“Science is the belief in the ignorance of the experts” – Richard Feynman

Prior to this year’s Presidential Primaries, I had primarily ignored the continued existence of one Newt Gingrich. To the extent that my opinion matters in picking the next GOP Presidential candidate, my ignoring him worked to his benefit. When he announced his run, I learned some fulsome and scurvy truths. One aspect of his record that particularly made me want to give him a good going over with the wire brush was his chumminess with Environmental Activists who considered their chosen cause of greater value to the commonweal than the continued growth and welfare of the US Economy. This lead me to initially call for “The Great Green Newt” to go extinct.

I wrote in haste last May. This was before Mitt Romney and Ron Paul actually began to gather serious momentum. Thus, I later welcomed him back into my personal subset of somewhat decent politicians. I was even willing to tolerate his dalliances with intellectual velleities pushed by power-hungry scientists and bureaucrats. Perhaps his recent axing of his favored advisor on climate science, Dr. Katherine Hayhoe of Texas Tech University, is a sign that I was right to grant Newt absolution for his environmental flights of fancy.

Perhaps instead this is a sign of something even better. Perhaps this is a sign that we, the Conservative movement are truly winning. It was The American Right that led the fight against the bunko schemes of Al Gore, Nancy Pelosi, and pseudo-intellectual purveyors of fraud like James Hanson and Michael Mann. While Newt chummed with that Good Old Bean Senator Kerry, Senator Inhofe manned the barricades against carbon taxes, cap and trade and rationing. All of this would have sent American industry on the slow boat straight to China even faster than Barack Obama’s stimulus dollars facilitated the emigration of General Electric’s wind turbine plants from American Soil.

So how do I proclaim Conservative victory? That comfy chat on the couch with Nancy Pelosi has put The Great Green newt on the hot seat. Newt Gingrich now admits it was the dumbest thing he’s done in four years. He is now attempting to make his reputation as an environmentalist completely disappear.

This is probably not a sincere break with AGW by Newt. It takes more than a barrage of overwhelming evidence to make a smoker stop smoking, a crack-addict destroy the pipe, or a political junkie turn down untrammeled power. However, the case against Global Warming as an existential threat looks overwhelming. In case you wonder why I hold AGW-Rapturism against potential GOP Nominees, Steven Goddard offers up the knowledge below.

• Temperatures are below Hansen’s zero emissions after 2000 Scenario C
• Global temperatures are declining this century
• Sea level has been declining for several years, and is lower now than it was in 2003
• Arctic ice extent and area is the highest for the date since 2005
• Temperatures in western Greenland last year were the coldest since 1996
• Temperatures in Antarctica have been declining for 30 years
• Antarctic ice has been increasing for 30 years
(HT: Real-Science.com)

As the great Richard Feynman famously said, “Science is the belief in the ignorance of experts.” Any rapid increase in hot air over the North American Continent comes from the dissipating smug clouds that previously surrounded the self-congratulating, new-Malthusians pompously promulgating the IPCC’s latest fictions. But the good news is that now Newt Gingrich wants to run from these people like the lepers that they truly deserve to be.

When Newt’s new book about how Newt Gingrich and only Newt Gingrich can truly save America hits the local Barnes and Noble, the most interesting chapter to me will be the one he axed. This would be the chapter written by Dr. Katherine Hayhoe, who once famously asked “What would Jesus do on a warming planet?”

The part of me dedicated to religious faith would like to believe Jesus subtly offered us his answer to Dr. Hayhoe’s sacrilegious query. But I don’t think Jesus would waste time sweating the details. Dr. Hayhoe got abruptly cashiered because The GOP is overwhelmingly winning the debate on Anthropogenic Global Warming.

From Senator Inhofe, to Rush Limbaugh, to the outstanding Climate Depot blog all the way down the VRWC food chain to small-time minnows such as me; we are carrying the day and winning back our society one hard-fought block of real estate at a time. Candidate Gingrich has seen his career dissipation light flicker. We, the Conservative activist community, are turning The Great Green Newt into a chameleon.