7/3/98

    Let me talk about global warming for a bit.

    We live in a room called the earth.  We can't see the ceiling because it's a function of gravity, which is invisible.  The air's mass is attracted to the denser mass that forms the planet on which we crawl around and do things.  No one has a good explanation for gravity yet, but it certainly seems to be a basic fact of  here: things like to get together, and they do every chance they get.

    So, a room.  Closed.

    We've all gone to parties in rooms.  Those rooms are hot.  All those people having fun, breathing on each other.  Sometimes, you go into one of those rooms from "outside" and it smells a little powerful.

    Similarly with fire.  You come in from the freezing cold into your freezing cabin after a day of surviving, crank up the wood stove and before you can get all your gear off it's too hot and you have to open the windows.

    That's global warming - too much fire in a closed room.  Because there are ever more humans and each one burns, or has burned on account, an increasing amount of fuel each day.

    There are people going around saying that actual warming is not happening, and since the global temperature trends are not out of a several million year average at this point there's no point in arguing statistics with those people.  However, the fundamental process is undeniable.  We are making significantly more heat in our closed box of a planet than would be produced if we were not partying all the time.

    Most of the heat we make is by burning oil and coal.  I believe our experts have decided that oil is constantly being created, though everyone thinks that rate of production cannot possibly match rate of extraction.  But the great coal deposits are from about 300 million years ago, and are not going to come again while we're around burning everything we can.  (It's tempting to waste time musing on possible metaphysical ramifications of this withdrawl of "long term assets.").

    Weather patterns and temperature trends essentially prove nothing.  Rising ocean levels ought to clinch the process as a fact to the recalcitrants.  I think it's been something like a foot in the last 100 years.  Acceleration of rate of rise is on the order of millimeters per year at this point, so, like the guy with the changing spot behind his ear, we can argue about whether something's really happening or not.  Doesn't matter.  The arguing, that is.

    Can something be done by individuals to ameliorate the situation?  Sure.  Live simply!  Forgo energy use!  Don't party!  Compete with your neighbors in abstention and piety!  That ought to do it in a couple of centuries, wouldn't you think?

    So come, let us be hot in the summer and cold in the winter together.

    But who has the time to do that, or anything different from what we're already doing, that's worked so far, and besides, it's what we know how to do?