OK. Despite the fact that we are all about full and responsible freedom here at NH Insider, you have to read "Global Warming As Mass Neurosis" by Bret Stephens. It is simply and unequivocally brilliant.

Mr. Stephens poses a very serious challenge to global warming "science" this morning in today's Wall Street Journal, and this excerpt is particularly daunting:

"This ... is, of course, a forecast, not an empirical observation. But it raises a useful question: If even slight global cooling remains evidence of global warming, what isn't evidence of global warming? What we have here is a nonfalsifiable hypothesis, logically indistinguishable from claims for the existence of God. This doesn't mean God doesn't exist, or that global warming isn't happening. It does mean it isn't science."

No dispute here. Should there be?

And then he tosses us this gem:

"A light carbon footprint has become the 21st-century equivalent of sexual abstinence."

And then:

"Listen carefully to the global warming alarmists, and the main theme that emerges is that what the developed world needs is a large dose of penance. What's remarkable is the extent to which penance sells among a mostly secular audience. What is there to be penitent about?

"As it turns out, a lot, at least if you're inclined to believe that our successes are undeserved and that prosperity is morally suspect. In this view, global warming is nature's great comeuppance, affirming as nothing else our guilty conscience for our worldly success."

Mr. Stephens ends strong referencing William James' stellar Varieties of Religious Experience, though I believe he fudges a bit what Mr. James meant by "sick-souled." Nevertheless, this is a tight and astounding essay, written to the pith, cutting to the marrow.

(If you have not read "Yellow Science" over at First Things, you are missing something special. Author James Kerian convincingly compares global warming science to yellow journalism. Fascinating.)

Peace.

BG