For months, NewsBusters has jokingly referred to global warming as the liberal bogeyman.

In a recently released horror film entitled "The Last Winter," this tongue-in-cheek reference became reality as the evil apparition embodied by man's insatiable lust for fossil fuels actually comes to life to kill oil workers in Alaska.

In effect, Mother Nature is so displeased with oil exploration that she begins targeting those involved in such dastardly deeds.

I'm really not kidding, folks.

The following is a synopsis of the movie as published at Antidote Film's website (emphasis added, reader is strongly encouraged to protect electronics from uncontrollable bouts of laughter):

In the Arctic tundra of Northern Alaska, an advance team working for a petroleum exploration company is engaged in a massive project to exploit the oil resources of the pristine land.

After one crewmember is found dead, a disorientation slowly claims the sanity of the other members of the team as each of them succumbs to an unknown fear.

This creeping dread bursts open when a malevolent wind brings down a plane that approaches the station. Explosions and carnage wreak havoc on the team and all functions fail in the camp, forcing two of the members out into the cold on a desperate bid for survival. As the two journey to find help, they find themselves utterly alone in a world that is unraveling- either they are being stalked by an invisible herd of menacing phantoms, or they are going mad.

Whatever does happen to them out there... they are never heard from again.

[...]

The Last Winter will be his boldest, most explicit, most challenging film to date, dealing with man's insatiable quest for oil in the face of environmental revolt.

In the end, this all seems a logical extension of the hysteria and fear folks like Al Gore and his sycophants in the media and on the left are trying to evoke. After all, in the 1950s, there were many science fiction horror films distributed which used nuclear energy as the bogeyman typically in the form of monsters resulting from atom bomb tests. The spectacular film "Them" comes to mind.

Of course, such atom-splitting hysteria peaked in the late '70s with the unfortunate release of the film "The China Syndrome" which, coincident with the accident at Three Mile Island, literally put the last nail in the coffin for the creation of nuclear power facilities in this country.

As such, "The Last Winter," following on the heals of 2004's "The Day After Tomorrow," appears to be Hollywood going passed the documentary phase of frightening the public about all things weather-related right to horror films better positioned to scare the dickens out of filmgoers.

The ultimate goal, of course, is to create enough of a panic surrounding this issue that people will be willing to make financial sacrifices to protect themselves from the images being displayed on the screen, as well as anything that might come out of the closet save those fond of show tunes and Birkenstocks. 

Don't be fooled, folks: they successfully killed the nuclear power industry using this strategy plants decades ago. Now it's fossil fuels they're after, and they won't be satisfied until all associated with such endeavors rest at the bottom of that swamp a few hundred yards from the Bates Motel.

Be afraid. Be very afraid.

—Noel Sheppard is the Associate Editor of NewsBusters.