It seems the constant scare-mongering of green and other groups may have made us vulnerable to attacks of mass hysteria.

IT seems Melbourne Airport may not have been crippled on Monday by a "chemical leak" but an attack of mass hysteria.

And thank our green paranoia for it.

• There appears to be no chemical or other evidence for Monday's evacuation at Melbourne Airport
  
• Therefore, people may have been victims of "an attack of mass hysteria"
  
• People are worried about things because of the green movement:
  

  "With the birth of the environmental movement, concerns over the depletion of the ozone layer, acid rain, chemical and biological weapons, and fear of contaminants in our food, air and water, we have grown more suspicious and sensitive to strange smells."

  
  
• Therefore it's the green movement's fault
  
• Therefore the green movement owes Virgin $2 million compensation.
  

The sick came mainly from a unit of people close enough to react to each other – security staff and Virgin Blue employees, rather than random passengers. Their workplace was stressful – staff knew the risk of terror attacks, and now Patrick Corporation is bidding for their airline.

While Iraq triumphantly builds democracy, we are mired in a semantic war over the difference between an interview and an interrogation.

THANK heavens the rest of the world has moved on. Yes, Iraq has held its first free election, Lebanon has big rallies to demand freedom too, and even Saudi Arabia had to stage council elections of a sort.

Now Time even reports that leaders of Iraq's "insurgents" are negotiating with Washington to end their terror attacks and make peace with freed Iraq.

But back in the trenches of Australia, the Iraq war is still fought by fanatics who, like Left-behind Japanese soldiers, don't know they've lost. Up they bobbed again last week, blazing away to ping the Howard Government – surely, this time! – as a bunch of slimeballs who lied us into an unjust war.

Rod Barton is a respected microbiologist who served on the Iraq Survey Group, which has searched Iraq for the weapons of mass destruction even Barton once believed were there.

But last week, Barton the bomb searcher became Barton the bomb thrower, with the ABC's Four Corners giving him 45 unchallenged minutes to do his very worst to the Howard Government.

He went for it. The Government had been "dishonest", he said, when it claimed after the Abu Ghraib prison scandal that no Australians had interrogated Iraqis there, or, it implied, anywhere else.

Not so, declared Barton. "I was involved." He'd interrogated one of 100 or so high-value prisoners at Camp Cropper.

What's more, prisoners held there may have been abused, given he'd seen mugshots of two with apparent abrasions on their faces – abrasions their guards claimed they'd suffered resisting arrest. Now he worried that another prisoner who he'd been told died of a brain tumour had in fact been beaten to death.

Barton also complained the prisoners had poky cells. The scientists and soldiers among them should be let go, because "they haven't done anything wrong".

And he accused the ISG of censoring its reporting of its failed hunt for Iraq's WMD.

"Some of the things we couldn't write about at all," he claimed. For instance, the ISG was "not allowed" to say that aluminium tubes found in Iraq were not part of Saddam's nuclear weapons program, as the CIA had said. Nor was it allowed in its interim report last March to debunk allegations that Saddam had mobile trailers to make biological weapons.

Small points, but almost damning. But let's test Barton's claims – if only for the novelty of the exercise.

First, did Barton "interrogate" (his word) a prisoner at Camp Cropper, or just "interview" (the Government's word) one instead? What's the diff, anyway?

Actually, there is indeed a "clear distinction", our Chief of Army, Lt-General Peter Leahy, told a Senate estimates committee last week. And said Barton should have known it.

Leahy read out from the army's "interrogation handbook" the official definition of an interview and an interrogation. He noted that the difference was that a person being questioned had a right not to answer and could leave. At Camp Cropper, prisoners were "not going to be able to leave detention", but "may be able to leave the interview".

Brigadier Steve Meekin, who led the first group of Australians in the ISG, told the committee every Australian at Camp Cropper was given an order: "The guidance was if it was an interrogation, they were not to be involved; they were to withdraw and report that to their contingent commander."

Defence Department head Ric Smith summed up: "I believe that what Mr Barton witnessed was not an interrogation – because he did not leave . . .

"He would have left the room, I expect, because they were his orders."

In fact, a senior Defence Department official, Michael Pezzullo, told the committee the Australian contingent commander spoke to Barton soon after his claimed "interrogation" of a prisoner in 2003.

"The contingent commander specifically recalls Mr Barton discussing the relaxed and casual nature of this interview, and that Mr Barton had not raised any concerns at the time regarding the conduct of the interview or over the treatment of the individual in question."

