George Will Channels Mark Steyn: AGW Loses.

George Will has long been one of the Dutch uncles of conservative writing, emitting urbane and recondite twaddle and common sense wisdom in equal dollops over the decades in the WaPo, often one of its few sane commentators in a political environment where the inmates have taken over the asylum.

Will dissects Obama and his daffy insistence that climate change legislation is "urgent," without noting the cardinal fact that Mark Steyn brings forward in his July 4th salute to the Cap-and-Trade nonsense that Pelosi & Nosewax pounded through the House of Reps. Will looks at it as an international shell game whereas Steyn points out the effect that the AGW Kyoto silliness has had in nations already committed to it:

...most of the developed world has already gone down the paved road of good intentions and is now frantically trying to pedal up out of it. New Zealand was one of the few western nations to sign on to Kyoto and then attempt to abide by it — until they realized they could only do so by destroying their economy. They introduced a Dem-style cap-and-trade regime — and last year they suspended it. In Australia, the Labor government postponed implementation of its emissions-reduction program until 2011, and the Aussie Senate may scuttle it entirely. The Obama administration has gotten to the climate-change hop just as the glitterball’s stopped whirling and the band’s packing up its instruments.

But it's not that Obama's the only retardo, as Canada continues to march steadfastly in "carbon credits" as its IOU scripts based on its declining currency. The biggest nutjobs, predictably, are in Congress, led by a hysterical Madam with an army of pimps.

The Congressional cap-and-trade shtick would be tired even if it weren’t the familiar boondoggle of tax hikes, big-government micro-regulation, and pork-a-palooza pay-offs to preferred clients of the Democratic party. Granted that carbon credits were already a dubious racket equivalent to the sale of “indulgences” in medieval Europe, the decision by Congressional power-brokers to give away credits to well-connected Democratic party interests surely represents the environmental movement’s formal Jumping of the Endangered Great White Shark.

Then Steyn goes on to dissect the rotund philosophe from Minnesota, that southern adjunct of Canuckistan, the tottering and doddering Tom Friedman:

Back at the New York Times, Thomas Friedman agreed the bill “stinks” and says “it’s a mess” and he “detests” it, but nevertheless says we need to pass it because his “gut” tells him to. Maybe his gut’s really telling him the New York Times canteen’s daily specials have been adversely affected by the company’s collapsing share price. Who knows? At any rate, for reasons not entirely obvious from his prose style, the eminent columnist believes himself to have a special influence on the youth of today and so directed the grand finale of his gut’s analysis to them especially: “Attention all young Americans,” he proclaimed. “You want to make a difference? Then get out of Facebook and into somebody’s face. Get a million people on the Washington Mall calling for a price on carbon.”

Perhaps it’ll work. Getting into Thomas Friedman’s face, I see the ruddy bloom of late middle-age has not yet faded from it, so maybe, as his command of the lingo shows, he’s hep to the scene. Maybe the kids’ll abandon their Tweet cred for street cred. Maybe they’ll get outta MySpace and into Sen. Robert C. Byrd’s parking space.

I don’t know how Mr. Friedman defines “young” but let’s be generous: If you’re 29, there has been no global warming for your entire adult life. If you’re graduating high school, there has been no global warming since you entered first grade. There has been no global warming this century. None. Admittedly the 21st century is only one century out of the many centuries of planetary existence, but it happens to be the one you’re stuck living in. Alan Carlin, in a report for the Environmental Protection Racket — whoops, Environmental Protection Agency — that they attempted to suppress, says:

Fossil fuel and cement emissions increased by 3.3 percent per year during 2000-2006, compared to 1.3 percent per year in the 1990s. Similarly, atmospheric C02 concentrations increased by 1.93 parts per million per year during 2000-2006, compared to 1.58 ppm in the 1990s. And yet, despite accelerating emission rates and concentrations, there’s been no net warming in the 21st century, and more accurately, a decline.

[Ed. note: The 11-Year Sunspot cycle from 1998-2009 had few sunspots from the Primary Global Warmer, so that might be a clew.... The two previous 11-year cycles had a lot of "solar weather." The 23rd Round of 11-year cycles since observation began in the mid-18th c. begins this year & could either be sunspotless or a real SGW sunspot epidemic].

And in the final coda to Steyn's glitterball metaphor, George Will takes the Carlin conclusion one better and puts the Waxboy/Nancyfancy style/hoax in its place:

Which could explain why the Mall does not reverberate with youthful clamors about carbon. And why, regarding climate change, the U.S. government, rushing to impose unilateral cap-and-trade burdens on the sagging U.S. economy, looks increasingly like someone who bought a closetful of platform shoes and bell-bottom slacks just as disco was dying.

But Mark gets the very last laugh, as he defrocks and depants and de-dishdashas the hopeless retardos temporarily disturbing the republic:

The Europeans have figured out you can be too European for your own good, and are trying to re-acquaint themselves with the real world. But not Obama. Damn the torpedoes! Full speed ahead! Male unemployment has hit ten percent? The stimulus is a bust? It’s stimulating nothing but non-jobs like Executive Stimulus Coordinator for Community Organization Stimulus Assistance Programs? Hey, let’s spend even more, even faster, even less stimulatingly!

President Obama, Nancy Pelosi, Barney Frank, and their chums are spending at a rate that threatens American stability. And, except for the scale and the dollar figure, it’s all been tried before, and it’s all failed before. There’s nothing cool about Obama. He’s a non-stop square dance, swinging us around till we’re dozy and he’s got all the dough. Happy Independence Day.