The Global Warming Treaty negotiated in Kyoto, Japan by the Clinton-Gore Administration is a scam. The involvement of the United States with a horde of other nations in a squirrelly scheme to fight global warming is based largely on a report issued by the United Nations in 1996. We now learn that a number of the scientists who helped prepare the report are upset because certain passages were edited out before publication. What was omitted was not incidental.

Included in the censored material are these disclaimers: "None of the studies cited above has shown clear evidence that we can attribute the observed climate changes to increases in greenhouse gases . . . No study to date has positively attributed all or part of the climate change to man-made causes."

The censored words tell the whole story, not only about global warming but about the integrity of the people who published the report. Science has a methodology for establishing scientific facts. The burden of proof is upon the researcher. From the perspective of science, the proof does not exist that global warming is real. Additionally, if one accepts as true that global warming does exist, there is no proof that man-made greenhouse gases have anything to do with it.

In a recent Gallup poll of members of the Meteorological Society and the American Geophysical Society, only 17% believed greenhouse gases caused warming in this century.

Global warming is nothing more than an educated guess by many of the same scientists who are still arguing about what happened to the dinosaurs. Perhaps we should think carefully before putting blind faith in people who cannot explain the simple disappearance of tens of millions of creatures, many of which were the size of locomotives.

What accounts for the confidence of the White House in an unproven and strongly disputed theory about greenhouse gases? We have a clue. In a speech to a group of religious leaders in 1991, Al Gore said the following, "We are not separate from the earth. God is not separate from the earth."

Gore’s worship of the earth is in view. His fervor to protect the earth can now be understood in terms of his primitive faith and his New Age, geocentric perspectives.

In his book, Earth in the Balance (one of the Unabomber’s favorite reads), Gore wrote, "We must make the rescue of the environment the central organizing principle for civilization."

Gore’s holistic, eco-jingoism has led him to a "one world" view. His willingness to subordinate American sovereignty to the United Nations can now be understood.

The Global Warming Treaty calls for a reduction in greenhouse gases in the United States to 7% below 1990 levels by the year 2012. Assuming an average economic growth of 2.5% a year, the economy in 2012 will be over 50% larger than in 1990.

Thus, we are committing that by 2012 we will be using even less of the fuels that produce the so-called greenhouse gases than we were using 22 years earlier. These fuels include gasoline, coal, and oil, and account for 90% of the energy generated in the United States.

This could be catastrophic for our economy, our jobs, and our quality of life.

How would such a massive cutback be achieved? It would require increased government control of research efforts. It would require bigger taxes on fuel. It would require stern regulations governing industrial practices and onerous restrictions on private behavior and choices.

An already intrusive government would invade our liberties even further, taking charge of our lives in the name of what’s good for us, telling us what to eat, what clothes to wear, what cars to drive, where to set our thermostats, how often to barbecue, when to turn out the lights, what to believe, and what to think.

China, Russia, India, Mexico, and more than 100 Third World countries are not included in the binding agreement, thus setting up even more incentives for American companies to move offshore.

All this to avoid a hypothetical problem! How will compliance be confirmed and how will noncompliance be punished? Will United Nations bureaucrats be crawling all over America inspecting our factories and fireplaces? How will success be measured? There is every reason to believe that if every country achieved its goals, there would not be a measurable effect upon global temperatures. Would that give rise to a call for even more stringent measures?

It is a socialistic dream come true. Socialist governments have historically solved problems by asking the people to make sacrifices and when the problems worsened, asking for even deeper sacrifices, including, eventually, the sacrifice of freedom itself.

It is madness.

*Reprinted with permission from Creator Syndicate.