The other thing I can say about 2017 is that besides arguing with small-minded folk about the relative worth and goodness of Nazis, the debate about global warming continued. The "President" even appointed an energy secretary who not only disavowed its existence, but was ready to eliminate his position had he himself become president. Once he took the job, he was unaware that his responsibilities included overseeing the United States nuclear stockpile. With this as a prime example of the brain trust now running our country, is it any wonder that scientific fact continues to be up for grabs?
How about Oklahoma senator James Inhofe? As the author of The Greatest Hoax: How the Global Warming Conspiracy Threatens Your Future, Senator Jim would like you to know that things are not as dire as all those science types would have you believe. As proof of this, he brought a snowball to the floor of the Senate (feel free at this point to make your own joke about that snowball's chances)
to demonstrate just how cold things still are outside.
Never mind that temperatures across the globe continue to rise each year. Those eggheads at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, a branch of the U.S. Department of Commerce, want us to believe that things are getting warmer every year. The geniuses who sit with their arms folded tightly across their chests as polar bears die, will continue to bleat their mantra, "The climate has always changed," even as the ground beneath our feet turns to cinders.
If only there was a way that we could show all of them some sort of empirical evidence that would put this controversy to rest. Infrared photos of the planet, charts and graphs showing the annual temperature increases don't seem to have the effect we might have hoped. As long as this is still looked on as a partisan issue, it is good politics to place yourself on the other side of the climate fence if you encounter someone from the opposition who wants to slow or stop this threat to our existence. Never mind that when the planet becomes inhabitable for human beings that it will impact Democrats just as surely as it will Republicans, Americans just like those wacky Europeans and the other one hundred ninety-some countries that have signed the Paris Accord. Even Syria. We are now the only country on the outside, looking in.
Sure, climate change will continue to give our "President" chances to hop on Air Force One to go and toss paper towels at those affected by hurricanes and floods and blizzards, but it's not a game we can win. Not in the long run. Unless some of those assertions made about Jim Inhofe's snowball turned out to be true. Maybe we're already in Hell. Climate change doesn't make a lot of difference in Hades.
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