Hey, Bill, why not make the case that Global Warming is a crock of bull? Because you can’t. You’re not a scientist. But you are totally more smarter than that: you’re a government-hating Libertarian. Well, that settles it.

And it’s your turn, your time to blow it all out of the water. So you’ll post a gawdawful boring, long-ass children’s story about the polar bears who are tired of hearing lies and being harassed by a government that now oppresses them. Ooh, edgy.

The White Ones know and can prove that Global Warming’s a mountain of hooey. Why, how? I just told you, they’re polar bears, duh. And they say that the worst winter ever is coming. And, look, it’s happening! Brrrr–see? Well, that should do it. Freedom, anyone?

It’s a familiar Libertarian gambit: indictment by epic fairy tale. Just buy their crock of bull, and ours will make no sense.

G.P. Bear Goes to Washington: The True Story of a Freedom-Loving Carnivore
by Bill Steigerwald

“…because of global climate change, polar bears are suffering population losses and may soon become extinct. Rising temperatures are melting the sea ice earlier and earlier each summer, leaving the bears less time to hunt for their primary food – ringed seals. If we don’t reduce our burning of fossil fuels soon, scientists say the only place our children will be able to see these magnificent creatures will be in a zoo or in a Walt Disney movie. For CNN, I’m Anderson Cooper.”

“Extinct!?” Grandpa roared, slapping the arms of his leather chair with his huge paws. “Melting sea ice!? Shrinking bear populations? Who writes this junk science, Al Gore?”

“Don’t get upset, Dad,” said Mother, looking up from her latest copy of Reason magazine. “It’s CNN. What do you expect? Fairness? Balance?”

“What were they saying about polar bears dying, Grandpa?” asked Junior, looking worried as he came in from the kitchen with a bottle of Coke.

“Nothing, Junior. Nothing,” Grandpa grumbled. “Just a lot of make-believe.”

After dinner, Grandpa read Junior a bedtime story. As Grandpa was about to turn off the nightlight, Junior asked, “Grandpa, why do you yell at the TV? The people in it can’t hear you.”

“I know,” Grandpa said with a smile. “They live far away in New York and Washington. That’s why they don’t know anything about polar bears or the Arctic.”

Junior looked anxiously at Grandpa. “Mother said your heart will get attacked if you keep yelling at the news.”

“Don’t you worry,” Grandpa chuckled. “I just get mad when humans make us look like sissies who can’t handle a little change in the weather. We’re polar bears, for Pete’s sake. We’re not helpless victims. We don’t need the government, Keith Olbermann, Greenpeace, Leonardo DiCaprio or anyone else to protect us from Mother Nature.”

Tell that to the Brontosaurus Libertarians. Hmm, already the Arctic wisdom has run into a ditch: 99.9% of all the species that ever existed got murdered by that bitch, Mother Nature, regardless of their ideology. And extinction rates are now way up, thanks to Modern Forces You May Be Aware Of.

Fast forward:

Grandpa and Mother raced to Junior’s bedside. Junior was crying in his sleep. “Help me, Grandpa,” he pleaded mournfully. “I’m too young to melt.”

“Junior, wake up,” Grandpa said, shaking him. “You’re dreaming.”

Junior’s eyes popped open. “Grandpa! Mother! The ice was all gone! We were stuck on a tiny iceberg. The ocean was boiling!”

“It was just a silly nightmare, Junior,” soothed Mother. “The ice isn’t melting. See?” she said, patting the rock-hard wall of their cave.

Grandpa was fuming. He gritted his big teeth and looked Junior straight in his teary eyes.

“Boy,” he said firmly, “I’m going to tell you something I want you to remember for the rest of your life. We are polar bears. We are the largest land carnivores on Earth. We are the species ursus maritimus – ‘bears of the sea.’ We can swim 200 miles. We can walk 100 miles a day.

“We learned how to live on this frozen wasteland at the top of the world thousands of years before humans discovered fire. There are 25,000 of us alive today – twice as many as 50 years ago. We are not going to become extinct – no matter what Principal Hansen and her computers say. Now go to sleep – and no more silly nightmares.”

I imagine the Mammoth was a pretty rugged beast, too. And the Saber-Toothed Tiger. How many millions and millions of Buffalo used to roam the American plains 150 years ago? I tell you what, if polar bears aren’t any more intelligent than this, Bill Steigerwald’s gonna look bad.

