Our chief weapon is surprise! Surprise and fear, fear and surprise! Our two weapons are fear and surprise and ruthless efficiency!-Monty Python

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Living in Alaska is nice because it gives perspective. Up here we’re farther west than California by one time zone, and not at all connected to the rest of the United States except by the occasional three-masted schooner going whaling, so it allows us to be part of the United States, but distantly.

One of the more disturbing things I see when I look Outside (the rest of the world) is a huge amount of fear. Pure, unadulterated fear. I see it in the color-coded fear meter that The Department of Fear Metering puts out. Listen, if we’re at the point as Americans where we must have color-coded rainbows to tell us how scared we should be, well, perhaps we should all be sent home for a backbone implant.

I see the fear when I read that Germans (the same Germans who went on Tour 1938-1945) are now officially afraid of kittens getting bird flu. Remember SARS? Yeah, it’s silly now. Like (I fully believe) that we’ll look back on bird flu in a few years. It’ll be the Y2K of diseases.

Remember “The Next Ice Age”? In the 1970’s it was everywhere. Some people still believe that we should stock up on long johns and stuff to make hot tea, but they’re at the fringe. Now it’s “Global Warming.” In 1988, the major proponent of Global Warming (you know, the one NASA “muzzled” so effectively that he only merits 1.1 million hits in Google) made a prediction on what global temperatures would be like in 1998. He said temperatures would be warmer (they were) but we showed 350% less temperature rise than he indicated in his most optimistic (coolest) scenario.

I haven’t spent millions of dollars of other people’s money and my whole career making the biggest darned spreadsheet in history, but even I could have looked at the chart of temperatures from 1880 to 1985 and said, “it’s gonna get warmer.” This was a slam dunk because we were starting to warm from the 1970’s when it really was colder.

Listen: The same people who regularly are off by forty degrees in a forecast of weather for the next week are now trying to tell me what the weather is going to be like in 1000 years? Hey, I’m all about the science. Isaac Newton rules. But even if the US enacted Kyoto, we’d be at best looking at decreasing the global temperature 0.004ºF. However, these are the same people who have models that say that the Antarctic ice is getting thicker (no) and Greenland should be melting (no). Like any fad, it’s popular now. “Global Warming” shows 66 million hits in Google, versus the paltry 12.9 million hits for “ice age,” despite “ice age” actually referring to real events. Global Warming even gets more hits than Paris Hilton, if you can imagine that, and consensus is that she’d hit anything.

Oh, and the increased frequency of hurricanes? Nope. They’re down, not up. We just got clobbered last year.

I certainly understand that people really do care about the planet. Which is why I want to help. Any money that you were going to invest, either individually or as a governmental body should be shipped to . . . me. Don’t worry, I can help with any cause that you’re scared of. You Germans? I can sell you Magic No Flu Kitty Spray. SARS? I can sell you a special T-shirt coated in my DNA that repels that. Y2K? I’ll sell you a used laptop.

The problem with fear is that it’s pretty good money. How much money has Dr. Hansen made with his Global Warming claims? How much has GreenPeas (I don’t want to be sued) made with their peddling of various anxieties about how mankind is destroying nature? To flip the coin, how much has been spent taking lighters from stoners and frisking little old ladies from Des Moines in airports? Oodles.

In summation, if you want to worry about something, worry about heart disease. It kills more of us than Paris Hilton, even if she sang. If you want to worry about Global Warming, go ahead, be my guest, but instead of sending your money off to some group that will waste it on computer models, send it to me. I’ll spend it on beer. At least the beer will produce tangible results, and while it will not prevent Global Warming, it will prevent Wilder Sobering.

Heck, I think that I should start my own crisis. How about Friends United for Repairing the Earth’s Axial Tilt (FUREAT) or Wilder’s Wildlife Fund(WWF – Oh, that one’s taken) or People for Eliminating Shadows Because They Scare Us (PESBTSU)? If you want to join, just cut me a check. It’s for the children.

My only fear is that I won’t get a cut of the action.

For another view, check out Michael Crichton's comments in his speech about how aliens caused global warming.