When did global warming turn into a forced reli gion?

My daughter came home from school re cently with a spring in her step and a song on her lips. With no foreshadowing — or time to call an exorcist — out came this chilling refrain:

” . . . You can hear the warning — GLOBAL WARMING . . . ”

By the time her father and I removed our jaws from the floor, we had learned that:

A) All the kids had been coerced into singing this catchy ditty, which we called “The Warming Song,” at a concert for parents.

B) Further song lyrics scolded selfish adults (that would be us) for polluting our planet and causing a warming scourge that would, in no short order, kill all the polar bears and threaten the birds and bees.

C) There was no deprogramming session on the menu. And no arguing allowed.

The international “Climategate” scandal is now moving into its third week. And reaction from folks on the scientific and political left — or is that redundant? — who treat global warming as a cult in which naysayers must be crushed has been depressing:

Total denial.

The scandal began when someone hacked into the server at the Climate Research Unit at the University of East Anglia, England, and uncovered a cache of messages between leading warming gurus. These e-mails revealed guys deeply frustrated by planetary temperatures that, stubbornly, had refused to rise in some time. Were they afraid of losing their scientific juice? Or their funding?

So, as the e-mails prove, the scientists did something about it. They cooked the books to exaggerate global warming.

Of course! How can you scare the bejeezus out of little kids and small animals if you can’t make the mercury move a millimeter? Simple. You lie.

But while one rival scientist predicted the shocking revelations would blast a “mushroom cloud” over theories of climate change, that has not come to pass.

The Obama administration’s “climate adviser,” Carol Browner, totally ignored the smoking e-mails, and attributed the scandal to “a very small group of people who continue to say this isn’t a real problem, that we don’t need to do anything.”

“What am I going to do?” asked Browner. “Side with the couple of naysayers out there, or the 2,500 scientists?” — who’ve drunk the Kool-Aid. “I’m sticking with the 2,500 scientists.”

No less an authority than The New York Times sought to explain away the most damning e-mail, sent by scientist Phil Jones, who said he employed a “trick” to make temps appear higher than they were.

The paper quoted Dr. Michael Mann of Pennsylvania State University as saying he often used the word “trick” to refer to a good way to solve a problem. “And not something secret.”

Is anyone home?

Our children are on the front lines of the warming hysteria, a place where “experts” from Al Gore to the president leave no room for dissent or even the slightest skepticism, despite claims that are no more provable than the Earth is flat.

Children were the targets of a book co-written by the producer of Al Gore’s star-making vehicle, “An Inconvenient Truth” — a fantastical view of global warming that should have been called a fiction, not a documentary.

Producer Laurie David told Publisher’s Weekly that she wrote the kids’ book, “Down-to-Earth Guide to Global Warming,” because “kids also are the Number 1 influence on their parents, so if you want to reach the parents, go to the kids.” She knows of which she speaks.

It may come to pass that global warming is real. Or not.

But your children won’t get the truth from Al Gore, the president or the scientific community. Or sadly, from school.

Neither will you.

‘Net’ result sure beats a nut revolt

After years of legal combat that rivals the days of the Roman forum, the state’s highest court has given a hearty go-ahead to the Nets basketball arena in Brooklyn. Finally! Sanity reigns in a borough where people will protest sunny days and rainbows if given the chance.

The Court of Appeals says the small knot of resisters who’ve refused to sell their properties to developer Bruce Ratner — at handsome profits, I might add — can be displaced by eminent domain.

This is good news to the many New Yorkers who will win jobs and affordable homes, and bad news only to the selfish handful who’d refused to let their neighbors get a shot at prosperity.

Smack in the middle of some of the richest real estate in the city sits Atlantic Yards, a spot so blighted, it’s an outrage nothing has been built there in 40 years. Now, there’s a chance.

Even better, big entertainment dollars will be sucked back into New York from New Jersey, where the Nets currently play. It’s a win-win situation.

Bring it on!

SWEEP THIS HUMAN TRASH OFF THE STREETS

This holiday miracle comes with a steep price that no child should have to pay.

Beautiful, 15-year-old Vada Vasquez is recovering nicely from a bullet that tore through her brain — the latest victim of streets run by thugs with no supervision, armed with illegal guns that are more plentiful than textbooks.

Vada is awake and has been moved from a Bronx hospital to a rehab center. Yet the stray bullet fired, allegedly, by 16-year-old Carvett Gentles tore through a portion of her brain that affects speech. Her recovery will be arduous. Fortunately, she is young.

This holiday season, and all year long, police must enforce gun laws. But that’s just a start.

Controversial stop-and-frisk practices work. Use them. And if children like Gentles are not in school — and his relatives admitted the boy was a no-show — it is the duty of cops, truant officers and, especially, the parents to demand they get where they belong.

That’s in a classroom. Or a reform school. Or a military school. Get these budding monsters off the streets.

This can’t go on.

Mike’s vote buy a bit filthy-rich

stood on a street corner and handed a few bucks to every man and woman who voted for him, he still would have been re-elected. But we’d be a little better off.

Instead, he squandered a shameful $102 million from his own wallet to narrowly eke out a third term. That doesn’t even include the bonuses to staffers, which typically run 100 grand apiece.

Imagine if you had a fraction of that money to pay your ever-rising taxes. You might not feel as if Bloomberg got away with the swindle of the century.

