Clever People State The Obvious
I always knew the education I was given was pretty good, I guess this demonstrates it beyond a shadow of a doubt.
So first off I have to apologise. This is probably the millionth news update written about today’s announcement that… wait for it… global warming is caused by humans!
I know, it’s something of a reach isn’t it? All that burning of carbon dioxide generating fuels while simultaneously removing the forests that convert said carbon dioxide back into oxygen is causing a problem. Who’d have thunk it?
For those not up to speed yet, here’s the scoop : global warming is now a fact boys and girls, and clever people have stated that by the year 2100 the temperature on this planet will have risen, on average, by 3-6 degrees celcius. Might not sound like much, however that kind of difference is sufficient to raise sea levels by 4-6 metres.
According to those insurance types at Lloyds sea levels rose worldwide between 10 and 20cm. To see (sic) the effect of that check through the news of recent years for floods, coastal erosion, that kind of thing. By my reckoning there have been a fair few, but me and the boys and girls at Lloyds reckon that’s just the icing on the cake. And they should know, since they underwrite a whole bunch of insurance.
Suffice to say that a rise in sea level of a couple of metres would be enough to put a lot of places under water. If that isn’t enough fun for you already UK types, the desalination of the atlantic caused by melting ice caps will bugger up the gulf stream (that nice piece of water coming up from South America and Africa that keeps our climate temperate) meaning that instead of becoming the Costa Del Kent, the parts of Essex which aren’t underwater will have balmy conditions similar to those in Siberia. Only with more rain. And occasional hurricanes and stuff like that. So effectively, despite it being called “global warming” the effect for the UK is the that the weather is even more crappy than usual, and given that the only place in the country still above water will be Birmingham this can only be considered a terrific result.
Now then, this news broke this morning at the UN where clever people informed elected people about the brand new piece of information.
Dumbasses the lot of them.
I went to school in the country, and while country may not mean dumb, it also doesn’t necessarily mean “on the bleeding edge of scientific research”. And I was taught, in geography, in the mid 80s, that global warming, the greenhouse effect, the depletion of the ozone layer, acid rain and all this kind of stuff was fucking up the planet. I was taught this in school twenty years ago.
Ten years before our friendly neighbourhood, highest polluter on the planet colonial chums didn’t ratify the Kyoto treaty because they didn’t quite buy into the whole concept. Moreover, and this is merely a conspiracy theory on my part and may come as a shock to some of you, I believe the treaty was not ratified by the jolly Americans because they would have had to do something about the amount of oil they use. This would have been Unpopular™ and Not Conducive With Getting Re-Elected™.
At this point I would like to highlight, by means of political clarification, that it wouldn’t have made any difference whether the yanks had a democrat or republican in charge at this point. The decision would have been the same. Corrupt, nearsighted, money grabbing assholes the lot of them.
Attention Americans : elect a tree-hugging party for a while please. Set one up if need be. They can make all the unpopular decisions then you can go back to electing idiots who either use their power to score blowjobs from unattractive women with big hair or invade countries the other side of the world in order to procure more oil in order to further exasserbate the current climate problems.
Given the choice I’d vote for the guy interested in big-haired chicks with a penchant for fellatio, but that’s just me. A little less opportunity for overzealous flagwaving perhaps, but fewer bodybags. Your call.
I digress. What I find to be just a little incredible is that I was taught this stuff as a kid, understood it because it made sense, and expected the people who run the show to do something about it. I was young, and therefore naive.
After all, the people who run the show would sooner invest trillions of dollars on bombing the piss out of the third world because Jesus told them to (not he fucking didn’t) than invest a fraction of that cash ($10bn should do it) in finding a non-polluting alternative to oil – the reason they went out there in the first place.
“Hi George, we’ve got a scientist who wants to talk to you.”
“Sure, send him in.”
“Mister President, I have here a thermometer and a tape measure, and on them I’ve marked the difference in global temperatures and sea levels over the past 50 years. Pretty conclusive evidence wouldn’t you say?”
“Hang on professor, I’ve got Jesus on the other line and he’s telling me that the A-rabs want to take our freedom.”
How is it that my kids, who are 8, can work that out but George, Tony and the boys can’t. No question mark in the sentence because it is rhetorical.
My favourite bit of this whole scenario is that even if carbon emissions were cut to zero, world wide, tomorrow we’d still have 20-30 years of freaky-ass fucked up weather before the situation went back to normal.
Here’s a pleasing analogy for you. You go to your doctor complaining of chest pains. The doctor says, yup, your smoking and eating of too much pizza is catching up with you. I strongly advise you to stop now if you want to live a full and happy life. You do nothing though, because what do doctors know right? Twenty years later you can’t walk up a flight of stairs without feeling like you’re about to have a seizure so you go back to the doctor. He tells you that if you’d followed his advice in the first place you’d be fine now, however it’s now pretty much too late and you’re going to die. Painfully. Then Jesus turns up and says it’s all cool if you just bomb some A-rabs.
Friends, here’s the thing. Jesus, right? He’s dead. Maybe he was the Messiah maybe he wasn’t, but he’s gone now. Now, if we take a quick leap of faith (which seems to be faith’s favourite olympic event – “the leap”) and assume that Jesus does indeed talk to The Chosen, why would he advise them to expend enough money to save the planet in order to fly thousands of young men and women to a place where they should kill hundreds of thousands of innocents in order to procure the means to kill the planet faster? I’ll tell you why – Jesus hates America. Sorry to be the bearer of bad tidings, but under the above supposition it’s the only thing I can think of. Oh, unless it’s because your president is a lying sack of shit. But that can’t be so, after all there were WMDs in Iraq. And he is a politician, so there you go – above reproach.
I’m currently reading Unspeak which, while flawed (check the review from Marcus Alexander for a fair appraisal) hits the nail on the head a few times.
When I was taught about global warming it was called “global warming”. Then, subtley, over the years this changed to be “climate change”. Why is that? Simply put because the concept was spun quite handsomely. “Warming” implies that something is acting as a warming agent – there is a cause there somewhere. “Change” meanwhile implies nothing other than a difference in the state of play, not necessarily good or bad. PR gurus having slaved long and hard to find the right language as to make it all seem like less of a big deal, and certainly not the fault of big oil, big countries or big fat liars.
Another change which came about as recently as a year ago, which I’m not sure if anyone else has spotted yet. Apparently, the root of all evil is jet-aircraft in terms of carbon emmissions. When did this happen? I figured that a hundred million people all setting fire to stuff in order to get from a-b in a steel box was doing more damage? Or those sodding great fossil fuel powered industries belching out megatonnes of smoke daily? Don’t get me wrong I’m sure planes do more than their fair share, but it seems to me that they’re probably not #1 on the leaderboard. Bombing the piss out of an oil well however, I reasonably convinced is going to be pretty high up.
So, conclusions.
First, George, Tony – hope you drown first. Along with all the journalists (no special global-warming related reason). Second, give me some alternatives to my fuel-burning ways and I’ll jump straight in. I’m not going to pretend my “carbon footprint” is zero, because it’s not, but I’m game to do my bit given the opportunity. Third, I’m going to buy a big trimaran like Kevin Costner in Waterworld, only I’m not going to let Dennis Hopper fuck it up.
Finally, I take some solace in the fact that Norwich will be underwater first.
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