By Mark Landsbaum

At the polls this year voters have a rare opportunity to slow or even halt the runaway scaremongering campaign of global warming, a.k.a. climate change. Or as yours truly refers to it, hucksterism by profiteers intent on separating people from their money.

As I’ve written for nearly a quarter of a century, global warming never has been about the globe getting warmer. It’s always been about control and money. Warmists’ control and your money.

It’s not difficult to discern a candidate’s stance on the issue. The warmists in particular are loud about their positions. If you’ve already been persuaded that man is creating unprecedented, dangerous increases in earth’s temperature, you’ve been misled.

The real science is clear. Man is not dangerously raising the planet’s temperature. Doom is not just around the corner. Don’t believe me? Check out the in-depth studies here.

Voters shouldn’t be stampeded into costly fixes for what’s not broken. What we should be asking is, “Why would anyone want me to believe something that’s not true?”

There are trillions of reasons. They’re called dollars. (See above: what global warming always has been about.)

Common sense helps cut through the clatter. What on earth do alarmists even mean when excitedly squalling about earth’s temperature?

Well, they don’t mean local temperatures. They’re up and down all the time.

No, like politics, the climate that really matters is local. Global “averages” are meaningless. The “average” human being has ½ penis, ½ vagina, one testicle, and one female breast. Average is a statistical caricature. It’s not real. It doesn’t exist except on paper — or in computer models in the case of global warming’s “settled science.”

Voters should also ask why environmental alarmists promote endless fear of any change in nature. By their logic, any warmer change automatically is man’s fault. Doesn’t it then follow that any cooler change means we should celebrate whatever we did to bring that about? Don’t count on it. In the 1970s, when things actually got cooler, the same breed of opportunists screamed that a new ice age was near, and man was to blame.

What’s a man to do? If it’s hotter, it’s his fault. If it’s cooler, ditto. Either way, guess who will be forced to pay to fix it? Yep. Man.

The reality is that climate has continually changed since earth’s first sunrise. It will continue to change as long as the planet exists. Greenland once grew grapes. London’s River Thames used to freeze over. Change is the constant. Unchanging climate exists in the same place as “average global temperature” — in the imagination. That’s also the only place you’ll find the predicted horrifically high temperatures.

But as long as “change” is considered the problem, these exploiters of fear will reap perpetual paydays. Here is what actually is settled about global-warming alarmism: Nothing will stop the pretend “problem,” no matter how much you pay in taxes, regulatory costs, penalties, and interest.

You’ll always be told, no matter how much you’ve already paid, that you must pay more. And more again, ad infinitum. It’s the perfect marriage of faux science badly applied and criminal shakedowns that would make the mob envious.

Regarding change, climate physicist/meteorologist Richard Lindzen said, “We are scanning for small changes … we are talking about tenths of a degree … and viewing them as ominous signs of something.”

Such infinitesimal differences are doubly absurd when you realize temperatures alarmists tout aren’t even real. They shamelessly “adjust” already dubious raw data, pushing earlier readings down and later readings up — and, voila! The numbers fall in line with their talking points. Like magic. Or something.

Global warming alarmism began with apocalyptic predictions of dying polar bears, mass starvation, and metropolis-submerging tidal waves. Four decades have passed. No such events have occurred. Yet every 10 or 12 years we’re told we have only 10 or 12 years left before “it’s too late!”

But Gaia-worshiping alarmists continually harp on “change” as if it were an evergreen hymn. Change itself has become the thing to fear, particulars aside. Who needs particulars when they’ve got taxes, regulatory costs, penalties, and interest?

If a purported “increase” of a few hundredths of a degree over decades justifies the current shakedown of hundreds of billions of dollars worldwide, imagine how much in taxes, regulatory costs, penalties, and interest climate-change cashiers will ring up if things actually do get warmer — say, by a whole degree or two.

When you cast ballots this year, don’t be duped. Global warming, or its alias, climate change, is not about you making the globe warmer. It never has been. Its motives are as old as politics.

In addition to the site linked above, you can catch up on the facts about the global warming controversy at www.CornwallAlliance.org. Enjoy and be enlightened.

But in this campaign year, as always, be leery of global warming advocates who stand to gain taxes, regulatory costs, penalties, and interest if they persuade you.

Mark Landsbaum, retired investigative reporter (Los Angeles Times) and editorial columnist (Orange County Register) covering, among other things, climate change since the 1990s, is a contributing writer with The Cornwall Alliance for the Stewardship of Creation.