Bill O’Reilly went on Jay Leno’s show Friday night and confessed to being extremely confused. About global warming.

O’Reilly knows what he’s talking about. He is very confused.

O’Reilly believes global temperatures can be predicted by the number of days hockey can be played outdoors on Long Island. The global warming theory is proved by polar bears floating down the Mississippi. Global warming is caused by human-created smog, yet O’Reilly doesn’t know if people cause global warming or if “the Deity is mad at us.”

O’Reilly supports Al Gore’s global warming work (“Right on, Al Gore!”) and is enthusiastic about the use of private airplanes (“the only way to go”).

It’s enough to make you wonder if a bottle-blonde airhead has taken over O’Reilly’s body.

Take his exchange with Leno:

O’Reilly: Al Gore’s running around the world in a private jet… but that’s all right…

Leno: …but that’s…

O’Reilly: …that’s all right, that’s the only way to go… you been in an airport lately?

Leno: What would the critics say? Take a sailboat?

O’Reilly: Yeah, you got to get there. I think Al Gore is doing a good thing. The planet is dirty. Let’s clean it up. I don’t know how this got to be a partisan issue. Who doesn’t want a cleaner planet?

Leno: Sometimes I’ll listen to the different radio shows, and I’ll hear a lot of the conservative guys vehemently against global warming. I mean, to me, let’s say you’re against global warming… why not be self-sufficient so you can screw the electric company…?

O’Reilly: Yeah, or the gas and oil companies… I think the anger against Al Gore is that he blames America for a lot of it when China and India are the real big coming polluters. Doesn’t mention that… The right says oh, no, there isn’t global warming, and meanwhile there’s a polar bear floating down the Mississippi River. C’mon. I used to play ice hockey for two years in Long Island where I grew up, sorry, two months during the winter. You are lucky if you get two days now. You’re lucky if you get two days! So there is global warming. The temperature says it. Though whether it is man-made or the Deity, we don’t know. So let’s get a cleaner planet. Let’s all get together and clean it up. C’mon! So right on Al Gore!

O’Reilly doesn’t quite catch the nuances of the global warming debate.

Counting the number of days Long Island ponds freeze won’t reveal global temperature trends. If O’Reilly’s right and there were more frozen-pond days in Long Island in 1966 than in 2006, it doesn’t prove the global warming theory any more than New York’s largest-ever snowfall occurring in 2006 proves global cooling. Continued...