They've got that global warming thing down cold

Thursday's episode on environmentalism opened with a morose-looking Penn Jillette waving a magazine as he recited one ecotastrophe after another -- drought in Africa, flooding in Pakistan and Japan, -- I snapped to attention. ''It says right here in Time magazine -- the weather's gone nuts and we humans are to blame!'' Teller wailed. ``We have bleeped up the environment and now we're going to pay for it!''

Yeah, that global warming is pretty bad. You know, Al Gore says -- oops, never mind. Turns out Penn's not reading from the infamous Time cover story of 2006 on global warming, the one headlined BE WORRIED. BE VERY WORRIED. No, this Time is from 1974, and the headline is, ANOTHER ICE AGE? And all those violent paroxysms of nature are the pernicious work of global cooling

I sometimes find myself longing for the good old days of the Ice Age scare, because at least back then, dissent was possible. These days, deviating from the orthodoxy on global warming is almost enough to get you thrown in jail. One of Gore's former science advisors said that oil company executives who argue against him ``should be tried for high crimes against humanity and nature.''

Consider it a certainty that the Climate Police will lock up Penn & Teller after Thursday's show. Not only does it feature interviews with some scientists who aren't totally sold on the idea that the Earth is toast, it whispers an even more inconvenient truth:

A lot of the scariest global-warming tales are told by people who stand to make a buck if they can scare you enough...

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