Gov. Deval Patrick hiked the cost of heating and cooling our homes by about $100 million to fight "global warming." The reason our likely next president, Barack Obama, supports $5/gallon gasoline is "global warming," too. Joe Biden opposes "clean coal" technology for the same reason, and Al Gore is encouraging young people to break the law attacking coal plants to save the planet.

But what happens if we spend these billions of dollars and cripple our economy fighting "warming," and it turns out the Earth is actually getting cooler?

On the same day Gore spoke, scientists involved in NASA's Ulysses project reported that the intensity of the sun's solar wind was at its lowest point since the beginning of the space age — one more indication that the sun, the biggest source of energy affecting the Earth, is getting quiet.

The weaker solar wind appears to be due to changes in the sun's magnetic field, but the cause is unknown. Sunspots, which normally fluctuate in 11-year cycles, are at a virtual standstill. In August, the sun created no visible spots. The last time that happened: June 1913.

The results of the Ulysses spacecraft's mission, according to Jet Propulsion Laboratory project scientist Ed Smith, show that "we are in a period of minimal activity that has stretched on longer than anyone anticipated."

The consequences for Earth are enormous. The lack of increased activity could signal the start of what is known as a Maunder Minimum, an event that occurs every couple of centuries and can last as long as a century. It leads to extended periods of severe cooling such as what happened during the Little Ice Age.

It may already be happening. The four major agencies tracking Earth's temperature, including NASA's Goddard Institute, report that the Earth cooled 0.7 degree Celsius in 2007, the fastest decline in the age of instrumentation, putting us back to where the Earth was in 1930.

What kind of idiots want to put a long-term, multi-trillion dollar program in place to cool a planet that might be headed for a new Ice Age?

For the answer to that question, see the list of names above.