Old beady eyes keeps telling us there is no evidence for global warming, and most nay-sayers who back him up say we'd have plenty of warning and measured temperature increases over the last one hundred years are insignificant and probably due to local microclimates. Well unfortunately for us the vast majority of the scientific world disagrees with GWB and his paid-for-by-fossil-fuel-company advisors. And also unfortunately for us there's a proven track record of the Bush administration taking the wrong advice and waiting until after the event to even acknowledge it. Indeed his hunt for "a breakdown in intelligence" should stop right at the bathroom mirror next time he's shaving.

Even worse for us there's a well known hypothesis that the arctic ice melting caused by warming so far jeopardizes the very Gulf Stream that warms the north east of American and a significant part of Europe. Furthermore it seems the changes caused when the gulf stream gets disrupted have historically occured very quickly and brought arctic conditions and a return to ice age in just a few years, not decades or hundreds of years. This counter intuitive phenomenom of "an ass sneezes in the Whitehouse and Europe freezes" is described in all its gory details in Thom Hartmann's article The Ice Age Cometh.

You can write-off Hartmann's article as pinko-liberal scare mongering, however the consequences will be rapid enough and devastating enough that there is no second chance if we screw up. If there ever was a clear and present danger, or a weapon of mass destruction aimed fair and square at North America and Europe then this is it. And guess which countries will still be basking in the sun, enjoying rains over their deserts, and pumping oil like its 1999 when the rest of the world is freezing their assets off?

I'll let you figure that one out for yourself.