Opinions Are Like Anthills

Chapter from Opinions Are Like Anthills...

Am I Getting Warmer?

    Since the world is going to end in 2012 anyway, I don’t know if it is necessarily prudent to debate global warming, as the concept will become nothing more than an abhorrent afterthought a few short years from now. But what the hell, as long as the earth is still here, I guess we can concern ourselves with whether or not our planet is in a somewhat slower, albeit warmer, demise rather than the abrupt and scary end predicted by 2012. If you pay heed to the almighty media gods, the whole world is under siege by global warming…And fast! It’s nigh impossible to watch the national news, open up a magazine, or watch a program on the National Geographic Channel without being clobbered over the head by doomsday reports on global warming.

    The question isn’t what is being affected, but rather what isn’t being affected by global warming? Flood in the Philippines…Global warming. Tsunami in Thailand…Global warming. Hurricane in Haiti…Global warming. Blizzard in Denver…Ummm…Global warming. On the flip side, there seem to be plenty of arguments against global warming…That conversely; the earth’s sudden bout with heat stroke is totally overblown. This camp reports that the earth has actually been witnessing a cooling phase rather than a cozy warm up. These people cite that ocean temperatures have risen, not cooled since 2003. They also point to NASA’s about-face as to the hottest year on record. NASA came out with a report that 1998 (which added fuel to the fiery global warming debate) was the hottest year on record, but they recently rescinded their original findings and concluded that 1934 was actually the hottest year on record. Of course this hottest year on record business is mainly a farce anyway, since records have only been accurately collected for a hundred years or so…A mere grain of sand in the ocean in the big scheme of things. We’ve had ice ages and little ice ages and heat-ups before. Weather and climate is cyclical. So who’s right in this debate? Will Al Gore live up to his lofty title as the High Priest of Global Warming, or will he be remembered as just another asinine goat with egg on his face? I suppose only time will tell. Let’s investigate a few premises of global warming. The ice caps are shrinking…Melting away day by day. This in turn is causing sea levels to rise, leaving people in places like the Maldives, an island nation in the Indian Ocean, wondering if they’ll still have an island to call home in the near future. The ‘cooler’ places on earth are becoming ‘warmer’ causing habitats to change, forcing animals to migrate and plants to rethink whether or not they want to grow. All because of human carbon emissions.

The Scapegoat…

    Remember old Snowball in the Orwell classic Animal Farm? He spoke out against the tyrannical leader Napoleon (the pig as opposed to the French man) and was subsequently exiled and presumably murdered by Napoleon’s henchmen (the dogs); only to be revived time and time again as the one responsible for anything bad that happened on the farm. The windmill explodes and Napoleon tells his subjects that Snowball was to blame and so on. It’s no different with global warming. We now have an enemy to blame for anything and everything in the world that goes awry or is deemed climatologically unexplainable. Global warming is surely to blame for all of the world’s ills. I guess one positive side effect to the scare tactics behind global warming is the push to cut down on our fossil fuel dependence. If it takes a hoax like this to finally kick our dependence on oil, then I guess it was a pretty healthy hoax. But here’s the problem…All rationality and deductive reasoning has flown right out the proverbial window. There’s simply no need anymore to explore alternative solutions as to why a troubling phenomena is occurring. Why look elsewhere when WE KNOW unequivocally what’s to blame. Just like Snowball, global warming is always to blame. There can be no other reason as to why the planet is falling apart. The decision has been made; there is no turning back now. Global warming is on the world government’s agenda; a matter of public discourse. Policy if you will. The printing presses have been turned on and the grants are being distributed loosely across the board. Corporations are buying up CO2 credits from rain forests so that they can feel better about their own carbon emissions. It’s out of control. It’s become cultish if not stylish. A superstitious meteorological religion. And besides, even if global warming is really happening as rapidly as the ‘experts’ say it is, how could we possibly kick our world fossil fuel habit fast enough to save the planet. In order to make even the slightest bit of headway at all, we’d have to go completely cold turkey; which we all know isn’t going to happen.

My Call: As I sat here writing this chapter and gazing out at the snow covering my yard on this freezing cold October day, I have come to the conclusion that the media hoopla over global warming is premature. I truly believe that it’s all about the green and I don’t mean the environment. It’s akin to telling cave men that the earth is round or that we rotate around the sun. It took thousands of years to debunk these theories…It’ll take many years to debunk global warming as well. Or worse yet…That oil is renewable. It’s oh so hard to challenge the big lie…Just ask Hitler.

    Besides what’s so bad with a temporary cycle of global warming anyway? Warmer temperatures, more crops….Yeah, the polar bears, who by the way, have enjoyed record growth lately, might have to adapt and become grizzly bears again, while those on the island of Tuvalu will have to find a higher place on which to reside…Fortunately, I live at 6500 feet above sea level, so it’ll be a long, long time before the rising sea levels cause me to bail water from my shack.

    I’ll leave you with a quote from my brother and meteorologist, Greg ‘Fathead’ Quinn, who says that weather and climate are zero-sum games like the stock market (when somebody is winning somebody has to be losing). He says if it is getting warmer somewhere in the world then that only means that it has to be getting colder somewhere else. He further states that meteorologists have a tough time predicting short term weather, let alone long-range effects of global warming and climate change. He sums it up like so…“If you don’t know what’s going to happen tomorrow how do you know what’s going to happen in the future” GQ