An Inconvenienter Truth

We've all heard the news. The earth is getting warmer. Man has released so much pollution that the greenhouse effect is trapping the heat from the sun to the point that the average temperature is rising. In a couple of hundred years the only habitable place on the planet may be antarctica. We all have to stop driving SUV's so our grandchildren will have a chance to live. Left unchecked, the polar ice caps will melt, raising the ocean levels to the point that they will flood most of North America.

I call bullshit.

Now where do I get off calling bullshit to such a well established fact as global warming? Well, quite frankly, because it is all more or less a bunch of bullshit.
I would like to just go through some of the more established facts about global warming.

Let's start with something basic. Let's start with the fact that global warming exists. I have looked at the numbers. The average temperatures across the world are, in fact, increasing. Or at least they used to be. Except that the average temperature hasn't actually increased since 1998. To the contrary they have decreased. I'm sorry, but it's true. However, the decrease is very small. I've been out of college for quite a while now, and I don't feel like brushing up on the degree of change that would constitute statistical significance, so I will just assume for argument's sake that the degree of decrease is insignificant, and ignore the decrease altogether. So then, the temperature is now at least holding steady. Why isn't this in the newspapers then? Good question.

How about this one: Global warming is caused by pollution. It's a very basic premise of the whole global warming issue. Again, bullshit. If you examine the amount of pollution that man is responsible for and compare it to the amount of pollution that natural events (volcanos, forest fires, cow farts, etc) cause, the results are obvious. It's absolute bullshit. This becomes even more evident when you take into account the fact that the warming trend predated the rise in carbon dioxide levels by a hundred years.

But the greenland glaciers are shrinking. That's my favorite. When Greenland was first discovered in the 900's AD, it was, in fact, green. It was even quite lush. Many of the glaciers in question didn't even form until the fifteenth century during what is commonly called the "Little Ice Age". We are actually on the heels of that same ice age. The earth has been warming ever since the fifteenth century. But it's not actually warming. It's just returning to normal after an ice age.

What about massive flooding throughout North America?
Yeah, whatever. That's nothing but pure propaganda in its worst form. Even Al Gore has admitted that he just put that crap in his movie for dramatic effect.

The actual truth is that the temperature of the earth is not constant. It fluctuates. Every twenty or thirty years some wise guy gets the idea that the earth is in trouble. Back in the seventies they were warning about the impending global cooling. We were all going to die in a new ice age. But before that, there was global warming. Back in the late thirties and early forties they were warning of global warming. That started in 1938. But before that, there was global cooling. In the late 1800's. In 1895 the New York Times was warning about global cooling and the impending ice age.

In the next hundred years more people will die from their ass is too fat than there will from global warming. Or global cooling. Or climate change in general.

Sorry for the inconvenience.