A few weeks ago in a column on global warming, I made reference to the shrinking glaciers and the possible extinction of the polar bear because of the loss of its Arctic habitat.

So today, I’d like to share with you the other side of the coin. There are always two sides to every story.

I received an e-mail from a retired IBM employee who worked on formulating models concerning global warming at the Yorktown Research Laboratory down along the Hudson.

He wrote, after my blaming industrialization for global warming, "I understand and share your love of nature, but I fear you’ve drunk the Kool Aid on this one."

It was the conclusion of their research that the rapid growing world’s population and its constant emission of intestinal ga[an error occurred while processing this directive]s is a major contributing factor to global warming. In other words, humans passing gas has a lot to do with it. Seriously.

Let’s look at the facts.

There’s a growing population in Latin America. What do they consume as a major portion of their diet? Beans and rice. More than a billion Chinese eat foods such as broccoli, garlic and rice. Have you ever tried the spicy foods the millions of inhabitants of India and Southeast Asia consume? Phew!

How many billions of people emit methane gas into the environment each and every day? And don’t forget about the millions of cattle, horses and water buffalo. Just take a short ride in a horse-drawn carriage and you’ll get the idea.

After examining his thoughts and ideas on the subject, I wondered if there might be a correlation between global warming, holes in the ozone layer and the areas directly above Washington and other governmental capitals around the world. It seems that there’s a lot of hot air emitted from these particular places as well.

Actually ... "Global warming is a hoax. It is the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people."

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This is a quote from Bill Gray, taken from an article in the May 28 issue of The Washington Post. Mr. Gray heads the Atmospheric Science Department of Colorado State University. He is the most famous hurricane expert in the world. Gray is the man who predicts the number of hurricanes that will blow across the Atlantic and ravage our shores each year.

Gray states that the earth’s surface has only warmed about one degree over the past century. Climate changes are normal, natural and cyclic.

The Washington Post’s article reminds us of the weather in the 1970s, when many scientists were toting the idea that we were beginning to enter another ice age. Gray apparently feels that the warming trend that we are experiencing will change in another 5-8 years. By then, the world will begin to cool again.

We really have no idea. Scientists, meteorologists and others can’t accurately predict tomorrow’s weather, let alone what will happen in the next two weeks or 10 years from today. The world is changing. It’s obvious that man has an effect on things, but will anything we do really make a difference? Probably not.

Go into your backyard on any clear night and look up. There are billions of stars overhead. We are just a minute speck in a million other universes. Are we the only planet that has life? Will anything that man does change anything out there or here on earth?

It doesn’t matter which side of the fence you’re on. Some of us believe global warming is caused by the cars we drive. So go ahead, buy your green machines if it makes you happy.

But think about what you’re doing to the environment when you’re devouring deviled eggs and Grandma Brown’s beans for dinner.

Rick Brockway writes a weekly outdoors column for The Daily Star. E-mail him at robrockway@hotmail.com.