In fact, now the theme – even from the global warming camp is … (drum roll, please) we could have up to three decades of cooling. Michael Reilly, of Discovery News, summed it up well: “Earth's climate continues to confound scientists.” He quoted a new study by Kyle Swanson of the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, saying “global warming may have hit a speed bump and could go into hiding for decades.”

Just as the global warming reality is cooling, the opposition is heating up. This week marked the second annual “International Conference on Climate Change” in New York, sponsored by The Heartland Institute. It brought together hundreds of climate skeptics from around the world and was headlined by European Union President Vaclav Klaus.

Klaus got to the heart of the matter during his opening night address. The climate debate isn’t just about temperature, he told the gathering of scientists and public policy experts. He said “environmentalists want to change us and our behavior” because “their mission is control.”

They are working hard to take that control. Forget the laughably inept Kyoto treaty. Environmentalists and politicians are working to give birth to its bastard child of a successor in Copenhagen this December. The midwives are already prepping for the birth of this Frankenstein baby in the run up to the G-20 conference in April.

Advocates want the meeting of some of the world’s powerhouses to focus not just on economics but on going green. That way they can show they have all the major nations working together.

That’s not the only push for quick action. Denmark's minister for climate and energy, Connie Hedegaard, is urging Obama to ram through global warming laws prior to Copenhagen and Obama looks like he is doing as instructed. His cap-and-trade proposal is already on deck despite criticism that it will cost an already damaged economy an average of $2,180 a year. Even Obamaphile Warren Buffett says such a tax is “pretty regressive,” which means ordinary people will pay through the nose for it and elitists will fly around and tell us how to live.

With Democratic control of Congress virtually a lock, cap-and-trade could fly through faster than lies from the mouth of a politician. Just in time, perhaps, to encounter a problem that may well be going the opposite direction for 30 years.