Snow, Ice, Global Warming, Energy Independence and the Stupid Americans

How about all this snow! It's crazy.

I watched a documentary on PBS last night called Extreme Ice. It was very cool (hah! I kill myself). You can watch it on the PBS website. Basically, it is a persuasive piece on what appears to be a rapid global ice melt. I have no reliable resources to turn to when it comes to scientific facts on global warming. Do you? The documentary was well done and fun to watch--countless scenes of massive chunks of glaciers "calving" into the deep blue, beautifully deep-carved turquoise canyons in the ice caps of Greenland, and time-lapsed filming of the rapid recession of enormous mountain glaciers. The message I got: this world is breathtakingly beautiful. The message intended (I think): we better stop burning fossil fuels or else!

Why is all this global warming talk such a big deal? I'll tell you why it's a big deal to me. Isn't it strange that a career politician, Al Gore, was the one to ultimately bring the discussion of global warming to the fore? Shouldn't that have been some suave PhD from Harvard (a Robert Langdon type) that has spent his life work on understanding the complicated patterns of global climate? If there's one thing I have come to believe about career politicians, it's that they don't spend much time on things that do not promote their own career. "An Inconvenient Truth" was a political move. From what I have observed, the Left generally likes to use global warming (now called "climate change" for reasons discussed below) as evidence that the government needs to coerce us (by legislation) into being more responsible sons and daughters of mother earth. And the Right tends to point out that there is no evidence that global warming is human caused, "so keep your big government ideas out of our private lives!" You must already know to which side I lean.

On Sunday, I was watching Fox News Sunday with Chris Wallace. The discussion they had on global warming was a classic back and forth by the Left and Right. Here's one place to read the transcript. The discussion starts with "WALLACE: Senator James Inhofe, a leading opponent of climate change legislation..." You'll find it about halfway down the transcript. If you use the "ctrl f" hot key and type in "senator james", you'll find it right away.

I just read it again. Ooooh it just gets my blood boiling! Connoly and Williams provide the classic liberal arguments that we should go green. It's so slimy how the rhetoric of the debate slowly changes with them. This was the first time I ever heard or read anyone say something like "human-exacerbated climate change." It kind of softens the blow from just flat out saying "human-caused" or "man-made." Maybe a half-truth? With all the debacle going on in the UN panel on climate change, the Left has to admit that global warming has been overstated without sufficient evidence.

How about the part on energy independence? Duh! Just drill! We've got enough oil, shale and natural gas under our feet to last a couple millenia! We can do it without ruining our beautiful planet. I love how Kristol points out that it is much more morally defensible that fossil fuels be used to empower the impoverished nations toward the improvement of the lives of their people than to cut them off from such resources in the name of environmentalism.

And the kicker... "Connoly: And it's difficult for the human mind to deal with counterintuitive notions." (Referring to all the snow we've gotten in the face of global warming). My translation of Connoly: I'm so much smarter than all you dumb conservatives out there. Can you "wrap your head around it." Oh please! You know, there's nothing quite so distasteful about the Left than their outright arrogance. It's a communal superiority complex. For the whole two minutes I could stand watching Bill Maher on Larry King live the other night he managed to belittle everyone watching the show with this blanket statement: "what the Democrats never understand is that Americans don't really care what position you take, just stick with one. Just be strong. They're not bright enough to really understand the issues. But like an animal, they can sort of sense strength or weakness. They can smell it on you." Apparently he is "bright enough."

Seriously?

This is all I have to say: I will never drive a Pious, eh-hem, I mean, Prius. Not as long as I have a choice in the matter.