OOPS! Global Warming Engine Unexpectedly Slows.

Preliminary reports from the Energy Information Administration’s “Annual Energy Outlook” (which will be fully published in April) suggest that any carbon crisis may not be quite as imminent as thought. Not so long ago, the EIA predicted carbon emissions levels would rise by 37 percent between 2005 and 2035. The EIA — get this – now thinks that global CO2 emissions in 2025 will be 6 percent lower than they were in 2005.

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The truth is that forecasts about greenhouse gas emissions are basically worthless. These recent forecasts certainly were; the difference between 37 percent growth and 6 percent decline is 43 percent. That is about the level of accuracy you could expect from a blind monkey throwing darts at a wall.

But without those worthless forecasts, climate math falls to the ground. If we can’t predict the future level of greenhouse gas emissions, we can’t predict the future temperature of the earth — even assuming that our atmospheric models work perfectly and haven’t left anything out.

None of this suggests that we should ignore climate and energy issues, but it confirms my belief that climate activists tend to be bad logicians, and that the way forward has nothing to do with the cumbersome bureaucratic power grabs, crony capitalist porkfests (ethanol, Solyndra, high speed rail) and economic controls that misguided greens hope will save the planet.

Skeptics have finally put ‘global warming’ on the back burner (pun intended).

MORE: a global warming economics primer.