Global Warming or just Hot Air?

Let me tell you a story, it is a story of a Dominant Species on a lovely, vibrant planet. The planet was a gifted place set as if by gentle hand in the exact position which would allow it to prosper and produce life. The Dominant Species, however, was arrogant spreading without regard all over the planet spewing  noxious fumes and gases into the atmosphere.

Plants.

It was plants. At one time the earth’s dominant species was plants which spewed oxygen into the atmosphere to such an extent that other life forms grew up and usurped the plant’s coveted place as top of the food chain. This is according to the majority opinion in the scientific community which, of course, does not mean its right.

Forgive me if I am skeptical of science that can take a coccyx bone, three teeth and a toe bone and tell you what SOUND the animal made. But the story I related to you above is their explanation of how the world went from a world dominated by plants to one dominated by animals.

This leads me to my topic for today, SAVING THE PLANET.  Kiddies, relax the planet will be just fine. The problem we have is saving ourselves.

Let us state here the obvious. Something odd is happening with the weather. Our interpretation of the incidental evidence we see everyday tells us what Bob Dylan made so clear years ago. “You don’t have to be a weather man to see which way the wind blows.”

Years ago science pretty much decided they had the whole ozone layer, heat refracting thing figured out and they named it “Global Warming”. Good enough. For years scientist thought dinosaurs were all reptiles. The name “Big Bang Theory” was a derisive term used by main stream science to put down a theory they did not agree with until Mr. Hubble shoved it up their patrician noses.

Scientist are a tad smarter than lawyers, have a few more ethics than journalist and are a little more pompous and arrogant than your average television anchor person. Forgive me if I do not handle them with the deference they tell me they deserve.

So anyway in the intervening years things did not get hotter, in point of fact they got a little cooler.  Well butter my butt and call me a biscuit. Scientist have a strategy when something like that happens. They just change their tune and pretend like they meant the new thing all along. Now global warming became Sudden Climate Change.  They even made a movie about it. We were going back into the ice age, New York was a popsicle, Randy Quade was in it so it had to be true.

Now it appears to be warming up again big time. So we are back to Global Warming with a sneering “See I told you so.”  Yes, as I said before, the incidental evidence of our own eyes, ears, nose and sweaty bottom cracks tell us it seems to be REALLY hot this year.

That leaves only a few little questions like why and what can we do about it? Why? Well obviously it has to be us. We are man and we were given dominion over the planet. (opps, sorry that is religion not science). Anyway we are man and we are the smartest and the bestest and the most blessed so it is our responsibility… (opps, so sorry, that’s philosophy AND religion not science).

How about this, we do suck up a whole lot of resources to live in the way we are accustomed. I did not say entitled to I said accustomed. We suck dead dinosaur juice out of the middle east, we mine dead plant matter out of West Virginia, we burn all that nasty stuff and apparently only the very learned scientist know what the outcome of that will be.

Those would be the same scientist who did not know until recently the climate was hotter during ancient Rome than now. Did not know or did not bother to tell us. There is not much grant money in saying, “Shuck got that one wrong too.”

So what do we know? We know for a certainty that weather changes, if not a lot of time better spent on NASCAR reports is being wasted on TV every day. We know that weather is cyclical sometimes getting warmer, sometimes getting hotter, sometimes dryer and sometimes wetter.

I know I have been on this earth for sixty odd years and it appears to me that the weather has been trending towards warmer. I also know that trying to support a whole trend based on my sixty years would be like aliens landing in Washington and supposing that, based on their sample, the earth’s population is made up of narcissistic nincompoops.

So am I saying we are not going through a GREAT GLOBAL CLIMATE CHANGE? No. I am saying I really do not know. People I have reason to respect say we are and people I have reason to respect say it’s a natural cycle.

I do know that, between worrying about how we are going to be able to keep our Ice Cream frozen and what is going on with Tom and Katie, no one even noticed us slipping past the point of Peak Oil and starting the long slide back to horse drawn carriages and whale oil lights.  They wouldn’t want us worrying our little pointed heads about stuff like that would they?