A picture really is worth a thousand words. The global warming crowd gathered in Washington today to protest a coal power plant at the Capitol, and the Greenpeace solar-panel truck ended up being covered with snow from the March — yes, March — snowstorm.

The sign painted on the side says, “America can stop global warming.” Yes, we can! And we did; we stopped it cold with a snowstorm.

The Competitive Enterprise Institute captured the ironic moment on film. Odds are good that you won’t see it in the mainstream media, which doesn’t want to burst the global warming bubble.

It seems like every time Al Gore and his true believers bring their hysteria about global warming to Washington, the area sets record cold temperatures or, like today, has a late snowstorm. I’m tempted to think a higher power is trying to send a message, but the only conclusion we can really reach is that the organizers of these events are lousy at public relations.

Today’s CEI picture reminded me of my all-time favorite newspaper photo. The Dominion Post in Morgantown, W.Va., published the picture while I worked there during college. The subject was a protest against construction of a smoke-emitting plant downtown.

The picture featured a student sitting on a campus bench with a sign that read “Stop Polluting Our Air” or something to that effect. He had a cigarette hanging out of his mouth.

I was more friendly to the environmental movement back then and wasn’t too keen about the push for a smoke-belching plant whose tower would spoil the view of the city from atop the hill on I-79. But even I could appreciate the humor in that photo.

I don’t know how the photographer kept from laughing. I’d have been tempted to walk up and say, “Excuse me, buddy, if you don’t want your air polluted, quit sucking on that cancer stick.”