Socialism may have failed as an economic theory, but global warming alarmism, with its dire warnings about the consequences of industry and consumerism, is equally a rebuke to capitalism. Take just about any other discredited leftist nostrum of yore – population control, higher taxes, a vast new regulatory regime, global economic redistribution, an enhanced role for the United Nations – and global warming provides a justification.

I’m left wondering, however, why? Why, if it is merely an accident, do we have to protect life? The word “precious” presupposes that there is some sentient being that feels that affection or to which the thing described is considered valuable. To whom or what are we duty bound to protect life if there is no God? Ourselves? Well, what if some of us don’t see the need? It makes no sense to me.

Global warming stopped? Surely not. What heresy is this? Haven’t we been told that the science of global warming is settled beyond doubt and that all that’s left to the so-called sceptics is the odd errant glacier that refuses to melt?

Aren’t we told that if we don’t act now rising temperatures will render most of the surface of the Earth uninhabitable within our lifetimes? But as we digest these apocalyptic comments, read the recent IPCC’s Synthesis report that says climate change could become irreversible. Witness the drama at Bali as news emerges that something is not quite right in the global warming camp.

With only few days remaining in 2007, the indications are the global temperature for this year is the same as that for 2006 – there has been no warming over the 12 months.

But is this just a blip in the ever upward trend you may ask? No.

The fact is that the global temperature of 2007 is statistically the same as 2006 as well as every year since 2001. Global warming has, temporarily or permanently, ceased. Temperatures across the world are not increasing as they should according to the fundamental theory behind global warming – the greenhouse effect. Something else is happening and it is vital that we find out what or else we may spend hundreds of billions of pounds needlessly.

Fred leads the way and won’t let the obviously biased moderator get away with it.

Update – Here’s what Fred’s campaign has to say:

Running for President is serious business. We’re facing pressing issues like national security, bankrupt entitlements, a broken tax code, and out-of-control judges. So what did the liberal moderator want at Wednesday’s debate? A show of hands. We deserve serious discussion not kindergarten antics.

Don’t you want a conservative leader who won’t grovel to the liberal media?

Now, why would they do that? Why would the UN overestimate the AIDS epidemic? Can anybody say money? Same reason Ted Danson overestimated the death of the oceans. Can anybody ask the same question about global warming? Why would the UN be overestimating the destruction from global warming?

…Just take the AIDS epidemic outta here and put global warming in it and you’ve got an identical story in about ten years.

“Some researchers, however, contend that persistent overestimates in the widely quoted U.N. reports have long skewed funding decisions and obscured potential lessons about how to slow the spread of HIV. Critics have also said that U.N. officials overstated the extent of the epidemic to help gather political and financial support for combating AIDS.” Oooh, okay, so they did it strategically. They were smart. They lied on purpose to get our attention, to make sure we knew just how rotten it was going to be, and to make sure that governments around the world and individuals threw money at AIDS programs all over the world, administered by the United Nations.

Can anybody say, global warming overestimated? Same bunch of people…

…Now, remember what is fundamentally involved in all this: science. Science told us it was going to spread; it was going to spread to the heterosexual community. Science told us it was going to spread at geometric rates. It was a consensus of scientists. Scientists, scientists, scientists told us that this was all going to be one of the most devastating things around the world. It was time to cough up money for education, and condoms, and cucumbers and all that, and we had rock stars like Bono establish philanthropic careers on the basis of all this, all based on science.

Like the panics of bygone eras, this one has the aspect of yet another re-enactment of the Big Con. The huckster arrives in town, tells all the rubes that disaster impends for them and their families, but says there may be one last chance they can be saved. But it will take a lot of money. And the folks should go about collecting it, right now.

This, it seems to me, is what the global-warming scare and scam are all about — frightening Americans into transferring sovereignty, power and wealth to a global political elite that claims it alone understands the crisis and it alone can save us from impending disaster.