Premier Gordon Campbell plans to tax and spend $1.8 billion, and Stephane Dion $15 billion, over the next three to four years to reduce global warming. Yet they both seem to have neglected a couple of key questions: has the Earth been warming and if it has, is it the result of rising man-made carbon dioxide (CO2) levels

Although global warming alarmists attack those who dare question climate change dogma, an analysis of the facts shows global temperatures have cooled since 2002 while global CO2 levels have continued to rise. Maybe, just maybe, human activity has little, if anything at all, to do with changing global temperatures. Is so-called global warming the latest Y2K scare People need to demand answers before billions - if not trillions - of tax dollars are wasted to "do something" about "something" we can do little about.

The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is the oft-referenced source for information in support of the global warming cause. The IPCC's Fourth Assessment Report published in 2007 states "continued greenhouse gas emissions at or above current rates will cause further warming." In fact, IPCC models forecast continuous global warming this decade of about 0.3 degrees celsius. The IPCC report doesn't mention the possibility of a cooling period this decade and no global warming alarmist ever claimed global warming would take a break.

How unusual then, that the two global temperature data sets used by the IPCC - one from NASA and the other from the UK government - all show a cooling trend since 2002.

No problem. This cooling period must just be because of a natural fluctuation in temperatures, right Not according to the IPCC.

The IPCC claims; "if greenhouse gas concentrations could be reduced, global temperatures would begin to decrease within a decade."

Well, if temperatures started falling in 2002, that must mean, using IPCC logic, global CO2 levels must have started falling in 1992, a decade before. Well, they didn't. Global CO2 levels went up. According to the Energy Information Administration, the source of official energy statistics for the US government, CO2 emissions worldwide increased by 15.5% between 1992 and 2002. Global CO2 levels went up after that as well, by another 15% between 2002-2005 (the last year for which data is available).

Rajendra Pachauri, head of the IPCC, had to admit that no warming has occurred so far in the 21st Century.

The climate changes, always has, always will. Should we be surprised then, that the billions spent to-date to "do something" about global warming by trying to control the level of man-made CO2 have been ineffective Remember how the past federal Liberal government spent $6 billion on global warming measures while CO2 levels rose by 33% Governments in Europe have engaged in a garden variety of greenhouse gas reduction measures since 1991 and CO2 levels have gone up there by 5%.

Cooling global temperatures so far this century, all while CO2 levels have continued to rise, just may mean man-made CO2 has little, if anything at all to do with changing world temperatures. Spending billions to reduce global warming will not make the environment cleaner. CO2 is a colourless, odorless gas necessary to all human life; it is not a pollutant. Like Y2K, this crisis needs an end date. It's time for governments to come clean on the environment and jump off the global warming bandwagon.