"The sky is falling....The sky is falling."

Parade, the Sunday feature in newspapers all over the country, came out with a good one this morning (Sunday, June 25, 2006. It features an article by Eugene Linden titled, "Why You Can't Ignore the Changing Climate." Linden, who obviously hasn't researched his subject beyond the false UN reports and Gore's unscientific rantings, tells us the weather is changing. (Duh!)

In his sky-is-falling report, Linden claims that "We're making it worse" by burning gas and oil in engines. ". . . gas-guzzlers contribute to climate change," he writes and adds that those furnaces and engines have "pushed carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere far above where they've been for hundreds of thousands of years." Citing the thoroughly debunked Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (go to www.sepp.org and do a search on the panel for the truth), and Science Magazine (whose professional science credentials are non-existent)as his proof.

Now, no one would argue that the climate isn't changing -- it has been warming (and cooling and warming again) since the end of the Ice Age. The question is whether civilization has anything to do with it and there is NO (I repeat NO) true scientific evidence that it does. Again, if you're interested in what real scientists who have studied these things for years have to say on the subject, www.sepp.org is your best and most authoritative voice on the subject.

On that site you can also find out WHY certain politicians are so anxious to perpetuate this myth, but that's not what prompted this piece.

It's the last section in the article that caused me to do a double-take and sent me here, to the computer. In a section captioned, "Climate Has Destroyed Past Civilizations," Linden says that a drought in Mesopotamia 4,200 years ago destroyed that civilization (no doubt a result of the gas-fired SUVs and industrial furnaces of the Akkadian culture!) and that climate caused the collapse of the Mayan culture as well as the end of Norse expansion into the New World in the 14th century.

Doesn't Linden see that those very points destroy his argument? Yes, the climate has changed -- off and on, back and forth -- since the beginning of time. But hydrocarbons and man-made pollutants have only an irritant affect on local atmospheres. Scientists who have studied climates for years contend that there is absolutely no credible evidence to justify the claim that man has any control whatsoever over the climate.

"Past civilizations had no way to know that climates could change," he writes. "We do." But those civilizations also didn't have the technology Linden claims is causing climate changes. It follows that the technology in question wasn't a factor then, and isn't now. The reason for giving up gas-fired engines is more significantly grounded in our dependency on oil from the Middle East. But it's silly, useless, egotistical and foolish to claim that man can control the climates of the earth by getting rid of gas-fired engines, etc. The sky isn't falling, Mr. Linden.