Hello America. Today I'd like to bring to your attention a heist - a theft of globalthermal proportions. Someone is stealing our cool! No, not that kind of cool. As far as I know, Justin Timberlake and Derek Jeter are fine. No, I'm talking about the lack of cool in our atmosphere.
For some reason, our little blue and green orb has been getting warmer over the past hundred years. Other than a cooling period from 1940-1980 (a small percentage of the last 100 years) the Earth's temperature has risen 245° farenheit since 1900.
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IPCC: Uhh, excuse me, Mr. Dobson, that's not exactly accurate.
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Who's interrupting my introduction? What the hell are you thinking?
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IPCC: I...ummm...I just thought....
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Sit the fuck down before I smack you upside your head! I have a good mind to kick you off my panel right now. You sit down and you shut up, and if I hear another peep out of you, I'm going to slam your head through that table. Understand?
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IPCC: Yes sir...
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Good. Damnit! Where was I? Oh yes...
Over the past 25 years, the Earth's temperature has risen 375° farenheit, and we're here to find out why. Today, we have a distinguished panel of guests. Let me introduce them now.
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Patrick: From various places scattered throughout the atmosphere, we have our good friend, Carbon Dioxide, or, as I like to call him, CO2.
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Carbon Dioxide: Hi, Patrick, thanks for having me. Good to see you again.
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Patrick: Next up, we have a buddy of yours. His parts come from many places, but at his heart, he's just a city boy born and raised in Detroit. From the lower peninsula, the H2 hummer!
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Hummer: Yee haw! Let's turn 'em and burn 'em!
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Patrick: Yes...right. Our third panelist makes his home at the center of our solar system, but he'll always be at the center of our hearts, the Sun!
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The Sun: Great to be back, Pat. I'm really glad to come in here and voice my thoughts today.
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Patrick: Thank you, Mr. Sun. Our fourth panelist today lives in a secret lair somewhere within the center of the Earth. He's as cool as he is evil, Earth's first real Super Villian, Vice President Dick Cheney!
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Dick: Mwa ha ha! Thank you, Patrick! Gwa ha ha ha ha!
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Patrick: Great and terrifying to have you, as always Dick. Our last panelist today hails from all over the globe. He is skating on thin ice with me after stealing my girlfriend and most recently causing me to lose my temper during the introduction. Our annoying fairy of an analyst, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.
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IPCC:Thank you, Patrick, I'm glad to have this opportunity today, but I don't appreciate you calling me a fairy, or giving me this image. It really sends off the wrong message.
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Patrick: You'll take it, and you'll like it! If you know what's good for you, you'll shut up and quit complaining about every little thing. Otherwise I'll put you next to Cheney.
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Dick: Heh he he he.
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IPCC:I'll be good.
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Patrick: Ok, let's get down to business. CO2, you're up first. You get a lot of the flak for causing the recent rise in global temperatures, do you think it's well founded?
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Carbon Dioxide: Yes, Patrick, I hate to admit it, but I definitely have a hand in it. I have this awful addiction! I need sunlight! I crave it! I need to have it inside of me. And once it's there, I like to hold it there, in my special place and...
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The Sun: Ooo, you're getting me all hot and bothered.
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Patrick: That's enough of that! I won't let this panel be turned into a mockery! So, CO2, you've been heating the atmosphere by absorbing heat from the sun.
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Carbon Dioxide: Yes, I'm not the only one with my....ummm....appetite. That slut, Water Vapor, seems to be able to take in a great deal more sunlight then me. Floating up in the air, all white and poofy, catching all the sun. Methane and Ozone are more like me. We aren't whores like Water Vapor. She makes up 95% of all greenhouse gases, while the rest of us have to share the other 5%.
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Patrick: I see. So you don't think your role in heating the Earth is that big a deal?
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IPCC: We think it's a very big deal, Patrick. You see...
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Patrick: Hey, fairy dust, pipe down. We'll get to you in a second. That is unless Cheney decides he wants to bite your queer head off. I want to talk to H2. Now Hummer, a lot of people say that you are to blame for the extra heat in our atmosphere. They say you're working together with CO2 to melt the ice caps and sink New York, Boston, and Miami into the ocean. What do you say to this?
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Hummer: Why, it's gull-dern rubbish, Pat. I release all kinds of CO2, but the heating isn't all my fault, really!
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Patrick: IPCC, you think he's causing it, don't you?
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IPCC: Absolutely, Patrick. The thing about anthropromorphic climate change is...
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Patrick: IPCC says you're causing it, H2, what do you have to say to that?
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Hummer: Rubbish is what I say! CO2 will back me up on this. There's about 750 billion metric tons of carbon in the atmosphere.
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Carbon Dioxide: That's right, but we have a few places, and that's not even the biggest. In billions of metric tons, there are 1,020 of us in the surface oceans, 1,580 of us in the in the various soils of the earth, and 38,100 of us in the deepest oceans.
