Global Warming? Don't Bet the Farm on It!

Cycles are all around us and we don't concern ourselves with most of them. A day starts, it progresses through its cycle and comes to an end at exactly the point where a new one begins. We concern ourselves with that one. In fact, many of us lump seven of them together and obsess over them.

Today is the beginning of a new week, so I have to drag myself out of bed and go to work. Well, not really, because most calenders start the week on Sunday, but you know what I mean... Today is Tuesday and I have a show that I watch every Tuesday night. Wednesday is hump day and Thursday is something else and before you know it we start a new cycle.

Some are shorter and some are longer. I once read about a people in ancient times that had a calender with a fifty thousand year cycle. Imagine that! A primitive (?) group of people who actually found it relevant to measure time in fifty thousand year blocks. Most primitives had difficulty dealing with getting through the day, let alone trying to plan for next year. However, these people were on the right track.

We are, in certain ways, the most advanced people who have ever walked the earth. In other ways we, as a world-wide family of humans, are the stupidest bunch who ever lived. We worry about what will happen in some distant future and we can only look ahead in a straight line. We forget that the cycles rule everything we can see, and everything we can't see. We talk of flying to Paris, or wherever, and we imagine the plane going up, then making a straight shot to Paris and coming down again.

In reality, when we really want to think about, we realize that the plane takes a curving path. Why can we not see that other real things also take a curving path? Weather, for instance, which is what I'm really getting at, also works in cycles. You've heard stories about a time when rivers froze over and people could drive their cars across them. Cars ? That means it wasn't so long ago, but I've never seen anything like that in my lifetime, so that must mean that the world is getting warmer, right? Well, yes and no.

Yes, the world is getting warmer, but don't forget about the cycle. If you really want to know, if you're not so closed-minded that you push nature aside while loudly proclaiming that you're trying to protect it, then read a little history. You'll find that only 600 years ago the world was plunged into the midst of a Global Cooling period. Rivers froze over frequently, crops died because people tried to continue to plant the things their parents and grandparents had planted; things that were not suited to the conditions they were living in. Of course the yields were smaller, or failed altogether. Add to that the poor construction methods and materials they had at the time and you'll see that they had a real crisis on their hands.

Now, when I say, "poor construction methods, etc.", I'm only refering to their lack of insulation techniques and materials. They built out of stone and/or heavy timbers. They built to last and many of their buildings are still standing and functional today. But they were cold and drafty, and provided shelter in only the meanest sense of the word.

OK, so here were these people 600 years in our past. They were cold and starving, or at least poorly fed, huddling in their cold homes and doing the best that they knew how. Their animals faired no better, but at least the domesticated animals had someone who tried to do well for them, too, if for no other reason than to keep a food supply on hand. Those undomesticated animals had an instinct to live as well, and no one was trying to preserve them, so they tried to preserve themselves. They sought shelter too. Why sleep in a clump of tall grass with no food to eat when they could enter a house and steal food from the human population? That's exactly what they did, if they were small enough to evade capture and expulsion. Say maybe, as small as a rat.

Oh, I know I've over-simplified this, but these are the main points. People huddled together for warmth, for months at a time, on short rations and the rats came in with them and brought the plague. Medicine, as we know it, was in its infancy at the time and somewhere between a fourth and a third of the world's population died.

Think of our own situation. We build with climate control in mind. We have central air and heat, and high-quality insulation materials. If your office air varies by more than a few degrees then you're cold or hot and you swear it's unbearable to the point where you can't work. But less than 200 years ago there was no central air, and heat came from the log or lump of coal that you threw on the fire. How did these people survive? Well, they wore heavier clothing and put fireplaces in almost every room. They had high ceilings for the summer heat to collect in and they had high windows and transits over the doors to let it escape.

Yes, the world was a cooler place back then, and yes, we are in a global warming period. But it's a natural occurance and one day we'll again be in a global cooling period. Granted, you and I may not see it, but you can bet there will be people screaming out warnings that humanity is going to destroy the world by turning it into a big ball of ice. There will be scientists willing to stake their reputations on it, and political action committees bending the ears of any politition who will give them an audience, and Earth Day will focus on ways to halt the devastation to come.

