AlGore's Gas

I have been hearing a lot of commentary as of late relating to global warming. It certainly has been interesting to contemplate global warming in the middle of a cold snap with temperatures hovering around zero, and snow up to the proverbial whazzoo. AlGore is apparently going to win an Academy Award for his political documentary An Inconvenient Truth. He has been nominated for a Nobel prize for his environmental work. The United States has been chastised for our greenhouse gas emissions and failure to ratify the Kyoto Accords. How thoughtless of us.

I think Bill O’Reilly got it right on his program a few weeks ago when he said we ought to clean up the gunk in the air just because we should. I don’t like living in a dirty house, and I do my best to try to keep my office in relative good order, although that is open to debate by some. Burning less oil means less dependence on energy supplies from extremely volatile parts of the world. That is where George Bush dropped the ball. That should have been given priority after 9-11.

I am basically green in my approach to things. We installed a high efficiency gas furnace, and bought a high efficiency dishwasher. We are considering an addition to the house and I have instructed the builder to look at solar panels to assist in heating the room. We have done all the other normal stuff like sealing our windows and putting draft stops on the bottom of our doors. We could probably use some insulation on the top of my house. Two of our three cars average 25 mpg. I drive the guzzler, and it takes premium gas to boot. Bad me.

The problem I have is that I just don’t buy the global warming hype. I read about United Nations reports which have taken the approach of here is the theory, don’t confuse us with the facts. The UN has actually fudged historic temperature charts to fit whatever premise it happens to be pushing at the time. I can drive up into Trumbull County north of here, where it is flat, and understand that it was the glaciers that made the terrain the way that it is. They are not there anymore, and we have the Great Lakes resulting from the glacier retreat. Was that global warming? The glaciers are supposedly retreating in Alaska, but they retreated from here too. Then I read a report in the newspaper about a United Nations report that says the single biggest source of greenhouse gases is methane released in cow flatulence. This should be called AlGore's gas.

We should all be wary of science which is molded by politics. There is not 100% agreement that AlGore is right. The fact that a majority do agree is not convincing. There was a time when most men of science believed the earth was flat, and the sun rotated around the earth. 20 years ago I was told eggs and butter are bad for me. Eat oleo margarine. Now I am told that oleo margarine is much worse than butter. I should switch back. Little bit late for that, isn’t it?

At the end of the day, within 10 years, or maybe 5 depending on whom you read, China and India will make our greenhouse gas emissions look paltry. The world needs to address this issue based on facts rather than politics, and intellect rather than emotion. The United States should sign on to Kyoto when China and India are subject to the same regulations and requirements as we would be, and not one day sooner. In the meantime, lets start to clean the gunk out of the air just because it’s the right thing to do, politically, economically, and environmentally