Apparently, since 1975, we’ve become more powerful than the sun.
Yes, compadres, even though the mass of the flaming center of our entire solar system is that of 332,946 Earths, it has become a near-religious commandment that the burning of our little humdrum underground liquid supply is somehow having more of an effect on our global temperature than the 10,000 degrees Fahrenheit star we revolve around.
Sans 20-odd years of pseudo-liberal agenda setting and near-Orwellian thought policing, the idea would seem as ridiculous as it ought to appear.
But in an era where cultural alarmism manufactures political will, those who ring the bell the loudest get to be the grand Babylonian messengers for the rest of us, and one-time Insta-President Al Gore has astutely planted himself in the high chair of the subjective-science zeitgeist.
Let’s face it. Both sides of the phony climate change debate distraction reek of vainglorious opportunism. Liberal scientists jockey for competitive grant money and valuable article inches in peer-reviewed academic journals, while neo-conservative shills crank the denial machine in the same way Big Tobacco did in the legal war against cigarette smoking in the 1990s.
The real inconvenient truth is that there is a major disinformation campaign at the beating heart of both ideological constructs in this scenario – the ultimate in earthly role-playing games – and neither team wants to admit it.
Let’s start with the facts. The Earth is indeed getting warmer – a terrestrial rise of about 1 degree Fahrenheit in the past century, leading to 2005 being the warmest year since records began in the late 1800s, according to NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies.
The controversy begins when we assume that this warming is anthropogenic, or caused exclusively by humans.
Global warming doomsday enthusiasts believe that human beings have pumped the atmosphere full of excessive carbon dioxide and methane from the combustion of fossil fuels, which become trapped above our skies and radiate forced heat that will eventually melt the polar ice caps and flood the world, or so they say.
The overriding myth, however, is that there is a scientific consensus condemning humanity as the main contributor to the warming of the Earth.
This is a shining example of typical human arrogance, and it smacks of the very hubris Aristotle rhetorically warned us about before the overconfidence of Oedipus became his own fatal flaw.
Asserting intellectual human supremacy over small woodland creatures is one thing, but lording ourselves over the central body of our universe as the prime mover of temperature is quite another matzo ball.
The prevailing public opinion on man-made global warming pays amazingly little attention to the simple cyclical nature of solar variation, or changes in the intensity and abundance of the sun relative to Earth.
“The sun has been at its strongest over the past 60 years and might now be affecting global temperatures,” reported Dr. Sami Solanki, the director of the renowned Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research in Gottingen, Germany, in 2004.
Aren’t increased emissions from the rabid nuclear fusion-powered fireball known as the sun more worrisome than those farted out by a Ford Excursion in the gated community of a third-ring suburb?
To be fair, certainly the relentless pollution of our oxygen and water supply via chemicals and particulates in exhaust smoke and toxic waste is a matter we must hold all of the filthy industrial robber barons fully accountable for.
But Gore’s two-hour Powerpoint political ad spot skips your cerebrum and appeals directly to your amygdala – the emotional part of your brain – with ghost stories of drowning polar bears and starving penguins. (Or was that “Happy Feet”? Ah well, same thing.)
The truth is that polar sea ice naturally grows and collapses in variable orbital and interglacial cycles, and somehow the polar bear has survived 200,000 years of such activity – and the penguin about 62 million years worth.
There are other huge natural variables, such as Earth’s axial tilt and inclination, plate tectonics and ocean oscillation and circulation, which do far more to redistribute heat on our planet and drive climate than internal combustion engines could ever be purported to do.
In short, global warming is a perfect political storm – a well-constructed wedge issue masquerading as a planetary emergency, designed to keep you from chasing down the truth about the real causes of the death of our democracy, namely the lack of a living wage and universal health care, as well as the means and motive behind the bogus war on terror and other last-ditch towel throws by Old World industrial capitalism.
The real solution to any crisis, political or otherwise, is not to watch a movie, curl up in the fetal position and suck on your green thumb, pausing only to say, “Save us, daddy.”
In a March 7 letter to Gore, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals scolded the former near-President for ignoring vegetarianism, which would do more to solve global warming than any emission standard could ever accomplish.
Too bad about that sun, though, eh? If Al Gore wasn’t slimming down now for a possible presidential run, we could have probably started to orbit around him instead.
Adri Mehra welcomes comments at [email protected].
