For years, supporters of global warming alarmism have repeated an odd refrain: Even if we're wrong, we're right.

Sen. Timothy E. Wirth, D-Colo., said it in 1988, as the National Journal reported. "What we've got to do in energy conservation is (to) try to ride the global warming issue. Even if the theory of global warming is wrong, to have approached global warming as if it is real means energy conservation, so we will be doing the right thing anyway in terms of economic policy and environmental policy."

I regularly receive e-mails with similar arguments. Or, as one reader put it: "If global warming is not real, and we spend money trying to fight it, what harm will come of our mistake? Cleaner air? If global warming is real, and we do nothing, what harm will come of our laxity? On which side should we err?"

Savor, if you will, the lack of science in that argument. The global warming contingent loves to don the Mantle of Science as the reason to curb greenhouse gas emissions. But its backup argument is: It's OK if we're wrong, because we mean well.

What will come of the mistake of changing policies because of global warming alarmism?

The very question presupposes that the sacrifices that Americans will have to make are small.

Viewers of Al Gore's flick "An Inconvenient Truth" were warned of the dire changes on this planet and then were referred to a Website that tells people to buy compact fluorescent light bulbs, properly inflate their tires, drive less and turn off electronic devices when not in use. As if those changes would stop the predicted catastrophe.

Some of the most well-known global warming promoters are big-time energy guzzlers. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, who signed landmark state global-warming legislation, has his Hummers and leases a private jet. A conservative think-tank, the Tennessee Center for Policy Research, reported that, despite their signature issue, the Gores burned 221,000 kilowatt hours last year, or 20 times the national average, in one of their three homes.

To global warming glitterati, the noble approach to the issue is to push for treaties, laws and regulations that make other people and other industries do the heavy lifting on energy conservation.

Last month, a United Nations conference in Vienna approved a nonbinding agreement directing industrialized nations to cut their emissions by 25 percent to 40 percent of 1990 levels by 2020. Continued...