Musings on Global Warming

A Chapter by JC Pruett

So...we terrible humans are destroying the world, yet again. With the ever increasing greenhouse gas emissions we spew out every year, we increasingly warm the earth. Soon, we will have melting ice-caps, flooded coastlines, dancing in the street, and a Libertarian for president. Al Gore factors in here somewhere as well. Except, of course, that it's all bullshit. Well, not the Al Gore part. I just wish that was bullshit. But yet again, I digress.

The trouble with humans is our egos. We have trouble grasping the fact that we are such tiny, insignificant fleas. Not even fleas. Very, very tiny motes. The earth is big. I mean, freakin' big. Imagine something really big. It's bigger than that. You see, we are so very small that our ability to actually cause any lasting effect on the earth is virtually nil. Try telling that to Al. Meh.

The fact is, the amount of so called greenhouse gases we generate is just not that great in comparison to the amount the planet generates on its own. For example, Mt. Pinatubo dumped in the neighborhood of 921 megatons of H2O vapor and 234 megatons of CO2 gas into the atmosphere in 1991 alone. Granted, this was a major period. But major eruptions are not that rare. There is endless talk about CO2 generation by humans. The bottom line is, CO2 is far down the list of signicant greenhouse gases.

Global warming is the "killing ourselves" fad this decade. That is about it. In the '70's, it was global cooling. The 1974 Time magazine cover story was about the effects of human activity on global cooling, and the fact that the glaciers were gonna start their crawl any time. Interestingly, one climatologist at that time suggested that if humans dumped every bit of CO2 and other greenhouse gases we could manage into the atmosphere, we might just barely be able to stop the ice age. He was soundly derided and mocked by his peers. What a silly idea, that human gas emissions could warm the earth enough to cause a notable change! The fad of the nineties was that awful ozone hole. That...seasonal ozone hole. The one that had likely always been there. Not gonna talk about that now.

You may or may not have seen Al's movie. I, myself, was unable to do so. Much as I respect the man of wood for taking the initiative and creating the internet, I simply can't stomach hearing him talk for long. Here "long" is defined as a minute, three tops. I did watch a little snippet where he explained the ice core results. He showed how the core samples showed that CO2 levels were high, followed by periods of warmer weather. The trouble here is that you read ice core samples backwards. The closer to the top, the newer the readings. What the samples actually show is that as the atmosphere heats, the CO2 levels rise. Not the other way around. Yeah, this gave me faith in the rest of the "facts" presented by Tipper's hubby.

Are we humans able to destroy the world? Not now. We can certainly f**k up the area around us. We like to s**t in our own beds. As far as actually changing anything of any real impact, not so much. Well, not unless my dad manages to complete his mad scientist crap. But I can't talk about that. Gag orders and all that, you know.

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