Actually, I think anyone who believes that we puny humans have the power to make global changes to this world that are irreversable are either lunatics or abomidably arrogant. It can be demonstrated that one volcanic eruption has the potential to spew out more so-called greehouse gases that all of mankind has produced in its entire existance. Once the politically correct have things their way, then what? Are we supposed to try to cap all of the volcanoes of the world?

I used to have to take my car to be tested every year. What did they test for? Not the things you can see. They tested for ozone, an invisible gas. Ozone. Does that sound familiar to you? It should. That's the other side of the Global Warming scare; we're depleting the ozone layer, right? But, how can we be depleting the ozone layer if our cars are producing ozone at record levels? Or, if we're depleting the ozone layer, shouldn't we be trying to do everything we can to produce as much ozone as possible?

It's all a scam, folks. I once heard something that has stayed with me through my whole life. If you really want to know the truth, follow the money, honey. The auto manufacturers can charge you more of it if they have to produce a more efficient engine. The oil producers can charge you more of it for producing cleaner burning fuels. By the way, do you remember how they did that? They "developed" lead-free gasolines. But, originally, gasoline didn't have lead in it anyway. The oil companies put lead in the gas to make it burn slower and cooler. Anyone out there remember Gulf "No-knox" gasoline? They developed it, by adding lead to the mix, so a car engine wouldn't get so hot that it continued to run after the key was turned off. Then, in the Global Warming Age, they came up with unleaded gas (by not putting the lead into it) and charged us more money for this "new" product. Then, there were those companies who charged us to test our vehicles every year, and every year the tests cost a little bit more

Don't forget that industries have to comply with these riduculous standards as well. But industry is not like Joe and Sally Somebody. If you and I have to pay more that means we have less. If industry has to pay more they just raise their prices and we cover the added expense. Of course, that means that we have less again. This, too, has a cycle to it. At some point, far in the future, I hope, many of these industries will price themselves right out of business. It'll be a while, for the big ones, because governments will bail them out as often as they can get away with it. And they'll do it with our money, so once again, we'll have less. Besides which, have you seen the news lately? GM posted a loss recently. What did they lose? Nothing. They made less profits than they had anticipated. Note that phrase; less profits. They still made buku bucks, just not as much as they wanted to. Will they make up this phoney loss by producing cars next year at a lower cost to you and me, and sell more cars? Don't bet the farm on it. These big name companies are not going down any time soon.

It sounds like I'm down on auto manufacturers, but it's not just them. Why does a gallon of milk cost almost $4 now? Does the cow charge us more? No. Does the grass cost more? No. The dairy farmer wants more and he knows we'll pay it. The same for bread. It doesn't really cost ten times as much today as it did when I was a child to grow a grain of wheat. It costs something more, because the wheat farmer shares the same expense that we do, but it doesn't cost that much more. You can go on and on with this.

Before you ask it; yes, I make more than I did back then too. But the guys who do the jobs I did back then are not making so much more. When I was 18 I took a job that paid $1.90 per hour and I was in the highest paid group in the factory, outside of management, at slightly more than minimum wage. That year you could have bought a good new car for less than $3000 or a 3BR house for $15 - 20,000, and I seldom had to spend more than $15 for a week's worth of groceries for me and my wife. So, a car cost me about a third of my yearly income, a house cost everything a could make in two years, and groceries for two for a week cost me about a day's wage. That factory is still there, and the guy who's doing the job that I did there is pulling down a whopping $16 -18,000 per year. You do the math. No, I take it back; I'll do it for you. His budget car costs everything he can make in a year, his house will cost him six years, and he can't really afford either because his groceries will cost him almost half of what he earns in a week. The only way he can survive is to insist that his wife work as many hours as he does.

What else? Oh, don't forget all of those scientists who earn their paychecks from Global Warming R & D projects. There are also the people who produce all the propaganda materials; the pamphets, the energy efficient gadgets, the PACs (don't let anyone fool you on this one; they don't work for free), and things that you and I will never know about.

Where will it end? I don't know and I'm sure you don't either. But in my community some are starting to see through it now. I don't have to get my car tested anymore. Maybe there is some hope after all.