Cold temperatures have gripped much of the Lone Star State this past week and in fact, much of the nation. A low of 8 degrees was recorded in Waco Saturday morning, where temperatures were below freezing for three days. The jury is still out on the hard freeze effects on sugar cane and citrus in the Rio Grande Valley. Miami, Florida suffered a freeze; Tampa, Florida had ice. A cold front that paralyzed this nation swept all the way through Cuba.

My niece in Nebraska reported the snow plows had quit running when temperatures plummeted with wind chill temps at -45 degrees. A friend in New Jersey is considering hibernation. Another friend in Iowa mentioned moving back to Texas where it is warm. I told him never mind. I reverse migrated and flew to Seattle, Washington this week, where it was a balmy 50 degrees, to miss the vicious chill in the Lone Star State.

My environmental friends will take me to task for mentioning global warming. The new go-to phrase is climate change, they say, which takes in the variables such as the extreme cold the nation has suffered this winter. Not to worry, they say. The warming trend will begin again.

Phooey, I say. The earth will go through periods of warming, as it always has. And it will go through periods of cooling. This time, however, it got so cold globally so fast that we saw “a dramatic increase in the number of politicians caught with their hands in their own pockets,” as a speaker at the American Farm Bureau convention said.

And that, my friends, is what global warming, climate change, this “scientific” call to global crisis is all about. Climate change is not about the climate. It’s about raising the price of energy. It’s about imposing a $100-$300 billion tax increase annually on the American people. Cap-and-Trade legislation is little more than a rationing scheme where the state will decide how much energy an individual can receive.

As Christopher Horner, a senior fellow with the Competitive Enterprise Institute says, the climate change brouhaha is not about the weather. It’s about wealth transfers, revenues, offsetting rents and ideology.

And what will the temperature be after the largest tax increase in the history of our country? It will be whatever Mother Nature decrees. Nothing in Cap-and-Trade does anything to affect temperatures. And no lawmakers in our country are considering this. These politicians are, however, moving toward putting our economy at risk because they’re not thinking it through.

As for me, I’m tired of the cold. I’m weary of shivering because of this climate change that has resulted in climate chill. I’m ready to go back to a little global warming.