Global Warming; the origin of the consensus

Let's look back a few years--to 1992. I'm not sure I was even aware of global warming in 1992--I probably was still under the influence of the global cooling theories. 1988 was the hottest summer I can remember, but then I wasn't around in the 1930s, although my parents could tell the stories of the dust bowl and the ghastly hot summers. I had watched Lake Erie rising and had seen the huge boulders they were bringing in to keep it from destroying the lawns that led down to the flat rocks. I could see from the old photographs of Lakeside that the lake was much higher in the 1970s than it was in the 1950s or the 1920s. Of course, all that has changed now--the lake is low again, and would be even lower if it weren't for the other Great Lakes draining into it. The boulders look a bit silly and lonesome now.

Check out what Richard S. Lindzen said about the origins of the "consensus" in 1992, and then what he said in 2006. Then browse a bit of history--like how cold it was in Europe in the late middle ages--how people froze from the cold, or starved because the growing seasons were so short after experiencing a balmy period in the 11th and 12th centuries. Then ask yourself, why should the world always be only the way I remember it? (Of course, Ohio used to be covered with a glacier, so I know it is getting warmer, and I'm so glad it did.)

And then pause to remember the Chinese, yes, the billions and billions of Chinese, who are just on the cusp of wanting what we in America and western Europe already have. They could sign 10 Kyotos, and it won't make a snippet of difference (following a contract is not in their tradition), while Al Gore and friends try to shut down the American economy in hopes of cooling the planet. Yes, think about China as you screw in your energy-saving, mercury filled bulbs made in coal fired factories in China and congratulate yourself for being so careful with fragile, elderly Mother Earth.

JAM says he could take global warming more seriously if only the people warning us about it were acting out their concern or behaving respectfully toward the environment in their daily lives. He's a bit more generous. I might take it more seriously if they weren't the same folks who say it took millions and millions of years for humans to develop a brain and walk up right, owls to learn to eat field mice, and terns to learn to navigate to their nesting area over thousands of miles, but now we're going to hell in a handbasket in just a couple of hundred years. How did evolution ever succeed without Al and his oversight committee of the IPCC?

Do your part to save the planet:

lose weight,
stop smoking,
pick up trash along the road side,
conserve resources,
plant a garden,
pick up after your dog poops in someone else's yard,
keep your cat in the house,
don't put out bird seed or throw bread to the ducks,
don't take down the fence rows on the farms,
put up a purple martin house,
don't drive like a drugged jack rabbit,
and be nice--reduce hot air by using your common sense.