Saturday, August 30, 2014

Global Warming 'Pollution?'


        "Hey, Nee, want to go for a swim?"
        "Ander, are you crazy? It's freezing outside. That's why they call this the Ice Age. Ask Thal. He's also nuts. Maybe he'll go with you."  [Ne-ander-thal, a joke. Cave humor. Ha ha. Get it?] 
        "No, bro'. Take a look outside. The ice is melting. It's getting nice and...toasty."
                                                                  ***
        About 15,000 years ago much of North America, Northern Europe, and lots of other places were covered with ice. And it wasn't just that crunchy stuff that all those folks in Massachusetts and Vermont walk thru on the way to their Social Justice meetings. This was real ICE, a mile or two thick and covering the continent from coast to coast. And then, gradually, it all melted, except for a little that was left on the poles, North and South.
        But how could that be? With no industry to burn 'fossil fuels' (most of the 'fossils' were actually still walking around), where did all that 'climate change' come from?
        Well, Earth's climate has been changing since it was formed  4.5 billion years ago due to what scientists call, 'natural causes.' i.e., changes in earth's orbit, changes in the way the earth's axis tilts, changes in the sun's output of heat, etc. It's only been during the past 200 years or so, i.e. since the start of the industrial revolution, that we've had a little extra warming (0.8 degree C.) from burning fossil fuels and, during the last 17 years in fact, there's been no additional surface warming at all. Go know!
        And, as far as it being a pollutant is concerned, global warming is no more a 'pollutant' than is global cooling or global lukewarming. Pollutants are pollutants and warming is warming. Calling a change in temperature a 'pollutant' just to get everyone's juices going is dumb and dishonest and you shouldn't do it even if it gets people to vote for you or to come and see your movie.
                                                                            ***
Summary of latest U.N. IPCC Report on climate change:
1: We made a lot of mistakes last time but we got better computers and we're smarter than
     we used to be.
2. Things are much worse than we thought.
3. Send money.