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Hummer: Aye, buddy, you got it! Soil and vegetation emits 121 billion metric tons into the atmosphere a year and the oceans emit 90 billion metric tons a year. Then there's me, I emit about 7.1 billion metric tons of carbon into the atmosphere a year. Most of it from burning fuel, but any time I run over a tree or kill a shrub, that emits a bit as well. So there's no way I'm the cause, I blame nature!
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Patrick: Wait, so 218.1 billion tons of carbon are released into the atmosphere each year, and fuel burning and deforestation only accounts for 7.1 billion metric tons of that? That's less than 4%!
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Carbon Dioxide: That's right, Patrick. And don't forget what I said before, I make up less than 5% of all greenhouse gasses in the first place. All of that carbon going into the atmosphere isn't even a large part of greenhouse gases, and you humans aren't even responsible for the largest share of it. On the contrary!
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Patrick: So there is some other sneaky bastard adding heat to our atmosphere. Mr. Sun! Isn't it true that you are the ruthless crook who's stealing all of our cool?
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The Sun: Why...uhhh....no. I mean, yes. I mean...
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Patrick: Yes? No? Well? Speak up man, what is it? What is the answer?
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The Sun: Well, I'm not exactly certain of my involvement. See, I don't put off the same amount of heat all the time, and I have many different phenomena like solar flares, sunspots, solar wind, and other magnetic forces that can affect the amount of heat in Earth's atmosphere.
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Patrick: So you're saying you don't know? What kind of sad state of affairs is this?
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The Sun: Look, I'm just a big burning ball of gas. They wouldn't let me go to elementary school, let alone study meteorology at the university. This stupid country is full of solarists! Everything I have to say was given to me by some scientists that I hired, and none of them know anything about me. There's simply not enough research being done on me to know how my differing cycles affect Earth's climate over time. What I can tell you is that I'm probably between 18-36% responsible for the increase in Earth's temperature, as per my various cycles.
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Patrick: But there's no way to know for sure?
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The Sun: That's right, there's simply too much research being done on how man is causing global warming. There's not enough money being spent on what else might be causing it. Nobody cares about me, I'm going to cry....
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Patrick: IPCC, you heartless bastard, you made the sun cry!
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IPCC: No! It wasn't me! It was that damned Al Gore! He said that if I didn't tell everyone it was all man's fault, that he wouldn't give me any more money! My wife and kids spend millions of dollars every year, how am I supposed to support them? Al Gore landed a dirigible on my lawn and unloaded two tons of gold onto it! What am I supposed to do? I can't help it! I can't help it! I can't help it! I can't help...
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Patrick smacks IPCC in the face and slams his head repeatedly into the desk: Get a hold of yourself, man! You're a highly respected body of scientists! Now, take a deep breath, and be respectable.
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IPCC: I can't! We're not scientists! We're a bunch of politicians with doctorates. I don't know what I'm doing. I hired Spunky Ferguson to do most of the research because he was so good at blowing bubbles in his chocolate milk. We all respected him so much, he was so cool.
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Patrick: Chocolate milk bubbles?
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IPCC: You should have seen them! They were huge! Just before naptime at the UN building, we'd all gather round him and watch. He was so cool.
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Patrick: I think that's enough talking to the IPCC today, it's probably past his bedtime. After all of this talk about carbon and solar variation, I don't think we have a definitive answer to our global warming problem. It seems like there's a missing cause here that we don't know about, and I think I know exactly what that cause is...........Mr. Cheney!
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Dick: Gwa?
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Patrick: Isn't it true that you're the X factor in all of this?
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Dick: How do you know..... about The Device?
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Patrick: Isn't it true that you are running a weather machine at the core of the Earth that is heating the atmosphere as we speak?
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Dick: That is correct! I am the cause of global warming!
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Patrick: But....why?
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Dick: Money! You cad! Money is the cause of everything! A few years ago the economy was in shambles, and nobody wanted to build oil wells or dig coal mines. What was Halliburton to do? But now, now we will build refineries for ethanol for BP, we will construct General Electric windmills to supply power grids all over the world, and we will once again construct energy infrastructures that will power your blenders, and auto-gyros, and electronic picture boxes! Mwa ha ha ha!
At this, Vice President Cheney disappears in a puff of smoke. Several bats fly out of a nearby window.
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Patrick: Well, what an odd turn of events. I think we better call it quits for the day. I'd like to thank Vice President Cheney, the H2 Hummer, the Sun, the IPCC, and CO2 for coming and talking with us today. I need a drink. Goodnight!
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I'd like to thank 3dchem.com, mattszabo.com, eb.com, stardate.org, and treehugger.com for the use of their images.
Look for my next political commentary sometime in 2008.
Tschüs!