Pass the guilt, please

Get into a discussion on the web or elsewhere and it's not unusual for conservatives who warn of the ever-present threat of Islamic terrorism to be derided as fear-mongering cowards hiding under their beds, duped by Republicans using the issue to garner the security vote. Oddly, this same type of criticism doesn't apply to the greatest example of political fear-mongering ever known to man--climate change, an issue being framed around western excess and bolstered by media articles like this one:

Looking back to other periods in our planet's history when the climate was swinging about wildly, most notably during the last ice age, it appears that far more than the weather was affected. The solid earth also became restless, with an increase in volcanic activity, earthquakes, giant submarine landslides and tsunamis.

Talk about "vote or die", this article leaves the impression George Bush was not only responsible for Katrina (and the Minneapolis bridge collapse) but also the Asian tsunami and the next eruption of your nearby volcano. Here's the science:

Further evidence for a flurry of volcanic action at this time comes from cores extracted from deep within the Greenland ice sheet, which yield increased numbers of volcanic dust and sulphate layers from eruptions across the northern hemisphere, if not the entire planet.

It's like each story is trying to out-doomsday the previous one. Here, there's no mention that such layers tend to suggest global cooling--facts are really incidental. The goal seems more to create a collective feeling of guilt amongst the western electorate, a problem that can later be 'cured' by intellectually superior global progressives like Al Gore through veiled socialism.

All of which tends to chip away at the voluntary notion of the LiveEarth buzzphrase "are you ready to change the way you live?" with the goal of replacing it with "WE are ready to change the way you live". Hey, it's for the kids and all. And don't worry about those terrorists--they'll appreciate our efforts.