Wordless Wednesday
The Real Global Weirding
It is 104° in Phoenix today. It is 84° in the Keys today. Heck, it could be 64° in North Puffin today.
Paleoanthropologist Richard Leakey’s comments in a much delayed podcast of NPR’s Science Friday just gave me an aha moment.
Mentioning NPR cost me the conservative vote. Rufus may never speak to me again.
Professor Leakey helped me realize exactly why Al Gore has led us down the wrong primrose path.
Mentioning Mr. Gore cost me the liberal vote. Paul “Buster” Door may never speak to me again.
We aren’t facing a question of Global Warming. We aren’t facing a question of Global Cooling. We aren’t even facing a question of Global Climate Change.
The problem isn’t Global Weirding.
Of course the globe is warming. Or cooling.
The problem is people. People who would leverage the fact that you don’t know the science to coerce you do something bad for you.
Hubris.
See, Mr. Gore and his cohort don’t care as much about Global Weirding as they care about what steps we take to control Global Weirding. They think the solution is the Big Government answer to control people because obviously people cause Global Weirding.
Horse Puckey.
Of course there is Global Warming. Of course there is Global Cooling. Of course there is Global Climate Change. Of course there is Global Weirding. Or Global transitioning. This little blue marble is always warming or cooling or in transition.
Convincing new evidence demonstrates that Al Gore, the IPCC, and other global warming doomsayers screwed us while they were having on with the pooch. The landmark CLOUD findings at CERN show that cosmic rays and the sun (not human activities) are the dominant controller of climate on Earth.
Professor Leakey reminded me of the historical record. Forget who caused it, he said. Let’s look at the prehistoric record and recognize that climate change has happened before and because it’s happened before we know the scale of possibilities and the change we’re looking at is not unlike changes we’ve had before. The difference is we’re now eight billion people. Before there were less than a million. This is going to impact. Rising sea levels today will be very different than rising sea levels 500,000 years ago.
That brings us to three most important facets of this discussion:
- Al Gore is a fraud. He may have created the political science of Global Warming but he apparently knows less about the fact-based science than my friend Scott, a cartoonist in Alaska.
- Rush Limbaugh is a fraud. He is so caught up in his disbelief in science (because scientists push the evolution of Man) that he cannot accept any scientific statements about Global Climate Change.
- NASA is a fraud. Between James Hansen driving Global Warming at Goddard and Charles F. Bolden, Jr, driving Global Warming at Congressional budget talks, NASA has shown they don’t care about the science. They care only about the money.
The lowest temps in the last dozen years occurred in 2007 and 2011. Last year was globally cool despite what it felt like here in North Puffin. On the other hand, 2004 and 2010 were the hottest. So what?
Hubris. Do you really trust a politician who can’t predict tomorrow’s weather can forecast the climate a decade from now? Or a century? Do you really believe a politician who can’t bring democracy to a few square miles of desert can terraform an entire planet?
Follow the money.
It doesn’t much matter what you think of which politician usurping the science. It doesn’t even matter whether you think the science says it’s going to get hotter or the science says it’s going to get colder. We know Earth will get hotter. We know Earth will get colder. Sooner or later.
The only question left to resolve is simple: If the seas are really going to rise 5′ in the next 50 years, Why the heck are you spending all my money assessing blame instead of building a bloody dike?
This editorial is the reason Al Gore invented the Internet.
Thursday Thorn
“August 8: Gas prices are up sharply again. We saw $3.669-3.719/gallon pretty much everywhere we went…”
“There’s no longer much surprise nor anguish about that,” Liz Arden muttered this morning. “Most of us are all in that dull acceptance stage.”
And that, dear readers, is both the problem and what the retailers count on.
People grumble. People protest. People email plans to each other. Congress holds hearings. And then it becomes the new normal.
Why Your Premium Just Went Up
My friend Kay Ace got a ride in a diesel truck with a siren last night. She doesn’t remember too much of it.
The “episode” started at a meeting in Milton, Vermont. She says she felt queasy, asked for a chair, sat down, and still felt upset of tummy and clammy. Passed out. She woke up in an ambulance on the way to the hospital in Burlington. She said she was still woozy for her first hour in the ER.
Dx: Vasovagal Syncope
That’s the common big Latin word most doctors use to describe fainting. A faint is a brief loss of consciousness caused by a sudden drop in your heart rate and blood pressure, which reduces blood flow to your brain.
“A fainting spell?” her friend Rufus asked. “And these are real doctors? I’m surprised they didn’t diagnose her with the vapors. Sheez.”
Vasovagal syncope is usually harmless and requires no treatment, according to the Mayo Clinic.
So, of course, Milton took her for a $700 ambulance ride to a $2,000 trauma center where they performed a $900 EKG and (maybe) a few $65 dollar blood tests. All for something a $1.99 bottle of smelling salts would have fixed as little as 20 years ago.
“More like 45-50 years ago,” Rufus said.
We still had smelling salts around the house as recently as the 90s; certainly until 1990 because my grandfather was still alive then. For anyone of that generation as well as many of our parents age, it was just something you had in the medicine chest.
“And you took someone to the hospital if they needed it… in your own car,” he added.
Sure, although an ambulance (and the state police) came when that same grandfather cut his foot halfway off at the ankle with the spinning Gravely flywheel. That was in 1958 or so. On the other hand, I’m pretty sure my mom drove my dad in when he cut his fingers off. Both times.
Smelling salts not required either time.
Kay fainted. No one is worried that it might happen again. People faint occasionally and it’s not often a sign of any underlying problem. The over-reaction to her fainting will happen again because that is a sign of any underlying problem.
Kay is still just fine, by the way, although her wallet lost some weight.
I guess they’re not $1.99 anymore.
Some at-risk groups, such as pregnant women, are
currently advised to keep smelling salts close to hand.
Wordless Wednesday
