""The reindeer, that useful animal, is of a constitution that supports, and even requires, the most intense cold. He is found on the rock of Spitzberg, within ten degrees of the Pole; he seems to delight in the snows of Lapland and Siberia; but at present he cannot subsist, much less multiply, in any country south of the Baltic." In the time of Caesar, Mr. Gibbon wrote, the reindeer was native to the forests of Germany and Poland, but in Gibbon's time the animal was nowhere to be seen in those parts. And between the Age of Caesar and the Age of Gibbon, the Medieval Warming Period and the "Little Ice Age" had taken place. [ That's not to say we can't be exascerbating the current climate cycle of course. It looks to me though like the confluence of "Hubbert's Peak" in oil and the resulting price spike will at least provide incentives for alternate fuels and conservation which will mostly do things the global warming crowd likes. Now, if they would actually start campaigning for nuclear energy, I wouldn't consider them the wild-eyed hypocrites they seem to be... -ed. ] "