SOUNDING OFF:

I’ve got a news flash for the residents of Seattle, Beijing, New Orleans, Las Vegas, Malibu, New England, the upper Midwest, Europe and much of the rest of the northern half of the planet.

That’s not near-historic record levels of ice and snow on your front yard. Oh no! According to Joe Bell, vaunted journalist and noted Chuck Cassity critic (“Odds and ends for the new year,” Jan. 1), it’s “selected facts.” That should make clean-up much easier. No sand, snow blowers or road graders are necessary. Just pretend it’s selective facts and it’s not really there.

Some, including Bell, may not know that more than 650 internationally known scientists, physicists and climatologists signed a statement into the 2008 Senate Minority Report, repudiating the theory of man-made global warming. They believe it’s a hoax, and they risked their livelihoods by saying so publicly. There’s many more who are reticent to state their true position on this issue. That’s because, as you’ve learned from Bell, to come out against global warming theory is the height of political incorrectness.

Maybe these scientists are wrong. Maybe they’re right. Consider both possibilities:

If Al Gore, Bell and a lot of others are correct, the state of California and the United States will spend trillions we don’t have to lower so-called greenhouse gas emissions, and we don’t know for sure as yet what they are, or if they are, in an effort to control/lessen global warming, or climate change, or whatever it may be called next when the weather — or lack of weather — renders the name du jour moot.

That’s while India, China and much of the rest of the planet spend nothing and continue to pollute at record levels. The net result: negligible positive effect, according to these scientists, while we go bankrupt and other nations’ economies soar.

If the aforementioned scientists are correct, however, and the politicians and climate pimps who stand to gain unprecedented power and unimagined profit can be thwarted in time, we’ll do what we can to cost-effectively mitigate unnecessary pollution without spending ourselves into oblivion in a failed effort to clean up our skies more than enough to make up for the majority of other countries’ pollution, which will become our skies by a week from Tuesday.

You see anything even remotely unreasonable in that synopsis, Bell? Any “selective facts” that cry out for an impassioned rebuttal? I await your return-of-service in this continuing ping-pong match.

In the meantime, I’m happy you liked my “cacophonous caterwauling” alliteration. You have my permission to use it whenever and wherever you wish. That’s just the kind of guy I am.

CHUCK CASSITY lives in Costa Mesa.