Is man-made global warming the biggest schuck of all time?

I don’t know. I’m not a scientist – and even if I were I might still be confused. But that’s the point. Our scientifically-challenged legislators (Nancy Pelosi can barely speak coherent English, Al Gore nearly flunked out of divinity school) are about to enact a monumentally expensive, tax regressive “climate change” bill at the very moment AGW skepticism is growing in the rest of world. From the WSJ:

Among the many reasons President Barack Obama and the Democratic majority are so intent on quickly jamming a cap-and-trade system through Congress is because the global warming tide is again shifting. It turns out Al Gore and the United Nations (with an assist from the media), did a little too vociferous a job smearing anyone who disagreed with them as “deniers.” The backlash has brought the scientific debate roaring back to life in Australia, Europe, Japan and even, if less reported, the U.S.

In April, the Polish Academy of Sciences published a document challenging man-made global warming. In the Czech Republic, where President Vaclav Klaus remains a leading skeptic, today only 11% of the population believes humans play a role. In France, President Nicolas Sarkozy wants to tap Claude Allegre to lead the country’s new ministry of industry and innovation. Twenty years ago Mr. Allegre was among the first to trill about man-made global warming, but the geochemist has since recanted. New Zealand last year elected a new government, which immediately suspended the country’s weeks-old cap-and-trade program.

The number of skeptics, far from shrinking, is swelling. Oklahoma Sen. Jim Inhofe now counts more than 700 scientists who disagree with the U.N. — 13 times the number who authored the U.N.’s 2007 climate summary for policymakers. Joanne Simpson, the world’s first woman to receive a Ph.D. in meteorology, expressed relief upon her retirement last year that she was finally free to speak “frankly” of her nonbelief. Dr. Kiminori Itoh, a Japanese environmental physical chemist who contributed to a U.N. climate report, dubs man-made warming “the worst scientific scandal in history.” Norway’s Ivar Giaever, Nobel Prize winner for physics, decries it as the “new religion.” A group of 54 noted physicists, led by Princeton’s Will Happer, is demanding the American Physical Society revise its position that the science is settled. (Both Nature and Science magazines have refused to run the physicists’ open letter.)

This is one of the greatest examples ever of “politics as religion,” people (our Congress) blinded by ideology to a degree that might impress the mullahs. Oh, well. It’s only our money and our country.

For the record, I will repeat “I am a anthropogenic global warming agnostic.” It’s possible that I am wrong about this. But the idea that Nancy Pelosi et al are making decisions for us on this matter, when it is light years beyond their mental compass, is truly frightening. They are shameless and we are pathetic for electing them.

Here’s one last interesting example. A Congresswoman named Ellen Tauscher, Democrat from San Francisco’s East Bay, is so convinced of the veracity of AWG that she postponed resigning from Congress (she has a new job with the administration) to vote for the bill. Ms. Tauscher’s educational background? She has a degree in early childhood education from Seton Hall.