THE BELL CURVE:

How many of you were shaken up Wednesday morning by reading a Pilot headline with a double whammy?

First, that Virgin America Airline — contingent on passing a noise test — will soon be flying five new daily departures out of John Wayne Airport. And, second, that the earliest is scheduled to depart at 6:45. In the morning, that is.

The added flights are being absorbed by flight cancellations due to declining business. But take-off time is another matter. Since take-off for JWA is right over my bedroom window, it has long offered a wake-up call at 7 a.m.

Earlier than I would like, since I’m a night person, but since they refused to abide by my schedule, I’ve had to abide by theirs.

So the prospect of losing 15 more minutes of sleep daily not only started my day badly but hit me as a violation of the settlement under which JWA operates.

So I called Ayres Boyd who heads up the Airport Working Group, which has been in the trenches fighting off the expansionists for many years, to find out if they were on top of this one. And I got my sleep back.

Turns out that 6:45 isn’t take-off time. It’s get-ready time. It’s getting in line, revving up for morning rush hour at 7.

But while I had him, I asked Boyd what kind of response the Working Group got to a Forum piece in the Pilot — co-signed by AirFare and Stop Polluting Our Newport — that laid out a specific, rational regional transportation plan to resolve the problem of over-burdened airports, particularly JWA.

“Very little,” he said, “and none from Newport Beach where the noise problem is greatest. And no response, either, from the Newport Beach-Costa Mesa partnership to address JWA problems and plans.

“It doesn’t seem to be a top level issue in either city, nor does our effort to seek a means to buy the adjacent golf course property to prevent its use for a runway extension to accommodate larger planes.”

All of this is being played off against an ongoing $650-million construction project that has turned into a semantic game between the various factions.

Airport officials refer to the construction as “improvement,” while the Working Group calls it ”expansion” and is keeping a jaundiced eye on it while strongly questioning the timing of allowing a project of this size and dubious need to go forward in the economic crisis we all face today.

Meanwhile, what would Boyd suggest as marching orders for the people most affected by possible growth at JWA?

“Taking action,” he said emphatically. “There’s no strategy in place to prevent that growth. We need somebody to drive it. To act like they mean it.”

What action?

“Just address the issue directly. Put somebody in charge of airport issues. Talk about it in public. Build some sense of urgency. Most people in this community have no idea that $650 million is being spent in their back yard on something they neither need nor want. That awareness might be a good place to start.”

It is my understanding that from now on, when we talk about global warming in the Pilot, we just talk facts. No more trying to upstage scientists who have mucked around in research for several decades. Facts ‘R Us.

So an analysis published last week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, along with supporting data from the National Resources Defense Council — neither of which is an arm of the ACLU or a purveyor of carbon credits — is worthy of our examination. Among a multitude of similar facts, we are told that:

 Even if we were to turn around the growth of carbon dioxide levels, it would take 1,000 years or longer for the climate changes already underway to be reversed;

 By thermal expansion of ocean water alone, sea levels will rise from 1.3 to 3.2 feet if carbon dioxide levels continue to grow at the current pace;

 The arctic ice sheet has shrunk 20% since 1979;

 The 1990s were the hottest decade in the last 1,000 years;

 Climate changes have forced bears out of hibernation a month earlier than usual.

You can get a bunch more facts, to prove whatever you want to prove, by plugging in “global warming” on the search engine of your computer. So can I.

A recent editorial in the Los Angeles Times addressed this dilemma as follows:

“It is difficult to spot the moment when a scientific theory becomes an accepted fact. It took hundreds of years for the Catholic Church to acknowledge the work of Galileo.

“Still, science is a discipline of questions, and rarely is a fact established so firmly that it will silence all critics.

Of course, new questions inevitably emerge from new inquiry and new data.

“How then to judge when a theory becomes fact? The test lies in balance. A preponderance of evidence accumulates on one side or the other. If the alternatives are implausible, they melt away. Eventually there is nothing left to uphold the view that the sun is circling the Earth.”

Kevin Trenberth, head of climate analysis at the National Center for Atmospheric Research, summed up the National Academy of Science study this way:

“The climate change caused by global warming is poorly appreciated by policymakers and the general public and is real. The policy relevance is clear. We need to act sooner even if there is some doubt about exactly what will happen, because by the time the public and policymakers really realize the changes are here it is far too late to do anything about it.”

And that’s a fact.

JOSEPH N. BELL lives in Newport Beach. His column runs Thursdays.