Global cooling, anyone?

So now the "scientific community" is telling us that the world is experiencing global cooling - "a result of a natural and temporary shift in ocean currents." They predict that this cooling effect could last for the next 7-22 years, and that it has been going on for the last ten years or so.

Whatever happened to global warming? Whatever happened to Al Gore's infamous line, "The planet has a fever"?

Apparently it doesn't.

Admittedly, there is a lot of weeping and gnashing of teeth among these environmentalists, as they worry that the decrease in temperature across the planet "may take the heat out of action to fight" global warming.

Gee, do ya think?

The funny thing is, we keep hearing that our human activity is causing this massive shift in the climate - the warming, that is - and that if we don't change, then, well, who knows what will happen? But let me get this straight - global warming is man-made, but global gooling is natural?

Isn't that a bit arbitrary?

Meanwhile, Al Gore goes around and wins Nobel Peace Prizes for his fight against climate change (what climate change has to do with peace, I still haven't figured out) and we keep being propagandized by this environmental agenda. About a month ago, I went to two IMAX movies at the Boston Museum of Science and both of them talked about global warming, citing them, much like evolution, as cold, hard, assumed facts.

In the second movie, on the Grand Canyon, I listened as, in plain English, the narrator (Robert Redford) told us how, 500 years before, part of the Colorado River had dried up where a Native American tribe had lived. There was a terrible drought that disbanded the village. And then he said, "And we want to make sure that doesn't happen again. So take shorter showers. Don't buy bottled water. . ." And then in the next shot, they cut away to Las Vegas, telling us how this city has "drained" the Colorado River of its once-plentiful water.

I was utterly confused. Surely lands Las Vegas couldn't have caused the drought 500 years previously. And surely the drought didn't come about 500 years before because Bobby took 10 minute showers instead of 8. If a drought happened before - sans Las Vegas and bottled water and the 6 billion people that roam this planet now - whose to say that anything I do now will prevent it from happening again?

In the other film, we were taken to the Swiss Alps - a place where the glaciers are seriously disappearing. Yet the movie itself seemed to admit that these same glaciers go in cycles every couple of thousand years or so. But a few minutes later, they say, "Global warming is jeopardizing these glaciers. Stop driving your car."

Apparently the producers are a little confused, as are many scientists.

Well which is it? Global warming? Global cooling? A natural cycle? El Nino? La Nina?

Meanwhile, with this whole global cooling epiphany - whose mention is scantly found anywhere on any major news station or newspaper - scientists have now given themselves a little cushion so they can come up with another explanation 15 years down the road when they realize that this global warming thing isn't panning out.

And, oh yeah, New Hampshire almost set a record this year for snowfall.

And by the way, I definitely believe that we should take care of God's planet. We are definitely called to be stewards of it. But let's just make sure we know what that stewardship really looks like, instead of being sold a bill of goods. Should we try to conserve water? Yes. Does this mean I shouldn't buy it in a bottle? Maybe not. Should we become vegetarians so that more of the rain forest in South America - where a lot of the cattle is raised, only to find its way onto American's plates - is destroyed, all the while displacing thousands of people from their natural habitat? Most definitely. But, again, let's just make sure we know what we're talking about so we don't needlessly place ourselves in slavery to the environment. We are called to be "stewards" of this planet, not slaves to it.