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They bash Colin Powell for his UN speech about non-existent attempts to purchase uranium from Niger. They slam retired and current U.S. generals for not speaking out about the inadequate size of the Iraq invasion force or the total lack of planning for a post-Saddam Iraq.

Above all, liberals lambaste the mainstream media for failing, with one or two notable exceptions, to balance the administration’s pro-war hype with prominent rebuttals from war doubters, who were not all flakes or traitors but had reasons for their views that have been amply, tragically vindicated.

The same thing is happening again. The media are reporting only one side of an issue that is every bit as critical as the illegal invasion of a sovereign country that had no connection to the 9/11 attacks.

This issue, of course, is climate change. And the mainstream media again are giving short shrift to one side of the debate. Only this time it’s ignoring/trivializing those who don’t agree with liberal/progressive claims that the sole cause of global warming is human-created carbon dioxide (greenhouses gases) emissions.

This time, it is the liberals and progressives’ turn to be the bullies and keepers of ideological purity. Bush and his strident supporters proclaimed, “If you’re not with us, you’re with Al Qaeda!” The equally strident greenhouse gases proponents cry, “If you’re not with us, you’re with the evil oil companies!”

Whether or not we agree or disagree with the greenhouse gases theory of climate change, the ever-increasing stridency of those who promote it should give us pause. The Bush administration resorted to fear mongering to win its argument because it was lying and had something to hide. This begs us to question the motives of the greenhouse gases proponents as well.

Some assert that science has already “proved” that human-made carbon-dioxide emissions are the culprit behind global warming. Nothing about the scientific method, however, is designed to prove anything. The method exists to disprove a theory. A theory becomes more widely accepted only if it withstands multiple experiments as well as a slew of scientific studies.

Since it’s impossible to devise a lab experiment for the greenhouse gases theory, scientists instead have been exploring the history of climate change on earth and analyzing the physical clues that such climate shifts leave behind in places like ice sheets, rock beds and oceans.

These clues show that our Earth has been through multiple climate transitions throughout its lengthy history. This fact plays a key role in some people’s skepticism about the greenhouse gases theory. This planet’s climate has altered on numerous occasions prior to large-scale human production of carbon dioxide.

So what caused prehistoric climate changes? Unless and until we can answer that question beyond a reasonable doubt, the greenhouse gases argument just doesn’t cut the mustard. And if we don’t know or are unsure about what sparked past climate shifts, we cannot be all-fired certain about the causes of the current situation.

Today’s climate alternations and aberrations are indeed unnerving, if not downright scary. None of us knows for sure what the planet will be like when this period of climate transformation draws to a close.

This is precisely not the time for the same kind of fear mongering that rushed us into the Iraq war disaster. Such fear mongering is now racing us toward presumed “solutions” that may just make the problem worse, or create new headaches on top of the ones we already face.

In an era of climate crisis, only cool heads inspired by caring hearts can see us through to the other side.

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