If “going green” were less a matter of politics and religious zeal and were based more fully on science and economics we could all could collaborate more effectively. Instead, it’s founded in a “feel good” ideology that makes people who drive hybrid cars think they are saving the planet, or that by banishing the incandescent light bulb people are staving off the destruction of the planet due to global warming.

Earth Day is a good time to upgrade our knowledge of the global climate, and put a few things into proper perspective, not based on a “feel good” emotion, but based on history, science, and logic.

For example, the earth has been warming since about 1650 when it reached a low point for modern history, and nearly dipped into a modern Ice Age. This episodic variance in global temperatures is well documented and was notable for the concomitant misery it produced, with declining crop yields, and contracted economic activity.

As a matter of fact, the world is now roughly the same temperature that it was in about 1000 A.D. From a historical perspective we’ve risen out of the trough that we’d been in for a few centuries, and now we enjoy the same general climatic temperatures as the Vikings over a millennium ago. Greenland used to be green and had a thriving agronomic economy, and frankly, we have no idea what an ideal average global temperature is.

There is undoubtedly some incredibly complex formula that explains weather, temperature, and climate. We don’t know what that formula is, but there are plenty of scientists who prostrate themselves at the altar of government grants and special interests who have the hubris to claim they understand the dynamic relationship between the atmospheric elements. Those are the ones who tell us to drive the hybrids and change our light bulbs so we can save the polar bears.

Since we’ve only been expanding man’s “carbon footprint” for the past 150 years or so, it should be obvious that there are other factors at play that warm the planet other than your 100 watt incandescent light bulb. After all, this third rock from the sun has vacillated from cold to hot for much longer than man has even inhabited the place. While atmospheric combinations of gases interact in ways we may never fully comprehend, ultimately the source of heat for the planet is the sun, not my SUV.

If we were omniscient and understood the atmospheric formula, there would likely be a legitimate factor in the equation representing human emission of CO2. But considering that’s what we humans exhale, it’s illogical to assume that it’s a destructive element to the atmosphere. After all, are we not part of nature as well?

It’s this very minute (approximately .000034) contribution to the formula that has so many in a frenzy believing we’ve got to do something drastic right now based on assumptions, computer models, and a series of unproven hypotheses.

It may be disconcerting to the global warming adherents that the average temperature has slowly declined during the past decade despite the continued increase in CO2 concentration in the atmosphere. And now the global temperature is falling precipitously. All four agencies that track global temperatures report that the earth cooled by .7C in 2007. This amounts to the fastest temperature change in the instrumental record and puts us back to where we were in 1930. Maybe Time magazine will have to dust off its “The Coming Ice Age” cover from 1974.

If we would work together on economically sound energy policies focused on energy independence and scrap the alarmism, we would all be on the same page. Common sense and legitimate science need to be the basis of the dialogue, not pseudo-science alarmism.

There’s a religious-zeal gullibility that regrettably infests those who are too willing to believe the Jeremiads of the alarmists, whether it’s DDT, Y2K, or man-made global warming. Perhaps this is one of the byproducts of the secularization of America. For as the inimitable G. K. Chesterton said, “When a man ceases to believe in God, he doesn’t believe in nothing. He believes in anything.” Can you say “anthropogenic global warming?”

Everyone waited with bated breath to observe the grilling on tap for General David Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker by members of the Senate this past week. All three Presidential candidates were in attendance at a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing where Petraeus, the commander of the Multi-National Force in Iraq and Crocker, the U.S. Ambassador to Iraq testified.

While the questioning and comments by Senators McCain and Clinton reflected their respective views, as frequently articulated and micro-analyzed as they are, the comments by Senator Obama warrant additional scrutiny. His comments belie an ignorance and a moral ambivalence that should be alarming to any who have followed the developments in the Fertile Crescent.

Senator Obama began his remarks, “We all have the greatest interest in seeing a successful resolution to Iraq. We all do. And that has to be clearly stated in the record.”

That may seem innocuous enough, except when added to the context of everything else he said. Success has been carefully defined by the administration to include creation of a stable, self-sufficient government that can eventually handle its own security. Such a precondition to withdrawal would prevent Iraq from declining into a Taliban-like Afghanistan, which was a veritable cesspool of anti-American, and anti-freedom destruction-prone belligerents and malcontents, dedicated to the eradication of anything newer than the 8^th century, or anyone not a devout Muslim.

Senator Obama had to state his desire for success in Iraq, even though everything he says indicates he has no desire to see such success. But he had to have it “on the record” nonetheless, qualifying all his subversive comments that were to follow.

He then stated, “I continue to believe that the original decision to go into Iraq was a massive strategic blunder (and) that the two problems that you've pointed out — al Qaeda in Iraq and increased Iranian influence in the region — are a direct result of that original decision.”

Al Qaeda chose to make Iraq a test of their battle-worthiness against the U.S. They lost. That’s why they have been fleeing Anbar and Baghdad. If anybody had a sense in 2003 that some of the Wahabbists and former Saddamites would join us to turn on Al Qaeda and rout them, nobody would have believed them. And then to learn this past two weeks that an Iraqi Shia government has turned on Muqtada al-Sadrand those who were being backed by Iran completely contradicts Obama’s statement.

Then the revelatory line by the Senator. “I also think that the surge has reduced violence, and provided breathing room. But that breathing room has not been taken the way we would all like it to be taken. I think that what’s happened in Basra is an example of Shia vs. Shia jockeying for power that underscores how complicated the political situation is there and how we still have to continue to work vigorously to resolve it. I believe that we are more likely to resolve it, if we are applying increased pressure in a measured way. I think, and this is where we disagree, that applying increased pressure in a measured way includes a timetable for withdrawal.”

This is an ignorant, or at least poorly conceived moral equivalent statement. It’s not Shia vs. Shia. He’s reduced an elected government into just another Iranian backed Shia clique. It’s not. Rather Iraq has a constitutionally elected government that’s taking on an illegitimate Shia group militia, and successfully at that. He employs a moral equivalency argument that anytime there’s violence, all parties are equally culpable. Iraq has a constitutionally elected government that is losing two to three times more security personnel than the U.S. is. They’re making the political progress necessary having met 12 of 18 benchmarks, and all Obama et al can do is criticize and attempt to delegitimize them. They’re fighting terrorists everyday on their own oil, and they’re the only ones doing so, except the Israelis, under the auspices of a legitimate constitutional government. They’re the only ones who seem willing to take on the Shia led and Iranian backed terrorists, and they get no credit for their success, only criticism from the Senator.

That same erroneous moral equivalency argument is frequently used to question why a rogue, terrorist state like Iran that’s intent on destroying its neighbors shouldn’t be allowed a nuclear weapons since the U.S., has them. It reveals a moral ineptness and vacuity.  

We’ve already experienced “change” since the 2006 mid-term elections, and it isn’t good. That type of change can be perpetuated and accelerated in November. Let’s hope the nation has enough sense to realize we don’t need any more of that kind of “change.”