You've probably seen the commercials; TV actor Noah Wyle (ER, The Librarian) somberly informs us of an impending grave catastrophe: "A tragedy is unfolding in the world today. Climate change is threatening one of the most magnificent wild animals on the planet. Polar bears. They're struggling to survive."

Don't pay any attention to your frozen thermometer. Never mind that your city is shivering under a record-setting cold wave, paralyzed by another record-setting snowfall. Do not think twice about your mounting heating bill, electricity blackouts, or reports that heating oil deliveries for your area are not available. Even if your teeth are chattering, concentrate only on one thing: global warming, Global Warming, GLOBAL WARMING. Just wrap yourself in a blanket and re-watch Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth. And remember, be very, very afraid ... of global warming.

James Hansen, who runs NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS), has struck again. The political activist/scientist, global-warming guru, and boon companion to Al Gore has written a letter to Barack and Michelle Obama, imploring the president-elect and his wife to "decarbonize" the economy by imposing a steadily increasing "carbon tax" on coal, oil, and gas.

Beginning January 1, 2009, millions of asthma sufferers will no longer legally be able to obtain the low-cost albuterol inhalers that enable them to breathe. The inhalers have been outlawed by FDA regulations under the UN Montreal Protocol on Ozone Deplation.

Which poses the greater health risk to humans: hot weather, or cold? According to global-warming alarmists, the answer is simple: heat kills. However, statistical evidence shows that cold weather is twice as deadly as hot weather.

With great fanfare, the City of Portland, Oregon, inaugurated its first solar-powered "loo" in Old Town, on December 8. "At the unveiling, mayor-elect Sam Adams gave the fancy new toilet its first ceremonial flush and Commissioner Randy Leonard was awarded with an honorary golden plunger," reported Portland's KGW-TV.

ITEM: President-elect Barack Obama provided a pre-recorded video message to the nearly 800 attendees from the United States and foreign countries at the Governors' Global Climate Summit hosted by California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger on November 18-19 in Beverly Hills.

"John McCain has shown far more commitment to confronting climate change than Bush has, but his teaming up with Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, who doubts that climate change is man-made, should raise worries," say Michael A. Levi and Scott G. Borgerson of the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), who teamed up in a September 24 op-ed for USA Today. Levi is the council's David M. Rubenstein Senior Fellow for Energy and the Environment and Director of the Program on Energy Security and Climate Change, while Borgerson is the CFR's Visiting Fellow for Ocean Governance, one of his major remits being to promote the UN's Law of the Sea Treaty.

Poor Charles Ponzi is getting another media drubbing. News stories, of late, have been declaring Bernard Madoff's spectacular investment fraud case "the biggest Ponzi scheme in history."

Considering that John McCain himself was a POW during the Vietnam War, why is he so dismissive of the evidence that other POWs remained in captivity after the war's end?