Is all this Green stuff a bunch of bologna?

It's hard to go anywhere anymore without somebody trying to sell you on something that is green this or green that. Everything has to be green these days; it's the new thing. And even though I'm a strong proponent of all this green stuff, I still wonder at times if all of this is just one big pile of profit driven bologna (pronounced baloney for some reason probably because Americans are too lazy to use the correct Italian pronunciation).

I've heard several very strong arguments for the existence of global climate change and very few for it's non-existence. Actually George Carlin has given me the best argument against global warming I have ever heard:

Save the planet? We don’t even know how to take care of ourselves.

I’m tired of f***ing earth day. The planet is fine, the people are f***ed.

Think about it this way, the planet has been here for 4.5 billion years and we've been here for 150,000 and engaged in heavy industry for just over 200. The earth has been through a lot worse than us: earthquakes, volcanoes, plate tectonics, continental drift, sun storms, solar flares, sun spots, magnetic pole reversal, tidal waves, comets, asteroids, worldwide floods, ice ages.

And we think some plastic bags and aluminum cans are going to make a difference. The planet isn’t going anywhere. We are.

Pack your sh** folks because we're goin' away!

As Mr. Carlin points out, humans have only been on this planet for about one three hundred thousandths of a percent of how long this planet has been here. So if the earth has been here for a year, humans have been here for about 17 minutes 30 seconds. (Go ahead and check my math there, but I think that's right)

We'd have to be the next Jack Bower to do that much damage in such a short amount of time.

There a few things that nobody is disputing. The Earth's temperature has definitely risen about 1 degree Fahrenheit in the past 100 years, and we can go on to say that most scientific organizations agree that this phenomenon is caused by human activity. But it's only 1 degree! Well, maybe 1 degree doesn't have a huge impact, but three, four, or five degrees certainly would. That turns winter snow storms into rain, and hot summer days into unbearable heat waves.

A climate change of such magnitude could also include glacial retreat, arctic shrinkage, worldwide sea level rise, changes in crop yields, species extinction, increased spread of malaria, dengue fever (I don't know what it is but I don't want it), Lyme disease, hantavirus infections (I'll pass on that too), bubonic plague, and cholera, and an increase in severe weather.

So if the earth has been here for a year, we may have just pulled a Jack Bower in about seventeen minutes.

I still hear the mumbling occasionally from people who think the whole thing is some liberal elitist farce that will do nothing but damage our well preserved, global leading, powerhouse of an economy (at least it was). Maybe they are right. In my opinion, there is about a 0.5-1% chance that this whole thing is just a big joke put on by those with just as much wit and cleverness as George Carlin.

But that leaves a 99-99.5% chance that this isn't a joke and we could be well on our way to catastrophic climate change. And while my arbitrary determination of the risk of climate change actually being true could be way off, honestly, it's probably not.

Is all this Green stuff a bunch of bologna?