RanTom Thoughts/20070411 Global Warming

Global Warming

Spring, frozen in its tracks

You can tell it's been a constant wind by how the trees are covered on one side.

Stream in spring... er winter.

Winter has decided that Spring was being presumptuous.

There are some days when you step out your door and the wind striking ice crystals against your jacket sounds like Rice Crispies on speed. On days like that you really want to forgo the rest of the day and just turn around and go back inside, curl up next to the <insert heat source here> and just read a book. Today is one of those days.

Since moving to Illinois I have come to learn that my two least favorite phrases in the English language are the following:

• Freezing Rain
• Wet Snow

Snow is supposed to be "freezing" and rain is supposed to be "wet", not the other way around! Alas, today was of the 'wet snow' variety.

In todays news: Illinois has decided they want nothing to do with this "Global Warming" business and has become a Red State. In a show of solidarity with their new Conservative Overlords, lawmakers have repealed spring and sent IL straight back into winter in hopes that this will balance out the warming elsewhere.

Whoever is holding Spring hostage, we'll pay the full ransom! Just return it to us safely is all we ask!

Discuss: tell me which picture should go in my permanent gallery. (I like the two below, but I can't decide which, if any should go in the gallery.)

Global Warming

Now for the rant part. (And so it begins)

I'm really tired of Hollywood over-pimping the whole Green Agenda. The Oscars this year were just a sickeningly sweet love-fest for An Unpleasant Truth. Only in Southern California can anyone have the audacity to think weathermen can actually predict the weather past a couple of days :D. Didn't we learn anything from Chaos Theory? Whenever I hear politicians and actors spouting something about science that they've been told to spout by other actors and politicians, it just reminds me how much I'm surrounded by Sheeple.

That said, I do believe in Global Warming. At least I hope we have global warming, because our planet is doomed to iceball status eventually, as our internal heat source decays. (Then Sol will go Red Giant on us and we will get really toasty.) However, we are still at the end of an ice age here people. The planet is scheduled for a warm-up! Just look at the history of the planet and you'll see that it's been much warmer in the past. It's only human hubris that makes us think that the weather should be what it currently is. Mama Dirt is going to have her way eventually.

Now, I believe we should reduce emissions for the sake of not "fouling the nest". But this whole insane Green Panic because the Earth's temperature seems to be going up is ridiculous. As Ian Malcolm says in Jurassic Park, Life will find a way. Life survived much hotter temperatures before we were here. It has survived much colder. Planetary temperatures aren't that big of a deal for Life. However, if we aren't going to control our population growth, we'd better start controlling our emissions now before we poison ourselves out of existence.

Discuss: tell me how wrong I am, how I should learn about climatology, etc.

-- Tometheus (talk) 10:26, 11 April 2007 (CDT)