Global Warming

The sky is falling! The sky is falling! I have repeated this phrase from Chicken Little before, but it appears to be more true each time that I do. According to environmentalists, people who are considered to be reputable scientists, and a former vice-president; the world is on the brink of imminent doom due to the human impact on the effects of global warming. 

Now don't get me wrong, I am willing to concede that the world is getting warmer (after all, I have had my air conditioner on for the last couple of weeks straight), but I question whether we are on the brink global disaster. I further question whether human beings are the harbingers of doom in this situation. After all, environmentalist are usually whack jobs, half of the scientists in school graduate in the bottom half of their class, and if history has shown us nothing else, it has shown us that intelligence has never been a requirement for the office of vice-president of the United States.  

So what about this global warming thing then? Well I, like most of the people voicing their opinions on the subject, am not qualified to put forth anything more than mine (We all know about opinions, they are like butts. Everyone has one and most of them stink.) So rather than burden you with my interpretation of the evidence, I will take this discussion in a slightly different direction (like you couldn't see that coming).

• Why should I believe the experts in the environment and the climate, when they can't predict the weather three days from now, let alone three decades or three hundred years from now?
• Hasn't the climate of the planet changed periodically even before Man was able to exert any noticeable effect on climate? (Do the words Ice Age mean anything to anyone?)
• Aren't a lot of the "greenhouse gases" that seem to be tagged for global warming generated by things like volcanoes and cattle farting?
• Didn't most of these same people predict a global ice age just a few years back?
• Even if they are right, would putting Florida and parts of California under water be such a bad thing?

Like most Chicken Little situations where someone is expecting me to take their word as fact and that we are therefore in a state of crisis, this one seems designed to tell me two things:

1. That I am responsible for the problem, should really feel guilty about the way that I and my fellow man have treated the environment, and need to do something to fix it immediately.
2. That fixing the problem is going to be a long and complicated process which will require a great deal of sacrifice and an equally large cost, both apparently mine.

Well I don't know about you people, but I have a list of things that I feel guilty about that's longer that's I am willing to discuss in this or any other venue. If the environment is an item that I need to add to that list however, I may be willing to comply; but not on the strength of what I have heard so far. I am especially resistant to doing so knowing that Al Gore has already admitted to "stretching the truth" in the name of a higher good in what purported to be a documentary while flying around the world in a G4 lecturing on the evils of fossil fuels. Perhaps if there such a thing as Global Warming occurring, it is the heating of the planet by all of the hot air being generated by liberal politicians and activists. Not being one who wants anyone to believe something just because I say so, I will leave you with the words of two noted writers (also of fiction):

• Whenever you hear the consensus of scientists agrees on something or other, reach for your wallet, because you're being had. - Michael Crichton
• Ninety percent of everything is crap. - Theodore Sturgeon