Mother Earth: Check, Please

Global warming is real. Humans are largely to blame. Al Gore says so. So does Myron Ebell.

Ebell, a bogeyman to environmentalists, is a former ExxonMobil lobbyist now serving as director of energy and global warming policy for the Competitive Enterprise Institute, a conservative Washington think tank that receives generous funding from the oil and gas industry. Not surprisingly, he sees it differently.

Well, I'm no scientist so I can't say with certainty whose Germans are better in this case, but I do know that we can't afford to become so distracted by "we say, they say" bickering that we get this one wrong. If the "alarmists" are right, even partly right, and we do nothing, all of our other worldly concerns -- whether it's peace in the Middle East or rising interest rates or the happiness of Shiloh Nouvel Jolie-Pitt -- will amount to Humphrey Bogart's proverbial hill of beans. Ebell would say that's my alarmist side getting the better of me. I can live with that.

Wired's Tony Long, whose column is 'The Luddite', waxes on the dangers of believing the argument over global warming is a balance of we say/they say.