Um, how about that North Pole!

By Joseph Walther

“Global warming’s a joke!” Yep, that’s what some readers have told me. It’s also noteworthy that none of these particular readers has a science background. Since I do AND I disagree that it’s a joke, I decided to do some non-scientific surveying of my own, right here in the thriving metropolis of Delaware.

Several years ago, we had a multi-millionaire governor by the name of Pete Dupont. In the final analysis, Pete turned out to be an effective governor. But, along the way, he showed an amazing propensity to alienate the average working type. Referring to them, collectively, as “Joe Six-Pack” tended to do it every time.

So, since I am all over Delaware on a weekly basis, I decided to talk with a number of “Joe-Six Packs” about global warming. I also included as many “Jane-Six Packs” as would speak with me.

I managed to speak with a total of 103-adults: 68-men and 35-women. In addition, nine of the men had either undergraduate and/or graduate degrees in a hard science. Six of the women fell into the same category. Most of the others were high school graduates. A handful held GEDs or less.

There was NO middle ground relative to opinions, which were that “it’s happening,” or it’s a “bunch of bull.” What did vary was the degree of fervor and concern relative to the topic.

All of those with a science background agreed that global warming is taking place. None of them seemed panic-stricken and only two of them seemed to think that humans were a major contributor. The rest of the “Six-Packers” espoused varying degrees of agreement and disagreement.

Of the remaining men, 70% expressed DOUBT that the world is warming up. They chalked all of the hype to “politician’s trying to get elected,” the government looking for ways to “raise” taxes, or “tree-hugger special interest groups” trying to make money off unfounded fear.

Of the remaining women, 80% expressed agreement that the world IS warming up. The other 20% thought along the same lines as the men above. It was interesting to observe the degree of concern among the believers, both men and women.

There was virtually no panic among the disbelievers, only scorn for the “tree huggers” and their scare tactics. However, among the believers, panic was genuine and the degree ranged from mild concerns for us humans to a genuine fear for our complete extinction, perhaps as early as next Thursday.

If by, “global warming is a joke,” the disbelievers mean a seemingly disingenuity on the part of politicians and special interest groups, I think it’s a valid assessment. Otherwise, if they really mean that global warming is NOT happening, I think they’re idiots.

It’s understandable, though. Such people are the very ones who immerse themselves in TV between 30- and 40-hours a week. All they hear, according to the news and entertainment programs, is that the entire world—the United States in particular—is going to hell in a hand-basket.

However, serious, legitimate, and objective scientists throughout the world agree that global warming is a fact that is happening NOW. They also agree that humans are contributing to it and always have been.

The disagreement, at least among real scientists, is about the extent of human contribution. How extensive and whether it’s cost effective to remediate the problem leaves considerable room for intellectual debate.

Every time humans exhale, they send greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. Unless we’re willing to die, we can’t stop it. If the entire human population abandoned all technological advances and climbed back into caves, there would still be massive amounts of greenhouse gases spewing into the atmosphere.

They would come from the fires we’d have to burn to stay warm, cook our food, do our cave drawings, read, and write. And—Purists prepare to be shocked—some humans like to have light during sex. It makes watching in a mirror possible.

The output of greenhouse gases would be tremendous because there are now around 6.2-BILLION of us as opposed to the few hundred million the last time this happened.

Regardless, such population growth obviously indicates that there has been a lot of sex going on, which means more mirror viewing, which requires more fire, which increases the gas house effect even MORE!

In fact, modern humans must do many things that produce greenhouse gases; most of them are non-discretionary. In other words, we have to do these things just to survive in a meaningful way.

If we total those human processes that contribute to greenhouse gas production and subtract out those that are discretionary (the ones we don’t really need to survive), scientists tend to agree that our contribution to the problem ranges between 2- and 20%, depending on who weighs the variables AND how they apply the weights.

So, yes, we contribute through the very nature of our existence and drive for self-survival. If we find a way to eliminate, cost-effectively, our discretionary contribution, will it alter the outcome in a meaningful way? This, also, is a legitimate debate within the objective science community.

Consider that a single, moderate volcanic eruption vomits forth more greenhouse gases in 15-minutes than the total contribution from every automobile on the planet over a ten-year period. I won’t even get into the stuff evaporating from the world’s oceans every single day!

Mother Nature takes care of business whether we like it or not. To her life is life, whether it’s a creeping, hissing cockroach or the Roman Catholic Pope. It makes no difference to her whether human and animal life continues or dies. To her, turf boundaries do NOT exist. It’s all one planet.

If humans screw things up bad enough, they’ll be gone and Mother Nature won’t even attend the funeral. Nor will the rest of the universe notice that we’re gone. But, you can bet the mortgage payment that the cockroaches will still be here, and in a state of war with the cockroaches in the Middle East.

This past summer, scientists discovered that about a million square miles of sea ice had melted. A million square miles comes to about 402 Delawares, or about 15-thousand Washington DCs. It spells disaster for polar bears, walruses, and penguins. Humans will eventually feel it, too.

Crying wolf over global warming is not an inaccuracy because there IS a wolf. Only, we can’t kill it. We can’t even scare it away. But we can learn to defend ourselves against its attacks.

Humans possess the intellectual capacity to deal with massive problems, global warming included. It won’t happen, though, until we lose the political crap that pits one side of the issue against the other. And, if we’re going to do it, we’d better do it sooner than later.

Just for the record, there are dangers lurking out in universe land that are far more devastating than global warming; gamma-ray bursts from colliding pulsar stars, for example. It’s happened before, you know. There just weren’t any humans around.

Just one of these babies, even in the far reaches of our own galaxy, would destroy 90% of the world’s resources in a matter of hours, while leaving the living population intact… at least for a few years.

Yep, we’d have 6-plus billion people vying for the remaining 10% of our planet’s life-sustaining resources. Talk about your turf wars! But, hey, I don’t want to worry you. Relax! Sleep tight. Things will look better in the morning… well, unless the Sun explodes. Nah, just kidding.

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.