Look at them there, warming the planet like that.

With a flurry of press releases, guest speakers and big-brain pondering, officials at UNLV would have you believe that next week’s National Clean Energy Summit can actually help lead the West, and the nation, in moving toward a cleaner, greener tomorrow.

However, according to the Center for Immigration Studies, UNLV need look no further for answers to our collective climate conundrum than those immigrants pouring across our borders. Immigrants, turns out, are the ones forcing Earth’s climate to red line, not mankind’s profligate use of fossil fuels.

The center’s latest study claims “Immigration to the United States significantly increases world-wide CO2 emissions because it transfers population from lower-polluting parts of the world to the United States, which is a higher-polluting country.”

That assumes a lot, including the unavoidable fact that Americans’ lifestyles have vaulted us atop the list of nations who spew the most CO2 into the atmosphere, not the number of immigrants who’ve scrambled across the Rio Grande. Every credible scientist on the planet says we can only reduce the likelihood of disastrous climate change by embracing alternative fuels, renewable energy and conservation.

No credible authority, anywhere, has claimed that below-minimum-wage construction workers and fruit pickers are the hidden hands driving us toward potential climate disaster.

We wonder, did Exxon or Lou Dobbs secretly fund this “study”?

(H/t to Think Progress for the alert)