Our first day of orientation of law school, in August, 1986, Paul Ogden, who was the president of the Student Bar Association, spoke to our class and welcomed us to the Indiana University School of Law-Indianapolis. He seemed like a nice enough person.

   Later in the year, Paul talked me into taking the job of editor of the school's newspaper, "Dictum." Whatever ulterior motives he had in that move never were revealed. The hours I spent on the journalistic endeavor played a part, I am sure, in my not making it to one of the Big Law firms in the City.

   Only much later did I begin to wonder about Paul's past. He often refers to family, but---we never have met or seen them. For example, he mentions having visited his mother in Florida and carries a photograph of her in his wallet (how convenient). I even have spoken with someone, on the telephone, who identified herself as Paul's mother. That is a matter easily arranged. An actress can be hired to read script, then interact with the person on the other end of the line. Paul talks about his house, but it seems like I have picked him up from a different house every time I have swung by to give him a lift. I have not broached the topic of Witness Protection with Paul---if that really is his name---because I want to live. If he was a hit-man someplace, I do not want to ask the wrong question and receive the Big Sleep as the answer.

   This brings me to the topic of global climate change. Periodically, Paul blogs at Ogdenonpolitics.com about "global warming." He takes great joy when the weather changes in such a way as to delude him into thinking that somehow humans have not caused changes in the environment so drastic as to have led to global climate change. I know Paul likes to illustrate his blog with pictures. (No doubt this aspect of his blog is a throw-back to the textbooks he read as an undergraduate at Ball State.) For "global warming," Paul uses a cartoon of the planet spouting flames. Maybe he obtained that cartoon in a handout from one of the odd group gatherings he attends.

   "Global warming" is a mistake in label. Paul likes to point out that climate changes constantly, as a natural course of things. To an extent he is right---and, btw, Paul twice said on Saturday, in a span of 15 minutes, I was right about topics---the global climate changes naturally over millennia. What Paul does not understand is that the changes that have occurred and occur today are more drastic than any previously recorded by humans.

   Let us put aside for the moment, however, whether Paul---if that really is his name---is correct. Let us focus, instead, on the causes of what many contend is real, human-caused climate change.

   We put too much crap into our environment. Carbon, while also a key ingredient in "life," also can have drastic effects on our environment. There are many alternatives to fossil fuels---called "fossil" fuels because they derived from the rotting corpses of animals that lived millions of years ago or, from the perspective of some of the people whose works Paul reads, the 1800s---and yet we have propaganda pound us daily as to why we need coal and oil. Solar and wind energy could be used to supplant much of the fossil fuels upon which we rely today. The wind farms, on I-65 as an example, do not deliver their product to Indiana consumers as a matter of course. The Belgian or Brazilian corporation that built those windmills sells the energy on the market. Power companies should be owned by everyone---a definition of socialism is that public utilities are owned by the government---and there would go a bunch of oil and coal.

   To be anti-pollution is not necessarily to believe in human-caused global climate change. People like "Paul Ogden" use "global climate change" and right-wing people like Al "I'm a corporate mogul and will sell my supposedly-left-wing network to any oil country I want" Gore to divert attention from a common-sense matter. We all should be concerned about conservation and preservation of the environment. Global climate change is real. Aberrations in weather---like the foot of snow I shortly shall shovel from our driveway----are aspects of global climate change.

   Unfortunately, Paul does not understand such nuances. Or perhaps he does, but his handlers at Witness Protection told him to stay on the same course as all the lectures he was given in HIS orientation.