Fred Thompson on climate change

CBS News : Katie Couric Asks The Candidates In “Primary Questions:" Is The Global Warming Threat Overblown?

Thompson: There are a lot of unanswered questions. We don’t know to the extent this is a cyclical thing. This may or may not effect very much. The extremists, I think, are the ones who want to do drastic things to our economy before we have more answers as to how much good we can do, and whether or not people in the other parts of the world are going to contribute. It’s the fact that our entitlements are bankrupting the next generation. We’re spending the money of those yet to be born and we can’t continue that way.

Couric: You think that the state of entitlements is a more serious problem than global warming?

Thompson: It’s a more obvious problem. I mean, ultimately global warming may be a greater problem. I don’t think we know the answer to that. I can’t give you a list of specific items I would address. I think research and development has got to be at the top of that list.

National Review : Some people think that our planet is suffering from a fever. Now scientists are telling us that Mars is experiencing its own planetary warming: Martian warming. It seems scientists have noticed recently that quite a few planets in our solar system seem to be heating up a bit, including Pluto.

NASA says the Martian South Pole’s “ice cap” has been shrinking for three summers in a row. Maybe Mars got its fever from earth. If so, I guess Jupiter’s caught the same cold, because it’s warming up too, like Pluto.

This has led some people, not necessarily scientists, to wonder if Mars and Jupiter, non signatories to the Kyoto Treaty, are actually inhabited by alien SUV-driving industrialists who run their air-conditioning at 60 degrees and refuse to recycle.

Silly, I know, but I wonder what all those planets, dwarf planets and moons in our SOLAR system have in common. Hmmmm. SOLAR system. Hmmmm. Solar? I wonder. Nah, I guess we shouldn’t even be talking about this. The science is absolutely decided. There’s a consensus.

Ask Galileo.