Wednesday, December 19, 2007

EPA Denies California Greenhouse Gas Waiver

My co-worker suddenly shrieked as she was scanning internet news today. Since she is a Liberal, such shrieks generally are associated with what I consider good news, so I waited with happy anticipation for her to tell me the “bad news.”

“Oh, No! This is awful!” she exclaimed.

She read the offending headline in an exceedingly agitated voice: “The ‘EPA denies California's bid to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.’”

“Wonderful!” I remarked. “The government has no business calling water vapor pollution.”

“Not water vapor, carbon dioxide,” she retorted, visibly annoyed.

Water vapor is by far the most significant greenhouse gas, twenty-six times more prevalent in the atmosphere than carbon dioxide. Mankind only produces one percent of the atmospheric carbon dioxide generated each year, and carbon dioxide is only 0.038 percent of the atmosphere. Atmospheric carbon dioxide is insignificant, and isn’t a pollutant, so what business would the EPA have in regulating it?” I responded.

Barely catching my breath, I continued: “Anyway, temperatures haven’t increased significantly for nine years now, Antarctica is colder and its ice sheet is growing, the 2006 and 2007 hurricane seasons were among the mildest in recent history, and right now cold weather is setting records all over the world.”

“That’s proof of global warming,” she exclaimed. “Scientists say it will be hotter, it will be colder, it will be wetter, it will be drier, it will be stormier, it will be calmer – all of this is caused by global warming.”

“That’s pretty good,” I quipped. “No matter what happens, it proves global warming.”

Getting back to the EPA news, I was about to go into a long-winded explanation of how carbon dioxide and water vapor were the by-products of “perfect” combustion of hydrocarbons when she reminded me that my grandchildren would have to live in a horrible future world created by global warming,” then left in a huff.

“They’ll love the warmth,” I shouted, as a blast of cold air blew through the open door, and rain hammered the roof.

I’m glad Governor Schwarzenkennedy has been thwarted in California’s Quixotic attempt to stop global warming at the state line. Pity he can’t do the same with illegal immigration.

My co-worker professes atheism, but her belief in man-caused global warming has all the trappings of religion. It has high priests – Pontificator Al Gore the Ponderous leads the pack.

It has dogma – natural warming was OK, but mankind are sinners because when they burn hydrocarbons for energy they pursue not lofty goals, but selfish prosperity.

It has Purgatory – that’s where you’ll find the United States, shunned by the enlightened nations of the world like Papua New Guinea.

It has a collectivist Hell - all will burn for the sins of one, the United States.

Finally, it promises Salvation to all if the United States will repent its evil ways and sacrifice its misbegotten offspring, material well being, to save the world from a fate worse than living in a climate similar to that of Hawaii or San Diego.

What about China, India, Brazil, and all the developing nations whose paths to prosperity lead through higher and higher levels of energy consumption?

Obviously, if they see the Great Sinner repent its evil ways, they too will see the light, sacrifice their economic progress, consign their citizenry to continual deprivation and drudgery, and let the United Nations lead all the nations of the world back to the glories of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries – when it was colder than Hell!

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