While the Northern Hemisphere shivers through a cold winter and the ice in the Arctic continues to thicken, the political elites of the western world have launched an all-out assault of fear. The predictions become more shrill and dire; Al Gore tells Congress we have about another year or everything spirals out of control, and so on.

Now we are hearing the latest: Mass migrations will swamp the whole world as climate change makes our planet less livable. Yes, unless the people of the world submit to the elites who are trying to destroy our standard of living, they will be subject to war, war, war:

CAPE TOWN, South Africa – If we don’t deal with climate change decisively, “what we’re talking about then is extended world war,” the eminent economist said.

His audience Saturday, small and elite, had been stranded here by bad weather and were talking climate. They couldn’t do much about the one, but the other was squarely in their hands. And so, Lord Nicholas Stern was telling them, was the potential for mass migrations setting off mass conflict.

“Somehow we have to explain to people just how worrying that is,” the British economic thinker said.

Stern, author of a major British government report detailing the cost of climate change, was one of a select group of two dozen — environment ministers, climate negotiators and experts from 16 nations — scheduled to fly to Antarctica to learn firsthand how global warming might melt its ice into the sea, raising ocean levels worldwide.

So, we have a world-wide depression and now governments want to make life even more difficult.