Frankly, I have been skeptical of the threat supposedly presented by global warming ever since I first heard Al Gore spouting off about it. For one thing, never in the history of mankind has a politician made a scientific discovery. For another, I’d long been aware of the cyclical nature of the earth’s warming and cooling. Furthermore, I know that man has little or nothing to do with controlling the earth’s thermostat, just as I have little or nothing to do with controlling the one in my house. In our marriage vows, somehow my wife got dibs.
If man had so much power over the atmosphere, things wouldn’t have suddenly begun cooling down in the aftermath of the Industrial Revolution. It was in the 1970s, after all, when Newsweek breathlessly warned us of a coming Ice Age.
There were of course other signs that this was all a colossal con game. If Mr. Gore truly believed his own cataclysmic orations, would he have continued living in a mansion with Tipper? Would he and his most faithful disciple, that other notable scientist, Leonardo DiCaprio, continue flying hither and thither in private jets? One only has to ask oneself: If the greatest threat to mankind’s survival was caused by an epidemic of mad cow disease, would we constantly be seeing Gore and DiCaprio chowing down on Big Macs?
There was also Gore’s insistence that the issue was settled once and for all, that anyone who questioned his word was in league with the oil industry, if not Satan himself. At the same time, though, that he was slinging mud at Big Oil, we were all expected to ignore the fact that Big Al was heavily invested in an alternate energy firm.
The other tip-off that Gore was being as shifty as a snake was his reliance on the word “consensus.” In the world of science, unlike the sleazy world of politics, consensus carries no weight. Either something is provable or it isn’t.
Yet another sign that global warming is a lot of hooey hyped by an overwrought liberal media is the fact that ever since the presidential primaries have begun, none of the candidates has made it an issue and, when polled about their concerns, the American public has placed the issue slightly above the cancellation of the Golden Globes award show, but well below Roger Clemen’s alleged use of steroids.
Let’s face it, if instead of the planet’s being threatened by warming, an asteroid the size of Mars were hurtling in our direction, do you think the media would be focusing its attention on presidential primaries, let alone Britney Spears and Lindsay Lohan?
But I think something else is being overlooked in all this; namely, the benefits of global warming. Many centuries ago, history records that higher temperatures allowed farmers in England and Greenland to grow grapes. So, what’s so terrible if old folks in Minnesota and North Dakota could stay put and not have to retire to Florida and Arizona?
What’s so bad about introducing sunshine to people in London and Seattle? Wouldn’t it be beneficial if Russia had its own warm water ports and didn’t always have to be coveting someone else’s?
In spite of all the obvious benefits that come with a warmer climate, I just know that some of you are getting teary-eyed over the possible disappearance of glaciers. To which I say, get over it. At one point, those damn over-sized ice cubes covered much of Canada. Over time, and with no assistance from man, they melted. And, frankly, I very much doubt that in all those thousands of years a single Nova Scotian has ever woken up, gotten out of bed, walked to the window, looked out and said, “Doggone it, Alice, I sure do miss those glaciers.”
