The Earth is a Cube and Hot Snow Falls Up...

I have a consensus on that. Me, the homeless guy I met in Ohio, and Gaia all agree. That's enough right? Apparently it doesn't take much more than that for the media and the acolytes of Al Gore to decide that 'the debate on global warming is done'.

Not. So. Fast.

Turns out there were more than 400 leading scientists that disagree with the global warming theory (and it is that...a theory). Amazing, I'd never heard that before. CNN said the debate was over:

"We're done." O’Brien also declared on CNN on February 9, 2006 that scientific skeptics of man-made catastrophic global warming “are bought and paid for by the fossil fuel industry, usually.”

Ah, those sneaky fossil fuel lobbyists. ABC News couldn't even find the fossil fuel backed, Earth hating scientists:

“After extensive searches, ABC News has found no such [scientific] debate."

Found "no such debate". An 'extensive' Google search that I just did, in about 30 seconds, did find several such debates. Guess they didn't want to fire up the old PC...wouldn't want to stress the power grid and force 'fossil fuel industry' workers to have to feed more baby seals into the carbon belching power plants. How noble.

The fact of the matter is that there are debates, lots of them really, about the credence of the global warming claims. Contrary to what the dope on CNN mentioned, criticism and scrutiny of said theory are being volleyed by credible scientists. As it turns out, there are those in the scientific community that aren't willing to watch 'An Inconvenient Truth' and buy in whole-heartedly.

It was only thirty-three years ago that the scientific community had reached another, quite different, "consensus". Seen here:

As they review the bizarre and unpredictable weather pattern of the past several years, a growing number of scientists are beginning to suspect that many seemingly contradictory meteorological fluctuations are actually part of a global climatic upheaval. However widely the weather varies from place to place and time to time, when meteorologists take an average of temperatures around the globe they find that the atmosphere has been growing gradually cooler for the past three decades. The trend shows no indication of reversing. Climatological Cassandras are becoming increasingly apprehensive, for the weather aberrations they are studying may be the harbinger of another ice age.

Really. An impending ice age. To top it all off, the "trend shows no indication of reversing." Evidently it has...so much so that now we're not going to freeze to death, we're going to drown in glacial waters from melting ice caps.

The bottom line, in my totally uneducated (and thus as qualified as Al Gore) opinion, is this: The climate changes. It's always changed. It always will change. Core samples taken from glaciers show that for the past million years the Earth has warmed and cooled for absolutely no good reason. It does because it can. The audacity expressed by scientists, politicians, and blinded eco-nuts that mankind can, would, and should control the climate is laughable, if not completely crazy. Who's to say that the climate we have now is the perfect climate? If you're living in sunny Palm Springs you may think so...but what if you live in Ethiopia? Think they'd like a little more rain? It's not up to us.

I'm not saying that we shouldn't be good stewards of the planet. We should. It's a gift from The Almighty and we should treat it as such. But we were also gifted with common sense...well...most of us anyway, and it tells us that just because I drove my truck to the airport it doesn't mean that I just evicted a polar bear from his home. We already have taxes in place to combat wanton vehicle pollution, if you've ever had your car inspected you know that. Sure we can research other fuels, but how many years are we from a viable fuel replacement? When that fuel comes out, and it'll let me get 50mpg and 300 horsepower then I'm in.

Mark my words: In a year, or two, or twenty scientists and the general public will look back at this 'theory' and see it for what it is, an excuse for people to be burdened by more taxes as well as an excuse for a washed up ex-vice president to gain the spotlight for a brief moment in time.

1 in 194481

At least I think that might be right. Could be 1 in 84, but the other sounds better. What am I talking about? Well I'll tell you. I'm in Dallas tonight...the little brother and I went out and grabbed some seafood (shrimp brochette rocks) and headed back here to the hotel. We got back to the room, checked the fantasy football scores, and watched some TV. I became parched, and after watching that video on the internet of the hotel cleaning woman wiping down the toilet, then wiping down the glasses in the room, I needed a canned drink. So off we went to the vending machine. I pumped A DOLLAR FIFTY into the machine and got nothing. Machine down. So we bounced to the fourth floor, same story. On to the seventh floor and was robbed again. Down to the sixth floor. SAME FREAKIN STORY. Now you may be asking yourself, why didn't you just stop at the first machine and go downstairs? Because time is money, that's why. It'd taken fifteen minutes to go down there, talk to the desk, get my money back, then get a coke. My time is worth more. However, my time is not worth more than six bucks, so I went down to the desk. Here's how that conversation went:

Me: Uh, yeah, I've been to four different coke machines here and have been robbed by each and every one.

Clerk: Which ones? (Looks at a list behind the counter)

Me: Well there was three, four, seven and six.

Clerk: Yep, you got them all. How much did you lose?

Me: I got them all? What are the freakin odds of that? Am I an idiot, did I miss the out of order signs? Six bucks.

Clerk: No, probably not. Ok, here's your money back. We're renovating. There's a good machine over there.

Me: Ok? Thanks.


My brother and I then searched for the "good machine", which was hidden down a labyrinth of halls in a car rental center. I paid a smooth Washington for a can of coke. It was at that point that we looked at the vending machine next to mine. It was the most confusing, and depressing, vending machine I've ever seen. Beneath the Cheese Danish they had...tampons. That's right. Two things that should absolutely, positively, never ever be in the same vending machine together were right there. I'm not sure what kind of twisted individual would stock a vending machine in such a manner, but that person is likely in prison (or soon will be). Shocked, we took a picture of it with our cell phones and left.

It wasn't until after we went back upstairs that I realized that the clerk actually had a list of broken machines. They knew four machines were down. I happened to find them all which is, in and of itself, rather amazing. I could play the lotto for a decade and never get four numbers. As swift and appropriate retribution my brother and I "tied up" their elevators. Next stop? Floors 1 through 21. I did feel slightly guilty when two older ladies stepped into one of the elevators we'd sabotaged, but hey, they looked like they might enjoy a thirty minute elevator ride. Probably have lots to talk about.