throng—a little lightness for your jumbo-tron! 

—–

This was supposed to speak for itself.  I told any who learned of it that they were to keep my secret, please; it’s “the teaching, not the teacher” and all that; and in times like these, any known individuals identified with it would make it possibly the less universal and certainly the less valuable.  All were agreed until breakdowns within my contracted one-man cartoon shop kept delaying the “May 28th” release date until last Friday’s humble YouTube debut.  Cost over-runs, uncontrollable delays, mega-budget or shoestring—“That’s   showbiz,” I guess. 

No time for “word of mouth” now, they’re telling me.  Be done with anonymity and take a less dignified route, lest this thing go un-noticed!  (*sigh*)

The “Fired Up Fifer” in the cartoon is a little crazed, definitely a little disturbed out of his premises, just as we are.  Our sing-alongs ought to reveal our joy that, out on the streets and malls, we’ve found one another—willing.  The song is one you’ve known before, in a manner of speaking.  So, all together now, on the chorus: 

They promised guns and butter. They promised endless fun

Expand that social contract –  Provide for everyone

Which brings me to the chore of unmasking myself… and the bewildering discovery that certain of my dearest friends took one look at this cartoon and got in my face (a very approachable doofus, I) dismayed that I’ve gone over to the dark side!  I’m generally a lover of political arguments, so with luck they keep ‘em coming… especially if it keeps our friendships alive.  And, I’m obliged to tell them why I oppose government providing for everyone!

“Don’t suffer fools,” you say?  (A different friend told me he no longer cared to keep his own leftie friends…)  Well—whoa, a short minute—where do we cross the line?  Where do we cross from the duty to be involved in how to “keep our women and children” best…  and over to the entitlement not to be disturbed? 

I find it effeminate (in the worst sense of the word, if you’ll pardon my choice of it) if a buddy tells me “we can’t be friends if” I really do favor the wrong public leader or policy alternative.  Dude!  Deciding about policy alternatives is our job.  If I haven’t persuaded you at the end of the day, what’s our alternative?  Are we ready to go for our muskets?  No, today’s alternative is tomorrow.  The consent of the governed is a description, not just an ideal.  Short of gunfire, nothing instituted cannot be disinvested, otherwise terminated… or nullified by civil disobedience or sheer disregard, for that matter.  The order of our world is always fragile; better for us if our friendships are not.

Yet, even our delicate old friends sometimes must be confronted:  Identifying what’s in the hearts of “those people,” so surely that you can dismiss the arguments on their lips, displays overconfidence in your own refinement, not to mention your own intuition! 

The refined Mr. Rahm Emanuel, Chicago Brahmin who spake of a crisis never being allowed to go to waste, reminded us free range folk that for us it’s the teachable moment that must never be allowed go to waste.  In this teachable pre-dawn darkness (already feeling something more like a long night in our national life) with Marxian intellectual hangovers on full display, we can still challenge his side to an historic argument instead of allowing an historic spasm or brawl. 

Let’s line up ours and have them line up theirs.  Time to do the work.  Read a lot.  Compare the historical arguments and counter-arguments.  Is it James Madison over Karl Marx, or visa versa?  John Maynard Keynes, or Milton Friedman?  Liberty above equality, or equality above liberty?  Bring it on.  

The historical truths are on our side.  So, like the cartoon citizens alongside Fired Up Fifer, we ought to dance!  And maybe, like them (Was my one-man cartoon shop a leftie who couldn’t resist the chance to ridicule?) we ought to smile more! 

It really is okay to be enjoying all this.

I admit to feeling weird about pumping this song parody before people even hear it.  That’s not the way it was supposed to be, in any of my lifelong dreams of ever having a hit record.  “Don’t call it a comeback, I been here for years,” quoth the rap now-oldie!  Pat Boone, who’s been here for years longer, performs in the soundtrack, along with me (of ShaNaNa, the rest of whom ain’t all gonna be “down with” this) and Jordan Cole, of the 1960s mega-hit makers The Association. 

With apologies to vast numbers of my un-reconstructed fellow sojourners of Woodstock Nation, I’m out of the closet and into the fired up.  “Ready to go” indeed.  Hasn’t it ever dawned on you that our “peace” and Yasgur’s Farm demonstration of the viability of socialism were dependent on a life-support umbilical cord from the Nixon era capitalist grown-ups?  

Didn’t you ever come to notice how robust creation of wealth must be assured before any conversation about its redistribution can even be useful?

To those of my Woodstock cohort who are now aghast at the “tea party” (which more assuredly has “changed the world” than it’s said our misadventure at Yasgur’s farm did) I return that stunned glare, then the sputter:  “But…  I thought you were smart.  I thought you were a nice person!”  Being a nice person aligns with being in the fight for the nicest societal arrangement, among all of human history’s rarest gems:  Limited government. 

Like, dig it, man.  Some of today’s tea partiers are grown up flower children.  Imagine there’s no statism.  It’s easy if you try.  They may say you’re a dreamer.  But you’re not the only one.

A little marching song could have the power to help us remember.  Our side has never had its “Give Peace a Chance” or the like.  So I submit this easy rockin’ parody without asking a penny for its download.  I hope its singing on the streets comes naturally.