Global Warming and Chicken Little

    The International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) released a new report on climate change on 9/28. The major news media immediately picked up segments of the report and elaborated them to ridiculous claims. CBS claimed that temperatures would rise more than 200°. ABC predicted many more super storms, like Sandy. NBC predicted the same.
    The nature of man is to fear the unknown. Many children are afraid of the dark, because they can't see what's out there. Rational persons in Massachusetts believed in witches, because of suspected magical powers.
    However, the classic story about fear mongering is the story of Chicken Little. It Is a fable with a couple of morals.
    There are many references to Chicken Little on the Internet, but Wikipedia says Henny Penny, also known as Chicken Licken or Chicken Little is a folk tale with a moral in the form of a cumulative tale about a chicken who believes the world is coming to an end. The phrase "The sky is falling!" features prominently in the story, and has passed into the English language as a common idiom indicating a hysterical or mistaken belief that disaster is imminent. Versions of the story go back more than 25 centuries.
      A chick believes the sky is falling when an acorn falls on its head. The chick decides to tell the King and on its journey meets other animals (mostly other fowl) which join it in the quest. After this point, there are many endings. In the most familiar, a fox invites them to its lair and there eats them all. Alternatively, the last one, usually Cocky Lockey, survives long enough to warn the chick, who escapes. In others all are rescued and finally speak to the King. In most retellings, the animals have rhyming names, commonly Chicken Licken or Chicken Little, Henny Penny or Hen-Len, Cocky Locky, Ducky Lucky or Ducky Daddles, Drakey Lakey, Goosey Loosey or Goosey Poosey, Gander Lander, Turkey Lurkey and Foxy Loxy or Foxy Woxy.
        The moral to be drawn changes, depending on the version. Where there is a 'happy ending', the moral is not to be a 'Chicken' but to have courage. In other versions where the birds are eaten by the fox, the fable is interpreted as a warning not to believe everything you are told.