Happily the world is taking another look at "global warming." It's regrettable that it took an economic meltdown for this to happen. The Oct. 24 Appeal-Democrat editorial, "Putting heat on faltering economy," lays it out very well. The global hysteria was accelerated greatly by Al Gore's film "An Inconvenient Truth," which he promoted worldwide and even received the Nobel Peace Prize.

Global temperatures are easily measured and as Gore points out, have risen in recent years but it's all due to CO2 Solar radiation changes have nothing to do with it CO2 is .04 percent of the atmosphere. It would have to increase 25 times to be 1 percent. A very informative British film, "The Great Global Warming Swindle," very methodically plucks Gore's theory feather by feather and lays it bare. It traces historic temperature patterns and solar storm activity and shows a direct correlation between them for centuries. It also traces periods of increased human activity and shows there is no correlation to earth's temperatures.

I'm sorry about the plight of the polar bears, but until we can control the solar system they're going to have to tough it out; getting rid of SUVs isn't going to help. It's good to see that the global warming ardor is cooling before the CO2 "fix" drives more business out of California. Our current fragile economy can ill afford more irrational behavior.

Dean Munson
Yuba City