Four years ago I got into a debate with someone who decried the war as “blood for oil.” (He also went on to call American servicemen “pawns”, but I’ll leave that for another time.) I said then that the supply and demand of oil is a global problem, not just a United States problem. I explained how high oil prices would affect the price of food and its availability. I explained how essential it was to the global economy that the global oil supply wasn’t effected.

He didn’t agree with my assessment, said there was “no connection”, and that Bush was just “trying to make his oil buddies rich”.

Recent headlines prove who was right:

• Wal-Mart customers are feeling the pinch of higher food prices
• Corn hits $6 a bushel
• Rice prices jump 10% in Africa
• Rice Jumps to Record on Philippine Imports, Curbs on Exports
• Fuel Choices, Food Crises and Finger-Pointing
• Food Costs Rising Fastest in 17 Years 
• UN chief warns world must urgently increase food production
• Food Rationing Confronts Breadbasket of the World

Oil prices and food prices & availability are intrinsically linked. This is a lesson we all must learn, and learn quickly. Taking part of our food supply (corn) and burning it as an inefficient fuel source (in the form of ethanol) is beyond idiotic because it causes both prices to increase and there’s no appreciable benefit to burning an inefficient fuel source.

Do we need an alternative to oil? Yes. But ethanol is not the answer, and until we find one, the stability of the world’s oil market and price is essential to everyone. And closer to home, it is essential to the preservation of our liberties.

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Back in 1991, before Al Gore first shouted that the Earth was in the balance, the Danish Meteorological Institute released a study using data that went back centuries that showed that global temperatures closely tracked solar cycles.

To many, those data were convincing. Now, Canadian scientists are seeking additional funding for more and better “eyes” with which to observe our sun, which has a bigger impact on Earths climate than all the tailpipes and smokestacks on our planet combined.

And theyre worried about global cooling, not warming.

Prediction: as global warming is discovered to be the farce that it is, the nature of the conversation will shift to “global climate change”.

Full article: Investors Business Daily — The Sun Also Sets

What do you do when no one seems to be listening, time is running out, and you still want to get your way? You panic, because you fear that before too long you’ll be known as a fraud, and you’ll be a has-been that is the butt of everyone’s jokes. The last gasp is to ramp up the Panic Machine to try and instill it in others:

Climate change is occurring far more rapidly than even the worst predictions of the UN’s Nobel Prize-winning scientific panel on climate change, Al Gore said on Thursday.

Recent evidence shows “the climate crisis is significantly worse and unfolding more rapidly than those on the pessimistic side of the IPCC projections had warned us,” climate campaigner and former US vice-president Gore said.

There are now forecasts that the North Pole ice caps may disappear entirely during summer months within five years, he told a gathering at the World Economic Forum in Davos.

Well, here’s an idea: if this is true, there’s nothing we can do to stop it, so let’s stop with the crazy carbon footprint talk and carbon offsets and “green” programs and products and everything else. Let’s just wait five years and see if you’re right, Al. If you are, we’ll all go “Gee, he was right after all,” as he gets out of his SUV motorcade and into his Gulfstream to fly to another conference. If the ice caps are still there in six years, we can all breathe a sigh of relief as we bask in the glow of our incandescent light bulbs.

Prediction: As the climate on this planet get colder over the next few years, “Global Warming” will be replaced with “Global Climate Change”, the pretense being that any change is bad and that we are able to do something about it (which we’re not.)