The reality of climate change has prompted even longtime greenies to reconsider their opposition to nukes. It’s a clean and incredibly muscular form of power that has a remarkable safety record. We have more than 60 such plants in this country and about the same number exist in France and Japan.

How many significant accidents have there been in the history of nuclear power? I can only think of two. Know of any others? What will it take to convince the nuke-phobes that this is a safe and non-polluting industry?

Get a load of someone named Dan Hearst, president of the Committee to Bridge the Gap, a California-based anti-nuclear watchdog group, who, according to the Chronicle, said using the environment as an argument for nuclear power is simply “shameful.”

These are people who have been on the dark side on everything and are now callously trying to drown us in radioactive waste.

You’re right, Dan. The waste is a downside, but it’s the only one I can see. Besides, they say modern nukes produce only about 20% of the waste older reactors like Three Mile Island do. Try drowning in that.

I have one question for Al Gore: If I move to California and get my electricity from a spanking new nuke plant, am I purchasing one of those carbon offsets that allows me to live in a house like yours guilt-free? If so, count me in for a walk on the dark side.

P.S. Wonder if Dan is related to the famous energy consuming family that owns The Chronicle.

He also notes that the NYT and Gore’s hometown newspaper have started to quote reputable scientists who question some of the more extreme and alarmist scenarios in Gore’s Academy Award winning film, An Inconventient Truth, as well as some of the those dubious “carbon offsets” he uses to rationalize his exorbitant energy use.

And poorer continents like Africa and Asia are disproportionately affected. Who knows what’ll happen? But the “poor-get-screwed” scenario certainly fits the meme of the PC set. Too bad none of us will be around to see if it actually happens.

P.S. For an alternate view, click here.

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A conservative group that doubts the severity of the climate change issue has accused Academy Award winner Al Gore of being a hypocrite.

“How could that possibly be?” ask the global warming guru’s admirers. Simple: Gore suggests you and I change the way we live in order to save the planet, but he maintains two large residences, is ferried around in a limo and travels on corporate jets. Typical of the sanctimonious, eh — everyone else has to make sacrifices except those who demand it of others.

But wait, it gets better. A Gore spokesman says that while her boss’s 10,000-square-foot Nashville house uses 15 times the electricity of the average home, we shouldn’t worry our pretty little heads over it.

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My favorite political satirist reports sales of Global Warming shovels are booming in Oswego County in the wake of the bitter cold and 100-inch snowfalls that have slammed the eastern shores of Lake Ontario.

There is no question that the earth is getting warmer and that man is at least partly responsible for it. The question is how much?

One of the amusing aspects of the debate is that global warming alarmists have structured it in such a way as to give themselves maximum latitude.

They tell us that one of the characteristics of global warming is that not only will the earth get toastier, but there will be more incidents of extreme weather (hot and cold).

So if we get periods of bitter cold and record snowfalls, they can say, “Well, that’s global warming, too.” Brilliant.

Believe it or not, there are reputable climatologists and meteorologists (such as MIT Prof. Richard Lindzen) who swear up-and-down that the overall warming trend we are seeing is within historical norms.

Of course, Lindzen has been labeled a corporate shill and a lackey of the fossil fuel industry — typical name calling by people who would rather not debate him on the issues.

Coming next to a theatre near you: “The Criminalization of Global Warming Skepticism.”

Robert Kennedy Jr. just wrote another piece in the HuffingtonPost citing as evidence of global warming (among other things) “robins and bluebirds in upstate New York” and a friend of his who had just picked some asparagus. Is this supposed to convince skeptics that man is indeed the primary cause of climate change?

Gee, Bob, what about the ice storms to our south and the devastating freezes in southern California? What exactly are we to make of those?

There is no doubt that the earth is becoming warmer. The question is how much man is contributing to it. Listening to clowns like Kennedy talk about science is no better than reading Bill O’Reilly to learn about history. Junk food for the brain …

P.S. There is a terrific and thought provoking series of columns this week in OpinionJournal.com about education by Charles Murray. He writes with more clarity on the subject than anyone I have read. Click here, here and here to read the columns.

I’m not a big fan of the ex-VP, but if the Dems really want to win back the White House in 2008, Gore is the only person on the planet who can truthfully say he has run against George W. Bush and received the most votes. This is to say nothing of having won two other races on a national ticket.

Of course, Bush will not be running again (thankfully), but many Dems realize they would do well to nominate a battle-tested, seasoned candidate who can stand toe-to-toe with McCain or Rudy (or the Mittster).

Within days of announcing, he could raise truckloads of money, tout his electability (watch out, Hillary!) and his experience in foreign affairs (watch out Obama!). And he could run as the I-told-you-so candidate (climate change and Iraq war)

Of course, he does risk becoming another Harold Stassen. But isn’t that a risk worth taking if you want to be president?

School boards in Enfield and elsewhere occasionally decide to hold graduation ceremonies in churches not because they want to turn us all into Bible-toting zombies, but rather because they don’t have the facilities to accommodate the hundreds (sometimes thousands) who show up for these events.

And a modest rental donation to the church is a heckuva lot cheaper than spending tens of thousands of taxpayer dollars to rent the Springfield Civic Center, for example. Sam Brooke, the ACLU lawyer who wrote the letter to the school board, flatly labeled the practice “unconstitutional.”

Brooke said the establishment clause - “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof” - prohibits government entities, including public schools, from taking any action that a reasonable observer would interpret as endorsing a particular religion or endorsing the practice of religion generally.

I guess Brooke thinks he is reasonable. Do you think it’s reasonable to conclude that the school board is trying to “establish” a state religion by holding the ceremony in a church for the sake of convenience? I am an agnostic and take a back seat to no one in my opposition to theocracies, but the phrase “separation of church and state” is nowhere in the Constitution.

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My colleague Tom Shachtman wrote a very interesting piece on the op-ed page of last week’s Lakeville Journal. In case you missed it, Tom took a look back at a 1967 essay by a UCLA historian arguing the roots of much of the earth’s environmental problems were the result “the Judeo-Christian tradition that gave man permission to dominate the earth and all the creatures in it.” The historian’s theory was that man’s hegemonical tendencies had their roots in Genesis 1:28. That would be the same verse in which man is given “dominion over the earth.”

I can already hear my conservative friends shaking their heads in disbelief at such heresy (is it possible to hear heads shaking?). Not to worry. Tom is nothing if not fair. He uses the professor’s thesis as a springboard to examine a growing trend among conservative Christian leaders to take “up the cudgels of environmental issues,” such as global climate change, because they see a moral imperative to do so. And they see a responsibility for preservation in man’s “dominion over the earth.” A sort of Christian take on environmental stewardship.

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