I said, ‘What do you mean serious stuff? Climate change happens all the time!’
He said, ‘No, I think the climate…’ Let me put it this way. What he said to me, in my words, indicated to me that he thinks that the climate on the planet today is as it has always been, that it’s never been different, and that we are worsening it.
I pointed out to him, I said, ‘Do you recall — you may not have heard me discuss this, but maybe you heard it in the news — that they discovered deep down underground in Greenland evidence of a long lost civilization? People used to live there.’
He said, ‘Yeah, so what?’
I said, ‘Well, you ever wonder why they call it Greenland? It’s not green, right? Have you ever wondered why they call it Greenland?’
‘Uhhhh… Well, no.’
I said, ‘Because it used to be! You know why it used to be? Because it used to be warmer up there, and that’s why there was an ancient civilization up there.’
And he said, ‘Oh, interesting. I never looked at it that way.’
I said, ‘I know you didn’t because you are so willing to accept the guilt, and you’re so eager to think that.’
The vanity of all of us who are alive today, to think that everything on the planet today is as it has always been: the redwood trees, pristine, ancient forests and so forth and so on. I have a Global Warming Update, ladies and gentlemen, just to illustrate the point how the Drive-By Media does this. Dadelut dadelut dadelut dadelut! Here’s one of our three rotating global warming update themes. It’s ‘white comedian’ Paul Shanklin as Algore.
(playing of Ball of Fire parody song)
RUSH: White comedian Paul Shanklin, the vocal portrayal there of Algore, a takeoff on Johnny Cash’s Ring of Fire. At any rate, AP, ladies and gentlemen, has massive series today on the wire. I just bothered to read one of the pages on the dangers — the dangers! — associated with the arrival of spring. ‘The capital’s famous cherry trees are primed to burst out in a perfect pink peak about the end of this month. Thirty years ago, the trees usually waited to bloom till about April 5. In central California, the first of the field skipper sachem, a drab little butterfly, was fluttering about March 12. Just 25 years ago, that creature predictably emerged anywhere from mid-April to mid-May. And sneezes are coming earlier in Philadelphia. On March 9, when allergist Dr. Donald Dvorin set up his monitor, maple pollen already was heavy in the air. Less than two decades ago, that pollen couldn’t be measured until late April. Pollen is bursting. Critters are stirring. Buds are swelling. Biologists are worrying. ‘The alarm clock that all the plants and animals are listening to is running too fast,’ Stanford University’s Terry Root said. Blame global warming.’ (gasp!) No! (hyperventilating) ‘The fingerprints of man-made climate change are evident in seasonal timing changes for thousands of species on Earth, according to dozens of studies and last year’s authoritative report by the Nobel Prize-winning international climate scientists.
‘More than 30 scientists told The Associated Press how global warming is affecting plants and animals at springtime…’ It’s getting warmer, my friends, and we are threatened! We are in perilous times. We are destroying our ecosystem. Biological timing is called phenology, by the way. ‘Biological spring, which this year begins at 1:48 a.m. EDT Thursday,’ which has already happened, ‘is based on the tilt of the Earth as it circles the sun. The federal government and some university scientists are so alarmed by the changes that last fall they created a National Phenology Network at the US Geological Survey to monitor these changes. The idea, said biologist and network director Jake Weltzin, is ‘to better understand the changes, and more important what do they mean? How does it affect humankind?’ There are winners, losers and lots of unknowns when global warming messes with natural timing. People may appreciate the smaller heating bills from shorter winters…’ Shorter winters? This has been a horrible winter! It snowed big time in Chicago today. Wisconsin set a record in Green Bay for the amount of snow. Montreal has so much snow, it may not all melt this summer! There has been global cooling over this past winter of a degree Celsius, enough to wipe out the 100-year increase. This is just one page of this series. Spring equals danger! I could remember ten years ago, 15, seems like every year the cherry blossoms in Washington were early.
Don’t you remember that? There was alarm and there was cause for concern. But prior to that, ‘Oh, my God, the cherry blossoms are out! Whoa, this is cool. Get to Washington fast to see them.’ There was no alarm about it. Well, you know, this biological alarm clock stuff. I’ll bet you that these phenology people have not even accommodated for the fact that we moved the clocks up an hour a month prior to when we should be. You want to talk about biology alarm clocks? This is so absurd, the idea that everything on this earth is the same? This is exactly my point, that everything on this planet happens at the same time every year. There’s the same amount of snowfall, same amount of rainfall, same amount of cloud cover, same amount of humidity, same amount of tornadoes, hurricane, same amount — except when there’s the slightest deviation from one year to the next, it’s because of us! Well, because of you, because I have no guilt about it. I accept no blame. I don’t think we have the power to affect anything like these changes that they say are happening. We’re mere residents here. What about our biological clocks? What about our biological clocks in springtime and so forth? How about these people in Chicago… It’s the first day of spring, right? No. Butterflies may be out in California, but they’re not in Chicago. I’ll bet there’s not a whole lot of pollen in Chicago and I’ll betcha there are a whole lot of people that wish there were butterflies in Chicago because they’re fed up with winter.