Pezzullo said the prisoner Barton was worrying about seemed to be Dr Rihab Taha, infamous as "Dr Germ", the woman who for 20 years headed much of Saddam's secret research into biological weapons.

(Barton this week suggested he had instead interviewed a man, and denied being ordered not to do interrogations. Strangely, he even claimed credit for calling a meeting of Camp Cropper interrogators to create a "new organisational structure". What authority did this biochemist think he had for this work?)

As for the hardships endured by poor Rihab and fellow inmates such as "Chemical Ali", former ISG boss David Kay last week noted they at least had clean cells and air-conditioning, while their guards lived in tents with no cooling. They also "were not shackled" and "interrogations" were more like "a professional conversation".

Perhaps that's why Barton, in reply to a Defence Department questionnaire, last year wrote: "I did not observe any mistreatment of detainees at Camp Cropper," complaining only about their cells and lack of exercise. But that was then.

Are these really the final proofs of the sheer rottenness of this lying government and its evil war?

Believe me, Barton's allegations get no better.

The prisoner he suspects, without hard evidence, may have been beaten to death? It's Mohammed Al Azmirli, one of the weapon researchers who apparently "haven't done anything wrong", but who an ISG report says researched poisons such as ricin right until the war, and tested them on humans.

And what about his claim that the ISG was banned from mentioning the embarrassing trailers and tubes?

In fact, back in January last year David Kay, who'd just quit as the ISG head, had already said neither the trailers nor tubes seemed part of a WMD program. True, the interim report by his successor, Charles Duelfer, two months later ruled nothing in or out, but Duelfer said he was just six weeks in the job, and wanted to review the ISG's work before giving findings.

But by October, his team had written a final report which not only said all Barton desired about trailers and tubes, but added "Iraq's WMD capability . . . was essentially destroyed on 1991", even if Saddam hoped to reboot it.

Some censorship. Is it just possible Barton went off half-cocked, sniffing little evils that were never there?

So here we are, firing at shadows and brawling over semantics, while in the Middle East millions of people build a new democracy on the ruins of tyranny. They build tomorrow, while we still war over yesterday.

Abbott did insist Daniel not become a "political football" in his campaign against abortion, but then said: "I am disappointed there are so few babies adopted these days because there are plenty of parents (wanting to adopt)."

ANDREW BOLT: Mr Hopper, Andrew Bolt from the Herald Sun. Before I get to my question can I just ask you, just in passing, I saw a newspaper reference that you'd been - you're a convert to Islam, is that true?

STEPHEN HOPPER: Oh look people are trying to turn a lot of things around on to me privately. My private life is really no-one's business.

ANDREW BOLT: I ask only because you seem to be, you represent quite a number of Islamist extremists, it seems to me. And it also seems to me that you take, you seem to take their case very personally and make quite wild accusations against the government. I’m just wondering what the personal agenda behind this is, are you a convert to Islam or not?

STEPHEN HOPPER: Look, mind your own business Andrew. That's my answer to you.

ANDREW BOLT: OK. Can I ask you the $64 question then, was your client ever in a camp in Afghanistan or Pakistan that was run by Islamist extremists, whether it was Al Qaeda, Lashkar-e-Toiba or some other similar group?

STEPHEN HOPPER: He's denied that emphatically. He's been asked that question on Sixty Minutes and he says I'm completely innocent, I've never trained with Al Qaeda or any other group, I've never had any or been a member of any terrorist organisation.

ANDREW BOLT: He's never been in one of those camps?

STEPHEN HOPPER: No.

ANDREW BOLT: Mr Hopper if he's going around the world chasing lucrative deals, sealing deals and negotiating, what's he doing on a disability pension?

STEPHEN HOPPER: Well, he was on a disability pension because he had severe depression.

ANDREW BOLT: Not to do depressed to go around sealing international deals?

STEPHEN HOPPER: Well, you know people who have depression try and escape from their situation. It’s a very complex condition.

ANDREW BOLT: Should give the money back don’t you think?

STEPHEN HOPPER: Whether this business deal would've worked or whether it was like what it was made out to him, was something we haven't found out.

BARRIE CASSIDY: What was the nature of that business deal, without going into detail?

STEPHEN HOPPER: It involved a cleaning business.

ANDREW BOLT: Cleaning up Afghanistan. Thank God someone's cleaned it up.

