Is Paris burning?

I, like Al Gore, believe that global warming is the biggest threat civilized man has ever faced. Worse than Hitler, Stalin, Mao and Che T-shirts combined.

I don't know why, or whether, Al Gore actually believes this. But here's my take on it: Global warming hysteria could lead to a massive overreaction on the part of Big Government, and Big Government Overreaction, as our forefathers could tell you, is just about the worst Worst Case Scenario you can imagine. I mean, when you talk about Big Government Overreaction, you're talking about Hitler, Stalin & Mao. Che, in my opinion, is grossly overrated.

But here's the deal, as Newsweek puts it: If you doubt man-made global warming, you're part of the problem. Well, I doubt man-made global warming. I also doubt that even if man-made global warming was real -- yes, I'm consciously avoiding the subjunctive "were"; it might be true! -- that there's anything we could do about it, as economist Robert Samuelson explains -- in Newsweek! -- except move to higher ground.

You might think that I don't think global warming is a big deal. You're right. I don't. Weather moves in cycles. I think we're at the high end of a cycle. I think that if we do absolutely nothing -- or better-worse yet, if every one of us goes out and buys a Hummer tomorrow and drives the hell out of it (I know that's unfair to Hummers; the H3 actually has a lower lifetime energy-use total than the Prius) -- that we'll soon tip over into the trough of the cycle. Five or 10 or 50 years from now, Newsweek's cover headline will be "Damn it's cold!"

I'm taking a while getting to the point, but I just think we all ought to lay our cards on the table. Knowwhatuhmean?

So while Newsweek was going to press, this guy was reverse-engineering NASA's temperature trends. He was reverse-engineering because the NASA dude principally involved -- one James Hansen, who makes news every time he claims the Bush Administration is trying to silence him -- won't release his data. Just as hockey-stick-guy wouldn't release his data. (This is a mortal sin in science-land. If you don't release your data, other people can't try to replicate your results. And if your results can't be replicated, you're basically selling cold fusion.)

And he found that NASA had a Y2K software bug. And that after the bug was fixed, we weren't as hot as we thought. 1998, previously advertised as the hottest year in the last millenia, was actually No. 2 to 1934. So it wasn't even the hottest year in the last century.

The conservative bloggers -- we move as a herd, you know -- have made a big deal about this. But I can see the global-warming-alarmist community saying, "So what? It's still pretty frickin' hot!"

But what really bothers me about this -- aside from the alarmists hiding their data -- is McIntyre's revelation, uncontested to my knowledge, that the United States, whose data I trust more than any other nation's, is averaging and adjusting temperature readings. That it's equating urban readings from 100 years ago with readings today from the same location. That it is, in other words, stacking the global warming deck with epidemiological imprecision.

If you don't know what I'm talking about here, suffice it to say that the U.S. government is manipulating its data and your emotions to the effect that you will agree to have your taxes raised and standard of living lowered to address a problem that occurs naturally and is resistant to a man-made solution.

There are problems we can actually fix -- Social Security, bridges and so on -- for a lot less money. I think we should give that a shot and just stock up on sunscreen.

UPDATE: Eric points out a missing link providing relative lifetime energy use between the H3 and the Prius. Read it and weep. Prius batteries are, environmentally speaking, a nasty piece of work.