When the history of the global warming scare comes to be written, a chapter should be devoted to the way the message had to be altered to keep the show on the road.

Global warming became climate change so as to be able to take the blame for cold spells and wet seasons as well as hot days. Then, to keep its options open, the movement began to talk about "extreme weather."

Those who made their living from alarm  switched tactics  to jump on any unusual weather event -- whether it was a storm, a drought, a blizzard or a flood -- and blame it on man-made carbon dioxide emissions.

This proved a rewarding tactic, because people -- egged on by journalists -- have an inexhaustible appetite for believing in the vindictiveness of the weather gods. The fossil fuel industry was inserted in the place of Zeus as the scapegoat of choice, with scientists as the weather gods' priests.

The fact that people have short memories about weather events is what enables this game to be played. Even here in mild England, people are always saying, "I have never known it so cold/hot/mild/windy/wet/dry/changeable as it is this year."

One Christmas I noticed the seasons had been pretty average all year, neither too dry nor too wet nor too cold nor too warm. "I have never known it so average," I said to somebody. I got a baffled look. Nobody ever calls the weather normal.

Ann Coulter's famously calling Democrat presidential candidate John Edwards a "faggot" at the CPAC conference here in Washington earlier this month has scandalized a great many conservatives and every single Republican candidate.

It was brilliant.

That's a description, not approval.  I winced when I heard the forbidden word, not because it's forbidden but because it's so hurtful.  It's purposefully demeaning to homosexuals, especially to those who really can't help what they are.

Yet Ann's use of the term was diabolically clever, for with it she accomplished her goal:  demolishing Edwards' candidacy.  With this one single word, she made sure John Edwards will never be elected President of the United States.

She knew exactly what she was doing. 

In the US shale gas is old hat; it's the shale oil revolution that's proving a world changer, promising not just lower oil prices worldwide, but geopolitical ripples as America weans itself off oil imports and perhaps loses interest in the Middle East.

One of the pioneers of the shale gas revolution, Chris Wright, of Liberty Resources, was in Britain last month. It was he and his colleagues at Pinnacle Technologies who reinvented hydraulic fracturing in the late 1990s in a way that unlocked the vast petroleum resources in shale.

Within seven years the Barnett shale, in and around Forth Worth, Texas, was producing half as much gas as the whole of Britain consumes. And the Barnett proved to be a baby compared with other shales.

Like many shale entrepreneurs, Mr. Wright is now spending a lot of time in North Dakota drilling for oil. The success of America's shale gas revolution drove the gas price so low that in 2010 most drilling rigs switched to looking for oil. With spectacular results.

A new report (The Shale Oil Boom: a US Phenomenon) by Leonardo Maugeri of Harvard University, sets out just how astonishing this second shale revolution already is.

Wow.  That's my and everybody else's reaction to our first To The Point Rendezvous in Las Vegas last weekend (1/26-28).  The abundantly clear lesson we learned was:  members of To The Point really get along with each other!

At every get together, I was so hesitant to begin speaking as I didn't want to interrupt folks who were having such an obvious good time together.  Then again, I had such a good time.

Another thing I learned is that TTPers are a curious bunch.  I can't begin to remember all the topics we discussed.  Countries all over the world.  The Washington circus.  How politicians exemplify a Hyper-Peter Principle.

The Peter Principle, that people are promoted to their level of incompetence, applies to companies.  Politicians (and bureaucrats in general) shoot way beyond it, into hyper-incompetence.  The just-elected governor of Nevada, Jim Gibbons, is a perfect example.  He is an absolute fool, and is wife Dawn is an even greater ditz.  Sad to say, he's a Republican.

Yet a neighbor Democrat governor, Bill Richardson, is...