As most of you know, the top likes to stay on top. All policies and decisions fall in line from there. Unfortunately for the top, this time, the world needs to change from an oil-based economy to one based upon a more balanced use of alternate fuels. Maintaining the status quo depends on the fact that there has been no global warming. Although the top has unsuccessfully tried to pressure Dr. James Hansen of NASA’s Goddard Institute of Space Studies into not reporting his climate model results, their denial of sound science doesn’t make the research go away. Athough the top tries to keep keep our attention elsewhere (Iraq), it doesn’t keep 2005 from being the hottest year on record. It also doesn’t keep the glaciers and polar icecaps from melting.

The Bostonian may be on thin ice (so to speak), but an Inupiat in Barrow, AK, has been watching the thick ice disappear with increasing rapidity for decades, threatening his traditional subsistence culture. And his grasp of the science is probably pretty good.

Come on, Phil. One warm spell provides essentially no support for global warming, any more than Moscow’s recent extremely cold weather undermines it. I know you left yourself wiggle room by saying, “A Bostonian who spent… is going to have some trouble believing…”, but that Bostonian clearly doesn’t have much of a grasp of science, so why wiggle?

I think the last election emphatically demonstrated that Bush need not lose sleep over the newspaper-reading, t-shirt-wearing, Bostonians when it comes to election day mathematics. My guess is that he will talk about fear and money and hope we all bow down before that least erected spirit that fell From heaven.