Monday, April 21, 2008

Global Cooling


RL just handed me a Manhattan ... that was my first favorite drink when RL converted me from wine sipper to what I would call a spirits guy. Probably my favorite now is a chilled dry martini, but RL's cocktails are always so exquisite that it does not matter which of the drinks he proffers from his broad and expanding repertoire.

I changed my sig line at work today ... simplified, really, but added this line: One planet. Think global warming with every action we take.

I thought about the line a long time ... it is not particularly felicitous, but I did not want it in the second person as that seems so accusatory.

To set the scene ... the Giants are in a nice game with the D-backs, and Kevin Correia ... who seems like the nasty, dirty boy next door from the one family held lowest in regard by the peacock proud neighbors ... is pitching well, but is down 3-2 in the 6th.

Anyway ... I have meant for a while to speculate thusly (am I allowed to say thusly?) ... what if it were global cooling? What if Texas were threatened with August blizzards?

In other words, what if the physics of carbon dioxide were such that it blocked solar energy, and we were facing not a warmer but a cooler planet. The low-bore immoralists who continue to suck up giant obscene SUVs do so either because they don't care or because they rationalize that a warmer planet will provide for more summer vacations on the beach. But what if they were confronted with an imminent ice sheet crossing Lake Ontario and taking out Ohio.

Global cooling would have inspired faster action. I'm sure of it. Global warming seems like a boon, and it is easy for the blinkered to imagine that the scientists are doom-and-gloomers ... they just just buy some sunscreen and a new pair of speedos and head to the beach. It's summer party time, all year long.

One more thing on global cooling ... am I the only atheist who is puking at all the fawning over pope Rat? Talk about global warming. This is a guy who is from the most reactionary wing of the church ... he'd light the pyres, baby, if only he could. The New York Times has a blog on the pope with lots of commentators ... all Christians plus one Jew. No atheists, though. Atheists see through the charade. Atheists are not impressed by a fascist spewing hatred borne of a fourth-century self-loather whose doleful influence has been the proximate cause of death and misery beyond counting.

One skeptic I know well, my good friend Jim, noted with ribaldry that it is the pope who has the ruby slippers ... see my immediately previous post for context ... now, more than ever, we need Judy to rescue the ruby slippers from the evil witch from the East.

Global cooling, the pope with ruby slippers, Giants losing. What a wretched evening.

Photo by Arod, looking up in the National Gallery, Ottawa, Canada

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