Last week, at the first Senate Environment and Public Works Committee hearing on S. 1733, the Kerry-Boxer "Clean Energy Jobs and American Power Act," Department of Energy Secretary Steven Chu explained the economic rationale for adopting a Kyoto-style cap-and-trade program.

His argument, in a nutshell, goes like this:

In the next few weeks we'll be relentlessly scrubbed with eyewash, brainwash and hogwash, all designed to cleanse us of any doubts that global warming is a proven menace to mother Earth.

First, there's the Democratic global warming legislation rushing through Congress with a denouement expected soon. Second, the rush to pass the legislation is fueled by the upcoming United Nations meeting on global warming next month in Copenhagen. President Barack Obama and Democrats want to be able to go there with a goody basket of economy-busting measures that will show the world that America is with it.

"Forecasting is difficult: particularly about the future" This piece of wisdom is attributed to Yogi Bear. But it does not apply to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, since they do not make "forecasts" at all, only "projections". As they make clear, "projections" are dependent on the correctness of the assumptions made by the computer models and the futures scenarios from which they are made.

As people continue to resist draconian greenhouse gas control schemes that would virtually re-order society around energy rationing and technocratic authoritarianism, proponents of such an eco-revolution are ratcheting up the rhetoric of hate.

People such as James Hansen and Al Gore have long been at the forefront of slandering those who oppose them. As my colleague and I wrote in "Scenes from the Climate Inquisition":