Jump-starting global-warming hysteria.

A confluence of events during the last week of January guarantees that fears over global warming will again make climate change a hot political issue. On January 30, the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, chaired by Democrat Henry Waxman (Calif.), convened hearings on whether or not the Bush administration pressured scientists to remain silent on global-warming fears.

The hearing was used to showcase the report Atmospheric Pressure, by the left-leaning Union of Concerned Scientists. That report laments, contrary to reason, "that inappropriate political interference [from the Bush administration] and media favoritism are compromising federal climate science." In fact, the Bush administration has long accepted global warming as fact, and media reports are invariably skewed in favor of the most sensationalistic of global-warming scare scenarios. Only a partisan from the very distant fringes of the left side of the political spectrum would conclude that media reports on global warming lean toward skepticism.

As the Democrat-controlled Congress heats up debate on global warming within the United States, the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) planned to release its latest report on global warming on February 2. The report should turn up the alarmist rhetoric on global warming by a substantial margin, and it will be used to justify renewed calls for stringent economy-throttling regulations on greenhouse gases. "I hope policies and action will be formed to address the problem," IPCC Chairman Rajendra Pachauri said according to the Sydney, Australia, Morning Herald. "I think based on the awareness that is growing very rapidly in every part of the globe, you will see a certain political resolve developing."