Whoa, is it cold or what!

 

By Joseph Walther

 

First, I’m tellin’ ya; it’s been colder ‘n a witch’s ti… I mean, it’s been quite cold the past few days in these parts. If I hear, “so much for global warming,” one more time, I’m going to climb a tower and start shooting people. As soon as it warms up a bit, that is.

 

            Many years ago, we couldn’t turn to a TV channel without hearing, “It’s not nice to fool Mother Nature.” A supposedly distraught and angry Mother Nature waved her arms, and POOF! All sorts of comical things happened to us lowly earthlings because some of us unknowingly switched from butter to Chiffon Margarine.

 

            Chiffon Margarine used this tag line to convince us to buy its margarine many years ago. Like most TV commercials, both then and now, I thought it was stupid. Besides, I refused to eat margarine of any brand—and I still do. It tastes awful. I’d rather have someone stick an umbrella up my butt and open it, than eat margarine! Apparently, millions of others disagree. Just remember, though! Statistics repeatedly show that such people don’t have umbrellas.

 

            Regardless, media commercials that use a “God” or “Mother Nature” theme to sell products tend to prove a few things to me. First, humans, in general, know precious little about Nature. Second, they know even less about God. Pat Robertson proved this when he claimed to have prayed a hurricane away from his Florida digs. Third, Mother Nature does not get mad. She simply gets even. And, if we humans keep up the mental masturbation over global warming, we’ll find out how.

 

            Legitimate scientists are not debating the occurrence of global warming. In fact, people, most with 3-digit IQs, no longer deny global warming. Furthermore, I don’t hear many people still denying that humans contribute to it. While global warming is cyclical, over ions, twentieth-century humans have accelerated its affects to some degree. How much humans contribute seems to be the issue now. I find this refreshing, but—and this is purely my opinion—the degree of human contribution is not as critical as the rate at which it’s accelerating the affects.

 

            Hurricanes seem more frequent and violent than in the past. Small temperature increases shift the hurricane strength scale to the right by 1 to 1.5 points. In other words, category one-force hurricanes become category two or two and a half as the result of warmer water. Worse, a storm’s exposure time to warm water increases its strength transition considerably. It may take 3-days from a tropical depression to a category one hurricane, but only a day and a half from category one to category two, and as little as eight hours from category two to category three, and so on.

 

            Global warming. Yes, it’s not nice to fool Mother Nature. Only this isn’t about some stupid margarine and her anger is real. There is nothing comical about the consequences, either. And we haven’t seen ANYTHING yet!

 

            As do others, I believe global warming is a naturally occurring phenomenon and that we’re probably in a warming cycle. But, how much of it is nature and how much of it is us? It’s important for us to know this. Even more important is how quickly we’re accelerating it and at what point we’ll reach the point of irreversibility. Since the 1900s, industrialized humans (not just Americans), have contributed to the problem.

 

            As we turned into the twentieth century, 1900-1909 here in the United States, we experienced the dawn of air-conditioning and refrigeration. It took centuries to arrive. But, once we did, it only took a few decades to arrive at the dawn of aerosol convenience and profitability. We developed antiperspirants so we don’t offend, hairsprays so we don’t look crazy or stupid or both crazy and stupid, Pam non-stick spray-on so we don’t screw up the eggs, etc. Before this, of course, we entered the dawn of carbon-based fuels in order to improve the means of getting our butts from point A to point B. The list is seemingly endless.

 

            Remember, too, that profitability was not exactly a secondary motivator throughout all of this dawning. In case you’re not aware of it, compound interest and profit motivation have always been the differentiators between communism and us. Here you thought it was democracy, didn’t you?

 

            The point is that, prior to this time, our contribution to global warming was not a whole lot. Once started, though, it has increased, seemingly, at an exponential clip. When we began our contribution, we were clueless relative to environmental impact. We didn’t mean to get ourselves into our current predicament. But, it always happens when our technological genius is operating on only half of its cylinders. In other words, we had the intellectual means for cooling our butts off and stopping our underarms from stinking, but other than Carl Sagan and Stephan Hawking, we didn’t know nothin’ about no stinkin’ ozone layer.

 

            Well, we don’t have that excuse any more. For many people, situational science is a great thing. It doesn’t complicate or shatter reality with facts. But, if we want to survive as a species, we’d better stop relying on it because it makes us think that we’re an even match for Mother Nature.

 

            We’re not going back to smelly underarms or anything like that because we don’t have to. We do need to stop all of the silly arguing over causes, though. The worst-case proponents have us about ten years from the point of irreversibility. The best-case proponents put it about a century out. Reality is somewhere between these two points. Arguing over how much is Mother Nature’s fault and how much is ours is plain stupid, much like blaming asthma on breathing.

 

            No matter what people say, we’re not going to destroy this planet. People who say we’ll do so are both arrogant and stupid. We may cause our own extinction, and Pat Robertson, in spite of his claims, will not be able to pray it away. But, once we’re out of the picture, nature will rejuvenate the place. Baring some random cosmic force, though, life in various other forms will go on for a few billion more years. And, I’ll bet that the cockroaches in the Middle East will still be at war with the cockroaches in the West.

 

Joseph Walther is a freelance writer and publisher of The True Facts. Copyright laws apply to all material on this site. Send your comments. Just click here.