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1) Do you think car and smoke stack exhaustis good for your lungs?
2) Is it wiser to use energy sources that don't produce dangerous chemicals
3) Is it good for our economy to spend $921 billion a year on energy products that explode?
4) Is it good for our economy to spend $921 billion a year on energy products that explode only once?
5) Is it good for our nation to hand $360 billion every year over to people who hate us and love explosions?
6) Is it good for our economy to spend that money instead on energy products made in America?
7) Is all this air pollution that we're creating going, into the airwe breathe?

 If you answered yes to any or all of the above then you believe in alternative energy and support global warming theory, according to NBN. If you answered yes to any or all of the above and feel sorry for the drowning polar bears, according to Mr. Sutton, you're a stooge of the global warming movement.

Back in the stone age, Columbia Journalism School sold these really cool T-shirts emblazoned with the First Amendment. For those taking classes in the school's Pulitzer building, the First Amendment is the Ten Commandments, Koran, Bible and Upanishads rolled into one. There's a reason it's the First amendment. So, when Bill Clinton used the Oklahoma federal building bombing anniversary as a platform to suggest that present day anti-government media figures be held responsible for their words, it smelled like censorship to this Columbia J-school grad. Then I recalled a recent argument with my brother where I ended up suggesting similar censorship for those discrediting global warming theory.

 These days, it's not hard to find very popular media figures citing specious science to pronounce global warming a hoax. Is it unreasonable to say lives may depend on the accuracy and impact of their statements? Let's go to the video tape. This is Rush Limbaugh last year citing “scientists” saying the Gulf Stream had stopped. Wait a minute. There was a report that the Gulf Stream had stopped? Any such report would have been news on a par with Los Angeles falling into the sea. It would be an ecological tipping point from which there is no return, and Rush had the scoop on it? Common sense and a very quick “gulf stream stops” Google search suggested otherwise. This bears restating. Rush has some 13 million listeners who pride themselves on not listening to anyone else. In the video above he almost shouts that “man made global warming is a hoax,” and spends the next four minutes debunking a gulf-stream-stops story that we can't even find. Yet this pronouncement is going out to 13 million people who use him as a prime driver for their own opinions and votes.

Can we continue to offer complete legal protection to folks vehemently arguing against preventing potential future disaster? Or, should we start thinking now about laws to hold more accountable those more able to influence official decisions that could prove to be catastrophic? What if Congress were to make a law proposing some sort of civil liability for our words. Maybe “malice” as it is now applied in libel law could support legal action against those who broadcast opinions later proven to harm others. Malice could be measured by the number of times a particular opinion is stated, perhaps multiplied by the number of people hearing it. Could this have the “chilling effect” on free speech that was viewed in the Pulitzer school as the evil graduates must devote their lives to fighting? Or is it possible such statues might prompt Rush to nail down, possibly name, those scientists he cites to support his shouts. If he doesn't, he's taken to court. There are limits to freedom of speech in libel law. Shouldn't such limits apply to others areas shown to affect others' lives?

Obviously, this leads down a scary, complicated road. So, let's complicate things further. Meet Simon Bikindi. He's one of the radio broadcasters accused of inciting the genocide in Rwanda 15 years ago. He is going to jail. The broadcasters in U.S. reach a much larger audience and sway legislators that could end up having a far greater global impact than this fellow. What's to stop U.S. broadcasters from taking money from vested interests and then selling a prescribed message to their vast audiences and then retiring to Florida. Right now, nothing. That's what Clinton was getting at in his speech over the weekend. We've not heard the last of this.

This Christian Science Monitor piece quotes Floridians bemoaning a nine-inch increase in high tides over the past century. A little perspective please! Nine inches in 100 years? That's a whopping thirtysecond of an inch per year. Who is going to lose sleep over that? Can't you just hear Rush Limbaugh having a field day on that one. No mention in this piece when that increase occurred. Was it a little bit each year, or nine inches in the 1920s. Or, heaven forbid, nine inches in the 1990s. This is a big hole in this story and you see the same hole in just about every sea-level-rise story out there.

