Global Dimming: Why Pollution is Good, Up is Down and China is Our Best Friend

Global dimming is a new scientific theory that will warm every gas guzzling, toxin dumping, and smog-eating heart in America; in short, some climatologists now believe that pollution is saving our lives.

For a long time, we debated whether or not global warming was real. When the science couldn't be denied and even America's Oil Exec-In-Chief pronounced that global climate change was not a hoax, the debate shifted to whether or not human beings had anything to do with it. As it turns out, not only do we have something to do with global warming-our complete lack of respect for the environment may also be saving us from it.

The idea of global dimming is simple-human beings are throwing so much filth into the air that we're blocking out the sunlight that would otherwise reach us and accelerate the already run-away process of global warming. Because we're trashing our planet and blotting out the sun, scientists calculate that we may actually be preventing about two degrees of planetary heat.

Those two degrees may be the difference between our glib dismissal of an unprecedented number of category five storms as part of "the natural climate cycle" and our having to suffer the cataclysmic effects of global warming that a certain former Vice President has been warning about.

In the first week of September, NOVA aired an investigative program entitled "The Dimming of the Sun." In it, scientists discussed their findings that only a few days of suspended air travel in the aftermath of September 11^th resulted in a marked temperature change in the atmosphere, indicating that the effects of American atmospheric pollution have been vastly underestimated to date.

Scientists also have a wealth of evidence showing that smog and air pollution have reduced the amount of sunlight that reaches the earth's surface. This global dimming, brought about by the same air pollution that has caused rampant respiratory ailments in human beings, is also thought to have caused droughts and famines around the world.

But like all quintessential American tales, this one has a silver lining! As long as we're breathing noxious air, the seas won't yet boil. On the other hand, if we stop polluting, more sunlight will reach us, and the full extent to which we've endangered our own survival as a species via global warming will be revealed.

But this should not shock a nation that blithely accepts CNBC's Erin Burnett telling them that they should be grateful because if "China is to start making, say, toys that don't have lead in them or food that isn't poisonous, their costs of production are going to go up and that means prices at Wal-Mart here in the United States are going to go up too. So I would say China is our greatest friend right now."

So guzzle at the pump, America, and lick up that lead paint. Why not? It's clear that between Global Warming and Global Dimming we're not going to save ourselves from ourselves.