Heartland Institute media monitors have noted on several occasions that climate-change alarmists are finding it increasingly difficult to maintain their position that human activity has warmed Earth to crisis proportions.

Polar bears keep growing in numbers, Antarctic ice keeps expanding, deserts keep receding, temperatures keep easing, the ranks of science skeptics keep multiplying. It's tough to scare people with that kind of sound-science evidence.

Now the folk at DeSmogblog - created like so many alarmist sites for the sole purpose of attacking conservatives, libertarians and global warming skeptics - is getting really worried.

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DeSmogblog toted up the 2008 online battle this way: References to "global warming" and "hoax" soared 125 percent to 49,719 citations in 2008; GW and "lie" jumped 101 percent to 100,770; "alarmist" increased 97 percent to 27,298, and "skeptic" (our favorite) rose 93 percent to 73,956 citations.

"We're also seeing more people than ever using the internet as their main source of news and information," DeSmogblog posted recently. "Legislators are going to be very hard pressed to implement strict new greenhouse gas regulations if almost a majority of the public believes that climate change has nothing to do with human activity."

Ya think?