Was I wrong about global warming?

Contrary to popular belief, I am not a scientist. I'm really not even that smart. So when it comes to the debate on man-made global warming, I'm not exactly an expert. I'm not even the janitor cleaning up for the expert's trophy wife. I'm not about to attempt to argue the ins and outs of CO2 levels and I'm not going anywhere near the effect of sunspot levels. According to some, CO2 levels are making the temperature go up and according to others, it was caused by the increasing number of sunspots, which has gone down recently. Apparently, the scientists who said that rising temperatures were caused by excessively flatulent cows have been completely discredited. Whatever.

I'll admit that I believed that the recent onset of this phenomenon was caused by us. Now, I've already established that I'm not very bright, so accusing me of being an idiot for believing it doesn't make you a better person. I mean, it's not exactly a secret on this side. Apparently, the sunspot theory has proved to be the correct one.

Almost no one knew about the sunspot theory, however, so just because some didn't believe that global warming was man-made doesn't make those people right when they hear about sunspots. These people didn't have any proof backing up their non-belief in man-made global warming. They just didn't understand anything about CO2 levels, so they fought against it. They're like those people who claimed that the Earth was flat. They had no hard evidence to back that up. They didn't know that Amelia Earheart was going to fly off the side of the world like that; they were just sticking with the establishment and caught a lucky break.

But saying that two years of lower temperatures completely disproves man-made global warming comes from the same school of thought that says that staying off the ground for longer than two seconds means you can fly. I don't know what school that is, but I'm betting all the students have to use safety scissors.

However, the global warming debate isn't my fight. I don't have any degrees and according to those IQ test ads, I'm really not any smarter than Pacman Jones. All I really want to say is that smog is not a natural occurrence. Smog is not good for you. You're not really supposed to inhale that stuff. Or bus fumes. Or whatever that is that comes out of textile plants. All I'm saying is it can't hurt to stop letting our factories crap all in the river.

If you go out to the Wesley Chapel bridge across I-20 at anytime during a warm summer day and look towards Atlanta, you will see a yellowish-brown haze all of the place. I'm pretty sure that's not the high pollen count, either. Last time I was in New Orleans (well before Katrina), I was on I-10, going past the Superdome when I looked out across the city and noticed a brown haze. I can say with some confidence that the city wasn't trying to match the Saints' colors. When describing a city, the words "dirty" or "frighteningly unhealthy" shouldn't come to mind.

Maybe I'm just being a little skittish, but I'm not of the mindset that says that we should test the upper limits of the amount of abuse that the Earth can take from us. In a rare and unexpected split from the church, I'm going to declare right now that the Earth has been here for billions of years. It's been through meteors and asteroids, fires, earthquakes, pole reversals, you name it, the Earth has been through it. Man (in it's present form) has been here for about 100,000 years and believe it or not, we're pretty fragile. We can't survive getting hit by a well-thrown baseball, let alone giant chunks of rock. Also, we burn up right nice when we get close to fire.

So the Earth might be okay with whatever we're doing to it, but that doesn't mean my lungs or skin are going to be. Sure, the river's going to keep flowing despite the raw sewage, but all the fish in it are going to die or mutate into horribly disfigured killing machines. And dust storms don't hurt the Earth, but the lack of trees hurt us in more ways than hurting the economy. What I'm saying is, whether or not man-made global warming is real isn't even the point. Just as a rule of thumb, it's probably a good idea to stop dumping sludge into our very finite drinking water supply.