…Senator Boxer added, her voice cracking with emotion. “Our irresponsible burning of oil, coal and gas is melting the Arctic paradise of the polar bear. Without our help they will starve and soon become extinct. When our bill becomes law, however, the polar bear will be protected forever from man-made global warming by the Endangered Species Act.”

Grandpa stood up. “Listen up, all of you,” he yelled. Everyone quickly gathered around the wise and widely respected old bear…

“An army of nature scientists, government bureaucrats and pushy celebrities will invade our land. They’re all part of what I call ‘The Axis of Environmentalism,’ ” Grandpa explained.

“They will say they are coming to protect us from global warming and to do us good. But what they will really do is slowly take away our freedoms and take over our lives. They’ll force us to change how we live, what we eat and where we can travel. It’ll be just like we’re being kept in a federal zoo.”…

“Who will tell those humans in Washington we don’t need their help?” someone asked. “And don’t want it, either,” added someone else.

The 100 polar bears had forgotten all about the football game. An uneasy silence fell over the bar. Then Grandpa spoke. “I’ll do it,” he said in a quiet but confident voice. “I’ll explain how tomorrow night at the town meeting.”

Are you still with Bill, here? Yeah, wow.

So Grandpa decides to go to Washington to tell everybody they’re idiots. How? By riding an iceberg. “Icebergs make it as far south as New York City all the time,” Grandpa replied, stabbing the map with his pointer. Oookay.

For the next two months, Grandpa’s magical iceberg traveled faster than any had ever traveled before or since. Exactly as Grandpa planned, it sped south and met up with the swift Labrador Current, which swung it around the Island of Newfoundland, through the treacherous Grand Banks and down into the North Atlantic.

As Grandpa predicted, it was the coldest, most ferocious winter in North America in 1,000 years. By Thanksgiving the entire East Coast was locked in a brutal cold spell. For the first time since 1776, the Potomac River and Chesapeake Bay were frozen solid.

…hmmm. The worst in “1,000 years”? Freaky. How perfectly predictably unpredictable, for polar bears.

The weather in Washington was perfect for polar bears. A vicious Arctic air mass had been parked over the city for weeks, pounding it with a series of blizzards that closed most government offices. Not even Al Roker could explain its mysterious origins.

Twenty-four hours later, as the three polar bears walked up the middle of the frozen Potomac River, they saw the Washington Monument shining in the distance. Grandpa smiled. “We’ve made it, kids. Now comes the hard part – getting the politicians in this town to do the right thing.”

“Mysterious”? Yeah, I don’t get it either.

Fine, the Global Warming crap’s still in vogue with scientists because nothing really bizarre has occurred to challenge it. Absent reading this polar bear story, it’s still the normal state of things. Yeah, what a bunch of outrageous bullshit.

Otherwise, just think if a meteor had struck D.C. while “Grandpa” was around, it would have proven that rain is made from fiery stone. Oops, reload: just think if Bill Steigerwald had written a story where a meteor struck D.C. while “Grandpa” was around, it would have proven that rain is made from fiery stone. Better.

“These should fit,” Mother said, handing Grandpa a dark herringbone three-button wool suit, matching vest and wide-striped tie like the one she had seen Jimmy Stewart wearing in the movie “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington.” “Your eyeglasses are in the breast pocket.”

“And here’s your costume, Junior,” Mother said, giving him a pair of home-made blue jeans and a Chicago Cubs T-shirt to go with his backpack and Cubs baseball cap. “And your glasses. Don’t ever take them off when we’re in the presence of humans.”

After Mother put on her black skirt, blouse and seashell pink blazer, she pulled out her pair of gray Kawasaki 704 eyeglasses and put them on. Except for her black nose, she looked eerily like Sarah Palin…

They walked across the frozen Tidal Basin to the Washington Monument, where Grandpa hoped to take an elevator ride to the top. But it was closed because of the horrible weather, so instead they visited the National World War II Memorial and the Vietnam Veterans Memorial.

As they strolled past the brightly lit White House, two wary policemen in a patrol car slowed down to look them over.

“Wave, Mother,” Grandpa said under his breath as the policeman driving the car shined a spotlight on them. “Wave, Junior.”

The policeman hesitated. He squinted his eyes. Something seemed very, very fishy. He unlocked the shotgun attached to the dashboard of his patrol car.

The End! Yes! That’s the end!