Global Warming

An Online Publication of the Anonymous Anything Society — September 19, 2018

GLOBAL WARMING: An Existential Threat to Every Living Thing on Earth

Do you remember when there were summers when perhaps one weak tropical storm threatened islands in the Caribbean or years went by before a monsoon swept into Bangladesh, completely on the other side of the World? I've been around for a long time and I don't remember any time when whole sections of forests all over the world were on fire, or both polar ice caps were disappearing. Scientists in Antarctica are predicting that a huge ice shelf is threatening to break off in the near future, resulting in an appreciable rise in the oceans.

The reason for climate change is now being verified by scientists drilling down and extracting cores from ice that formed eons ago, then examining it for chemical content. As supposed by theorists in the past 50 years, more and more carbon dioxide was found in ice as the centuries progressed from the beginning of the industrial revolution, circa 1850, to the present. This is why we are suffering more and more from the gradually intensifying "greenhouse gas" effect. Civilization demanded the burning of more and more fossil fuels to power our engines.

The result was more and more carbon dioxide (CO2) being continually trapped in our atmosphere. Data from scores of scientists from all over the World, including the U.S. Carbon Dioxide Information Center at Oak Ridge Tennessee and The World Data Center for Paleoclimatology, along with The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, confirm this.

Planet Earth is not going through some sort of cyclical temporary phase. Climate change is "man-made." The solution to the problem is ridiculously obvious: the phasing out of the use of petroleum and coal for the generation of electrical energy. The quicker and sooner, the greater, the better.

I read something recently put forth by the pioneer right-wing radio broadcaster, Rush Limbaugh. I was not surprised by the title of his diatribe: "Global Warming is a Hoax." He goes on to say, "The International Energy Agency says that carbon emissions only grew 1.2 percent in 2017, (To a new spike) "These brain dead media people are lapping up all of this stuff about greenhouse gases rising and ice caps melting," says the Dean of Conservative Radio. "In fact," Limbaugh insists. "Compared to the Roman Period and the Medieval Period (before thermometers existed), the atmosphere is cooler now than it was then. Global warming is overdone. 40 scientific papers published in the first three months of this year (The Rushter neglects to identify the writings nor their authors), clearly show nothing climatically unusual is happening. There's no global warming. If anything, cooling is happening."

Yes, but what if anything accounts for the rash of tropical storms being spawned at one time in all the oceans and the scores of fires on every continent? And the heat? And the tornadoes that ripped through places like northern Washington State and Norfolk, Virginia, where twisters are seen even more rarely than Bigfoot?

-Phil Richardson, Observer of the Human Condition and Storyteller

"He goes doddering on into his old age, making a public nuisance of himself."—Joseph Menchen

Our unending thanks to Jim Bromley, who programs our Archive of Prior Commentaries

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