MALCOLM FARR: He paid for this trip out of what, the sale of the previous business or saved up his disability pension, how did he pay for this?

STEPHEN HOPPER: I believe there was a small residue left from either selling the house or selling business.

MALCOLM FARR: So he was going to move the whole family at some stage, out of Australia?

STEPHEN HOPPER: Yes he was, well yes. He was looking at doing this for a year or two and then, apparently, if this business was what it was made out to be, he would've set himself up.

ANDREW BOLT: So he's gone to a war zone in Afghanistan to seal a deal to do with cleaning. Do you really think that's remotely credible?

STEPHEN HOPPER: No, no, nice try. We haven't said where Mr Habib was from the time he left Sydney until he was detained. Just because an interviewer makes an assertion of him being in a certain place and he doesn't answer that question. There is actually a number of questions about his locations at various times that he didn't answer but they just played one but because a journalist makes an assertion doesn’t mean it’s true.

ANDREW BOLT: Even if it is northern Pakistan is he really doing a cleaning deal in northern Pakistan, is that what you're asserting?

STEPHEN HOPPER: Oh well, I mean some people say that you masquerade as a journalist.

ANDREW BOLT: I tell you what you're not masquerading very well as a solicitor right now. You haven't got many answers. A cleaning deal in northern Pakistan is that what you're saying?

STEPHEN HOPPER: No it was a deal that was set up to start there and go to another country. Believe it or not, they do have office buildings in Pakistan, they do have office buildings in other countries that need cleaning. It’s not that far fetched.

Want to make a greenie boil? Just question their claims of global warming. It's not hard when so much of the evidence is paper thin.

WHAT a relief it was, to be given the top 10 reasons to panic about global warming.

At last - the list that would save me from doubt!

It's been tough, resisting this new faith. I'd ask for proof that humans really have been heating the world up to hell with their exhausts, and believers would stare at me as if I were coal.

As a furious green told a weekend paper, sceptics like me are "Holocaust deniers that make themselves look so disgustingly evil".

Even during these latest warnings that the Great Barrier Reef would die in 20 years and polar bears soon after - wild warnings to coincide with the coming into force of the Kyoto protocol - I couldn't find faith.

So I thanked The Age, Australia's most Left-wing daily paper, for launching a crusade to convert sinners like me - pages and pages on global warming, starting on Saturday with a huge graphic: "10 Reasons to Start Worrying Now." And a headline screaming: "WAKE UP. THIS IS SERIOUS."

Here, then, was a carefully researched list of the 10 clearest signs a serious newspaper could find of the harm already caused by global warming. These 10 Truths had to end all doubt.

But - forgive me my sin - I checked this list against the facts. Forgive me again, but is this tosh truly all it takes to panic an entire newspaper - and so many of you, dear readers? Is reason now dead?

Let's go through The Age's 10 "reasons to start worrying now", so you can see I do not say all this for the fun of farting in church.

1: Hudson Bay

Claim: "Polar bears have become thinner", as sea ice retreats.

Facts: A Canadian Wildlife Service study did say Hudson Bay's bears were thinner - but as polar bear expert Mitch Taylor recently noted: "We're seeing an increase in bears that's really unprecedented."

The CWS study also said earlier melting of sea ice may make it harder for bears to catch food - but said this melting affected only western Hudson Bay. Indeed, there was "a gradual cooling trend in eastern Hudson Bay . . . and the Labrador Sea".

What's more, Greenland, which also has polar bears, has cooled since 1940. More bears, then. And more cold.

2: Tuvalu

Claim: These Pacific islands are "shrinking with rising sea levels".

Facts: Australia's National Tidal Facility monitors Tuvalu's sea levels and found: "The historical record from 1978 through 1999 indicated a sea level rise of 0.07 mm per year", with "no visual evidence of any acceleration".

At this rate, Tuvalu's seas will in 100 years rise by the thickness of a pen. "We have never believed these island will go under water," said University of South Pacific oceanographer Than Aung.

But our seas have risen - 120 metres in the 17,000 years since the last Ice Age, without human gases to fuel it. Satellites detect almost no rise in the past decade.

3: Antarctica

Claim: Fewer Adelie penguins breed, as seas warm.

Facts: The New Zealand Journal of Ecology in 1990 found "the numbers of Adelie penguins in the Ross Sea have increased greatly", and suggested global warming was to blame. Now there are fewer Adelies (in some colonies, but not overall) and that's a sign of warming, too. Yeah, sure, whatever.

