A political earthquake has resulted from a feature story in the Economist magazine because the Economist used to be a consistent cheerleader for global warming activism. Doubts about global warming used to be censored by its London editors, one reporter confided to Stephen Hayward.

So what will voters do to Democrat candidates in 2014 and 2016 when the former realize that the Democratic Party was lying to them? Is it time to run away from the issue for Democrats, journalists, and Hollywood personalities?

While our economy is struggling and our nation in debt, Democrats squandered tens of billions on a climate change hoax. How many voters are unemployed due to climate change polices? Unnecessary regulations are strangling people's jobs and their lives. And then one must wonder: what else were Democrats unbelievably wrong about?

Can Democrats hide by claiming that climate change hysteria was an innocent mistake? It was never a credible story. Democrats, journalists, and liberal commentators went way out on a limb. Like the collapse of ENRON or Bernie Maddoff's Ponzi schemes, political fortunes have been built on the shifting sand of bad science. Japan's Society of Energy and Resources in February 2009 declared the myth of man-made global warming to be like "ancient astrology."

Liberals always knew, as reported in TIME in 1969, that it was even warmer during the period of Viking exploration than today, in the Medieval Warming Period. Greenland was actually green when Vikings landed and averaged about 2 degrees Fahrenheit warmer in 1200 AD than today. In Greenland, human villages are being uncovered from under the ice when glaciers melt. The Climateers have to erase this time from history, when it was hotter than today only 700 to 1,000 years ago.

Liberals knew that warming temperatures were also measured on the planets Mars and Pluto, and the planet-like moon of Neptune called Triton. There was increased storm activity consistent with warmer temperatures on Jupiter and Saturn. The Martian ice caps were shrinking year over year. So how would voting for Democrats protect the entire solar system from a warming sun?

Melting polar ice was supposedly the proof of a warming climate. Yet even the alarmist BBC admits that polar ice is expanding: "Climate scientists have been intrigued by observations that Antarctic sea ice shows a small but statistically significant expansion of about 1.9% per decade since 1985, while sea ice in the Arctic has been shrinking over past decades." Ice has been growing at the South pole for more than a decade. A Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute study tries to argue that expanding polar ice results from the same ice melting and then re-freezing. Ye overall, the ice pack is expanding. So it's not the same water re-freezing.

So are forces other than humans at work? The volcanic eruption of Mount Pinotubo in the Pacific belched as much greenhouse gases into the atmosphere in a few weeks as 1,000 years of humans driving automobiles. Similarly, the production of methane gas -- a more powerful greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide (CO 2 ) -- from herds of wildebeest in Africa far exceeds the greenhouse gas emissions of the largest U.S. cities.

The only scientific data we ever had is this: over the geological history of the Earth, when temperature increased, 800 years later we see a rise in atmospheric CO 2 . Higher temperatures are not caused by carbon dioxide in the air. CO 2 cannot cause a warmer climate, because warming occurs 800 years on average before any increase in CO 2 levels. (It is suspected that CO 2 dissolved in the oceans escapes as the oceans grow warmer.)

Well, something caused warming. So it must be humans, right? The impeccable logic of the liberal environmental conspiracy theorist. The Earth is warmer than it used to be. So people must be to blame.

Did they consider the sun? Could that big yellow thing in the sky have anything to do with the Earth's temperature?

Earth's distance to the sun changes. The Earth goes through cycles of 23,000 years, 26,000 years, 41,000 years, and 96,000 years -- the Milankovich Cycles. The gravity of other planets gradually alters the shape of Earth's path around the sun. Sometimes our orbit is more egg-shaped and sometimes more round. The strength of sunlight hitting the Earth changes with the varying distance. The angle of the Earth's tilt in relation to the sun changes the Earth's temperature from a complex combination of factors.

A recent study now claims that the Earth is the warmest it has been in 4,000 years. So it was also this warm 4,000 years ago. Guys, you are not helping yourselves here. There was no industry 4,000 years ago. Are humans warming the Earth when it was hotter 4,000 years ago?

Natural forces change temperatures on Earth. The sun "wobbles" slightly under the influence of the planets. Dr. Theodor Landscheidt calls this "The Swinging Sun." All the objects in our solar system orbit the sun's center of gravity -- even the sun itself. In fact, this wobbling is how astronomers detect distant planets around other stars. This wobbling causes the 22-year sunspot cycles. (Every 11 years, the sun's magnetic poles reverse.)

Dr. Landscheidt revealed how the orbits of Jupiter and Saturn and other planets cause multiple overlapping cycles of roughly 22, 79, 178, 400, 1,000 years, etc. The sun is a ball of liquid "plasma." Very slight ripples or oscillations are caused as the sun swings with this orbital torque. The effect is vanishingly small for the sun overall. But varying sunlight can cause small temperature swings on Earth.

This wobbling also changes the sun's magnetic field. The amount of cosmic rays hitting the Earth from outside our solar system increases and decreases. Cosmic rays hitting the Earth act as seeds for cloud formation.*

Furthermore, the sun is hurtling through space -- very fast, in fact. Our solar system is orbiting the center of the Milky Way Galaxy. We fly through areas of space with more or less gas and dust. As the sun moves through different environments, the amount of gas and dust filtering sunlight changes.

It is a scientific fact that carbon dioxide gas will absorb heat. So -- the simplistic mind presumes -- CO 2 in the open atmosphere must also trap heat on a planetary scale. But real scientists don't make those kinds of leaps of faith. Planetary weather is unimaginably complex. We cannot extrapolate from a sample of CO 2 gas in the laboratory the open atmosphere on a global scale.

Humanity crossed from superstition to the scientific era when Sir Francis Bacon publicized "The Scientific Method." This requires hard data from controlled experiments, which are independently repeated. But we now have "science by press release." Political activists calling themselves scientists offer raw opinion and speculation. And now Western civilization is in deep trouble. We are sinking back into superstition, in which elite priests tell us what to think.

As the embarrassment of climate change "science" grows, will there be calls and congressional hearings on the sorry state of science education in our nation's schools? How could so many people abandon "The Scientific Method" grounded on hard experimental data in favor of pure speculation? Are our schools teaching science, or myths?

* correction. Hat tip to reader Ttown 49 and Professor S. Fred Singer for poiunting out that cosmic rays do not impart energy.

