Rep. Ed Markey (D-MA) has quite a distinction.  He chairs the only new committee that Nancy Pelosi has created as Speaker, the Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming.

Presumably that distinction gives Markey official license to design some pretty creative metaphors, such as this:

“The truth is, the planet has a fever, but there are no hospitals for sick planets.  We have to find a way of engaging in preventative planet health care.”

Of course, on the bright side of things, at least the planet doesn’t have to eat hospital food.

Pity, please, the poor folks who run the New Alternatives mutual fund.

We learn this from Kiplinger:

Ethanol, biofuels, and solar, wind and ocean power. With oil prices in the stratosphere, everyone, it seems, is suddenly interested in alternative energy. But Maurice Schoenwald and his son, David, have been exploring the best investment opportunities in this rapidly growing industry for more than a quarter-century…. The Schoenwalds are passionate liberals who employ social screens to pick stocks. Several years ago, they sold their position in Chesapeake Energy after learning that its chief executive was involved in Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, a group that opposed Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry in 2004. Chesapeake’s stock subsequently turned out to be a big winner.

Yeessshh.  Remind me not to entrust my family’s financial security with those earnest folks.  Heck, why not just let it all ride on Ben & Jerry’s stock?

Watch Tom Friedman connect the Southern California fires to … global warming:

Yes, I really enjoyed playing golf in late October, as though it were July. But you know what? It also felt a little freaky. Should I be enjoying this? Is there some connection between this and the fires I saw burning in California the very next day? I know the answer is complicated.

Suspected arsonists further complicating — or, more likely, simplifying — the story notwithstanding, I guess we need to fawn over Friedman’s golfy thoughts because, well he is a Pulitzer Prize winner, and he writes for the Sunday New York Times, and, well, the man doesn’t just define gravitas, he redefines it.  But can’t the Times’ “foreign-affairs columnist” just stick to reminding us the world is flat and stop wondering why parts of it are on fire?

Something called the U.S. Climate Emergency Council sends out this letter:

Dear Friends,

As global warming rapidly intensifies, the prospect of much more extensive hunger worldwide becomes increasingly likely, especially in poor countries, due to drought, Katrina-like storms, glacial melting and sea level rise. These impacts will lead to crop failures and economic and social disruption on a massive scale.

To draw attention to this threat and its moral implications, we are calling on thousands of concerned citizens to voluntarily give up food for one day on September 4th, 2007.

Give up food for a day?  How daring.  How brave.  How …. Yom Kippur.

All the comments in the post below about the April 1975 Newsweek article on global cooling reminds this old hand of that great joke told by rowdy economists: If you put one foot in the freezer and one foot in the refrigerator, on the average you’re comfortable.

Jeff Jacoby has this fascinating opening in today’s Boston Globe:

Introducing Newsweek’s Aug. 13 cover story on global warming “denial,” editor Jon Meacham brings up an embarrassing blast from his magazine’s past: an April 1975 story about global cooling, and the coming ice age that scientists then were predicting. Meacham concedes that “those who doubt that greenhouse gases are causing significant climate change have long pointed to the 1975 Newsweek piece as an example of how wrong journalists and researchers can be.” But rather than acknowledge that the skeptics may have a point, Meacham dismisses it.

You’ll want to click here to read the whole piece. It’s worth it.

Turns out, that April 1975 Newsweek is getting passed around more than a cheap metaphor at the end of a sentence. Newsbusters captured Dennis Miller parading it on Jay Leno last year:

“Now this whole article is about the cooling world and you can see over here where they’ve got a chart where the temperature of the planet is dropping off and down here at the bottom is my favorite part. I’ve starred it. It says the solution to the global cooling problem is to deliberately melt the polar ice caps. Now this is like 30 years ago, this what we believed. Now we’ve changed — and I’m not saying that maybe in the year 2036 it doesn’t go back in the other way — I just don’t think we control it like we think we do.”

Personally, I like Miller’s interpretation of the article better than Meacham’s.

We learn this about New York:

Governor Eliot Spitzer Friday signed legislation requiring that automobile manufacturers affix “global warming index” stickers to new cars and passenger trucks beginning in the 2010 model year.

Fair enough.  Then we see this:

The index will be based on emissions of carbon dioxide, a major contributor to warming temperatures worldwide, in addition to methane, nitrous oxide, hydrofluorocarbons, perfluorocarbons and sulfur hexafluoride.

In other words, they’re basing the index on New Jersey.

We learn that one of the bands performing in Al Gore’s Live Earth concert in DC is a funk-rock band from the Six Nations Reserve in Ontario, Canada.  The band is called The Breaking Wind.

The Breaking Wind?  Clearly a cheap knock-off of these giants:

Republican Rep. Bob Inglis’ fourth congressional district in South Carolina features a significant investment from BMW — the huge Zentrum factory in Spartanburg, where 4500 workers produce more than 100,000 BMW vehicles a year,

Inglis, the ranking member of the Energy & Environment Subcommittee of the House Science and Technology Committee, advocates the “Hydrogen Economy” and is a founding member of the House Hyrdogen and Fuel Cell Caucus.  All that dovetails well with the new BMW Hydrogen 7, a luxury performance sedan featured at Zentrum.

So it’s no surprise that in its new issue, BMW Magazine spotlights Inglis, including a full-page photo of him wading knee-deep into a BMW pool  (don’t worry: his trousers are rolled up at the knees) with this caption: “Congressman Bob Inglis (R-SC) stands by BMW while they help lead the way to a healthy, clean Hydrogen Future.”

But what might surprise some is this headline over a story about a Republican: “The Convert on Global Warming.”  And these Inglis quotes:

• “Human beings are a substantial cause of global warming.”
• “I shouldn’t be able to do something on my land that can do harm to my neightbor’s land.”
• Al Gore’s film “An Inconvenient Truth” is “compelling”

Further proof that all politics is local — and looks real sharp in a sporty BMW.

Quick question: If you like your presidential candidates saying “global warming,” would you have appreciated more the April 26 Democratic debate or the May 3 Republican debate?

Likewise, if you prefer your presidential candidates saying “climate change” instead, would the Democratic or Republican debate be more to your liking?

The results — and the rhetoric — might surprise you.

April 26 Democrats:

• Hillary Clinton:  “I believe America is ready now for universal health care. It is ready for a new energy policy. It is ready to deal with global climate change.”
• John Edwards:  “On the issue of climate change, we ought to cap carbon emissions in the United States.”
• Bill Richardson: “I would have a major initiative on climate change.”
• Dennis Kucinich: “I think it’s important that we move away from global warming and global warring.”

May 3 Republicans:

• Duncan Hunter:  “Global warming and the need to be energy-independent gives us a great opportunity.”
• John McCain and Jim Gilmore both mentioned “energy independence.” 
• Mike Huckabee split the difference:  “The most important thing about global warming is this. Whether humans are responsible for the bulk of climate change is going to be left to the scientists.”