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The New York Times' Tom Freidman recently wasted about 25 inches of that paper's precious ink on a column suggesting Global Warming might be better termed global weirding, because that's how the weather will react to earth’s increasing temperature. It's a decent but arguably overzealous point, perhaps better left to publications like this website, where copy doesn't cost a zillion dollars an inch to produce. We also don’t have a million daily readers with college educations. The problem with Freidman's column in such a publication is it ignites all sorts of buzz that deflects reader attention from the core issue: the endless assault on the planet's resources that’s causing global warming in the first place.

All Freidman’s column did was fester a fresh crop of hysteria responding to his histrionics. Included in this hype is this piece which cites this piece by conspiracy theorist Matt Taibbi. Note the Taibbi piece, written a year earlier in response to another Freidman column, doesn’t question the content of Freidman’s writing, it question’s Freidman’s character. Taibbi, normally a well sourced source, just illustrates what Obama quite accurately calls the professional wrestling of word smiths. Rather than add to public wisdom, it just adds to the political cacophony. Friedman, Taibbi, even NBN spend a little too much time telling you what to think without telling you to get a second opinion. These days no one source of information is enough. The days of the ditto heads are done, despite what Rush Limbaugh wants you to believe.

When my father insisted I watch Jesse Ventura's expose' on the attack on the World Trade Center, I groaned but relented. One tedious hour later I better understood the price paid pursuing a professional wrestling career. However, when Ventura followed up that rant with a segment on Global Warming conspiracy, it got me thinking: How do we really know the earth is warming? We've got these politicians in the Maldives holding underwater cabinet meetings in the Indian Ocean. But that's half a world away. We've got endless reports the ice sheets are melting, but not in anyone's backyard. NASA  says the past decade is the warmest on record, then it comes out that air conditioners and incinerators are throwing off the agency's thermometers. Winter still feels as cold as ever, Washington's under record snow cover and we've got scientists spinning their Global Warming studies to support their grant applications. How does that translate into pending ecological doom?

We might pick up a clue or two looking at some less glaring headlines. While the powers that be are convincing the public that global warming is a hoax, there's reason to think they may also be hedging their own bets in the world of business. Three years ago, the online version of the SF Chronicle noted those in the know are starting to take Global Warming seriously. Late last month the SEC made clear its stand on the subject. Even as dueling headlines leave average readers in a quandary, it seems there's a sense growing among those who aren't to make decisions based on "The Body's"  advice, that Global Warming is happening.

Here's a piece about low-lying nation's making plans to govern while their country's underwater. That is until such time as sea levels drop again. Now that's looking ahead! Look at this NY Times piece about law suits filed by resident's of those low lying nations. Is Big Oil going to the next “Big Tobacco”, brought down by those paying the ultimate price for their profits? Maybe that explains the SEC action linked above. A little closer to home, we have the community of Oak Bluffs on Martha's Vineyard talking about zoning changes to limit liabilities on that storm susceptible plain of palaces. So, who are you really going to believe when it comes to Global Warming? The guy above with the glasses or this guy here the visor?

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Now scientists are saying tides could rise as much as 26 inches by 2050 and 6 feet by the end of the century, all due to Global Warming. The scientists come out with all kinds of fantastic figures about damage done to cities and coasts. All of which will now be attacked more effectively than ever by global warming skeptics reinvigorated by the email scandal last fall. Totally missed  in this debate is the fact that we don't need to burn all these greenhouse gases. This argument shouldn't just be about global warming,. It should focus equally on how easily we can reduce our carbon footprints without dramatically reducing our living standards. In the meantime, if reduce reduce global warming or sea level increases, great. But relying only ofnthe Chicken Little approach of decrying dramatic tidal increases, meteorological chaos, and global ecological mayhem isn't going to work in a world ruled by economics. Let's face it, civilization was founded on economics not environmentalism. We're not going to protect the environment unless there are jobs in it. Not unless people start dying from global warming. A lot of people. Beside, if the Biblical calamities forecast above really in the works ,we're screwed anyway. Let's hope like heck Global Warming theory is dead wrong.

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