Smart bombs: The heat is on

Peabody Energy, the world’s largest producer of coal, is running ads with this dreamy scenario: “Imagine a world where our country runs on energy from Middle America instead of the Middle East.”

As Paris Hilton might say, “That’s hot.”

And that’s the problem, though you wouldn’t know it from the number of politicians from both parties promoting bills that would convert coal to automobile fuel. As the New York Times reported, vehicles burning liquid coal would emit twice the carbon dioxide as diesel. Plus, the liquification process produces hefty quantities of greenhouse gases.

The Democrats who are backing this effort look particularly hypocritical since they’re also crafting legislation that would impose stricter limits on emissions from coal-fired power plants.

But never underestimate the power of special interests and the tug of home-state politics to produce perverse results. After all, this is a nation that has handed out subsidies to tobacco growers while suing tobacco companies and slapping high taxes on cigarettes.

The greenback effect. While Congress considers billions in loans, grants and subsidies to get coal-to-gas technology off the ground, world leaders, including President Bush, agreed to a resolution at the G-8 summit in Germany that asks nations to “seriously consider” a goal of cutting greenhouse gas emissions in half by 2050.

It’s hard to take any of this seriously.

Drawing dumb conclusions. Memo to cartoonists: It’s time you learned the difference between weather and climate. Weather is what’s happening now. Go outside. That’s the weather. Climate is the weather over a long period of time. If Seattle has a sunny day, that doesn’t mean it has a dry climate.

Got it? OK, let’s move on. Global warming is about climate change. So stop drawing those cartoons where a guy in a snowdrift says, “I don’t know how much of this global warming I can take.” You just look stupid.

Thanks.

Men of conviction. Now that Lewis “Scooter” Libby, former chief of staff to Vice President Dick Cheney, has been sentenced for lying to the special prosecutor in the CIA/Valerie Plame case, perhaps he can apply for the Fox News Rewards Program.

Commit a crime, get convicted and then take a job as a TV commentator to rant about the disappearance of moral values, personal responsibility and the rule of law in today’s society.

Hey, it worked for Oliver North and G. Gordon Liddy.

Barring that, Libby could go to work for the next GOP administration, following the precedent set when President Bush hired Elliott Abrams and John Poindexter after their Iran-Contra convictions.