Australia's National Tidal FacilityBut several recent studies, including one by NASA, agree Antarctica - with 90 per cent of the world's ice - has grown colder and more ice-bound over the past 20 years or more. Ice-breakers this month had to cut through 80 nautical miles of ice instead of the usual 10 to reach McMurdo station.

4: Glacier National Park, Montana, US

Claim: Montana's glaciers are melting away.

Facts: Australia's National Tidal FacilityClimatologist Professor Patrick Michaels says these glaciers have melted since the end of the Little Ice Age 150 years ago - well before we were belching all this carbon dioxide - and Montana's temperatures in the past century of growing industrialisation have not risen significantly.

5: China

Claim: Many of China's glaciers are melting.

Facts: China has had to thaw out from the Little Ice Age that killed the famous citrus groves of Jiangxi. The Chinese Science Bulletin in 2003 said scientists found evidence in peat deposits in Hongyuan that China had a warm period around 1000 years ago, before the Little Ice Age, "suggesting ... the main driving force of Hongyuan climate change is from solar activities".

Fancy - warming being caused by the sun. New studies agree solar activity may indeed be behind some of the surface temperature changes we think we've seen - a 0.6 C warming from 1890 to 1940, followed by a cooling of 0.2 C until 1975, and a 0.4 C warming since.

6: Afghanistan

Claim: A long drought in Afghanistan, and also in Australia, "may be the product of climate change".

Facts: Afghanistan's drought seems broken by recent heavy rain and snow. Rainfall over Australia rose slightly over the past century, says the Bureau of Meteorology, and our worst known drought came in the 1890s. But do such inevitable changes to local climates prove anything?

7: Great Barrier Reef

Claim: Warmer seas are turning the reef white.

Facts: An El Nino caused coral bleaching in 1998, but the reef recovered, as it did again in 2002 - and from worse events in 1782-1785 and 1817. After all, the reef is 60 million years old, and has survived much hotter times.

Dr Andrew Baker, head of America's Coral Research Laboratory, says bleaching may be how a coral adapts - by expelling one of the algaes that help it thrive to make room for a better one.

In fact, reefs "could do well in a warmer world", Australian geochemist Professor Malcolm McCulloch has said, since "warmer ocean temperatures allow expansion of reefs to sub-tropical regions".

8: Arctic Ocean

Claim: The ice is melting.

Facts: The Arctic warmed until 1938, but then cooled before warming again - so is still no "hotter" now than it was 60 years ago.

Greenland, however, is still colder and icier than it was then, says the Danish Meteorological Institute, and was once so warm that Vikings thought it a truly green land.

9: Snowy Mountains and Victorian Alps

Claim: Snow gums have moved up the ranges as they've warmed. Migratory birds are affected too.

Facts: One study claims snow gums are now found 30m higher up mountains. Horror - more trees! But does this prove a global warming? No one knows.

Another study found four species of migratory birds now arrive a little earlier in spring - but one a little later. Yes, and...?

10: The Netherlands

Claim: Flycatcher birds migrate from Africa to find Europe so warm that the caterpillars they eat have emerged sooner than usual.

Facts: Very sad, but is global warming or local warming to blame? And are a few warmer years in one area a trend, or a natural cycle of an Earth that knew warmer times often before?

And that is it. That's The Age's list of the most frightening signs of global warming. See how little there is in it to justify this panic.

The truth is that despite the hype, not much about global warming is known for sure, not even how much the Earth has heated, and whether our carbon dioxide (CO2) caused it. So say even lead authors of the United Nation's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, whose doctored "predictions" are most used to frighten us.

One of them, Professor John Christy of the University of Alabama in Huntsville, asks: "Will increases in CO2 affect the climate significantly? Are significant changes occurring now? Climate models suggest the answer is yes. Real data suggests otherwise."

Adds another, Professor Richard Lindzen of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology: "The temperature is always changing for the earth, so it has only two choices - going up or going down. It has done both, and that doesn't say it's due to CO2; it doesn't say it's going to continue; it doesn't say anything beyond that."

This is why Lindzen calls the Kyoto accord, which demands expensive cuts to our emissions, "absurd".

But so much is absurd in the global warming hysteria, not least the media's willing surrender of its reason.

• Bolt and Cyclists
  
• Bolt on Cornelia Rau
  
• Bolt on Climate Change
  
• Bolt on Desperate Housewives