Friday, December 18, 2009

Little Ice Ages - Life on Mars

Take a look at the two pictures below. Can you spot the difference?



The main difference is that the first one represents a scene from 1565, in the Little Ice Age, and the second one represents Henley On Thames about an hour ago.

Yes, I know it's anecdotal eco-tapeworms, but fortunately as well as taking the above photograph today, I also had the good fortune to be the first human being to meet a Martian. One beamed down and stood by my side as I snapped the image above:

Little Green Man: Gee Jack, it sure is cold for the time of year!

Jack Maturin: How'd'you know my name?

LGM: Well you get hardly any readers here on Earth, but you're number three on Mars, behind Lew Rockwell and Mises.org.

JM: Well, it's nice to know someone's out there.

LGM: We've been here for ages too, spinning around the Earth taking photographs and such like. Did you know the Antarctic is really expanding, especially on the eastern side?

JM: So I heard.

LGM: So we think it's great that you folks are taking it seriously, with the Climate Change conference in Copenhagen, and all.

JM: How'd'you mean?

LGM: Well, it's good to know you have guys there who are planning to try to warm things up.

JM: They're actually trying to cool things down.

LGM: (Taken aback) You cannot be serious?

JM: They are the most deadly serious people on Earth. They want it to make it colder, for the sake of 'The Children'.

LGM: But all of your children will either freeze to death or starve? Didn't you know it's getting colder and has been for the last ten years?

JM: Apparently, rising carbon dioxide emissions mean it's actually getting warmer.

LGM: You guys are nuts. We were drilling at the South Pole two decades ago. Our ice core samples showed us that first the Earth warms, then about 800 years later carbon dioxide starts going up. The warming is causal to the carbon dioxide, not the other way around. The warming is caused by changes in solar activity.

JM: Our latest ice core samples show that too.

LGM: So why are you ignoring the latest studies?

JM: Because the results don't fit the 'Consensus'.

LGM: What about the stratospheric balloon tests which have failed to find any hot spots, thus falsifying any kind of carbon dioxide warming hypothesis.

JM: The results don't fit the 'Consensus'.

LGM: And once you add a certain amount of carbon dioxide to an atmosphere, it stops making any difference anyway. No, don't tell me...

Both Together: The results don't fit the 'Consensus'.

LGM: Right. Still, all the Canadians must be against this madness, of trying to make the world colder. Surely they'll all realise that the Tundra and Permafrost will turn all the habitable parts of Canada into Northern Alberta?

JM: If you took a random Canadian off the streets of Vancouver, and so long as this wasn't Walter Block, then you'd pretty much find a hard-core believer in Anthropogenic Global Warming, and someone desperate to try to cool the Earth.

LGM: You guys really are nuts. The Antarctic is rapidly expanding, there are no tell-tale hot spots in the stratosphere, the latest ice core samples show that it is heating first and carbon dioxide second, the greenhouse effect of carbon dioxide dissipates the more you have, and for ten straight years it's been getting colder, and you still think the Earth is heating up due to Anthropogenic Global Warming? Even dumb asses in the 1970s knew you were in a volatile inter-glacial period and were really worried about an upcoming Ice Age! And now you've forgotten that and you're trying to deliberately make it colder?

JM: That's pretty much it.

LGM: Well good luck to you, sir. I better get back up into orbit before whatever mad virus it is that's infected your brains gets into my eco-system.

JM: The virus is socialism.

LGM: (Disappearing rapidly into beam-up fuzz) You too, huh? We had that junk for over 10,000 years. It took us over 40 years to eradicate it, once we figured out the cure.

JM: What was that?

LGM: (Almost invisible now) A combination of Atlas Shrugged, Human Action, and Man, Economy and State, translated into the Martian - We're all Austrians now back on Mars, Mein Freund. Good luck! (He disappears, with the weird Star-Trek-like buzzing sound fading away to nothing)

JM: (Looking up to the sky) Be Seeing You.

3 comments:

Paul said...

Here's a left-leaning environmentalist Canadian, once founder of their Green party, who nevertheless has maintained critical thinking and as such is a DENIER!! (skeptic really). But he is use to it, he's the head of Rethinking AIDS.

Unknown said...

Block's a Canadian? Bloody hell.

Jack Maturin said...

I'm not sure if he's a Canadian, but he lives part of the year in North Vancouver, over the water from the main part of Vancouver, and I think he was a Professor at Fraser University for a long time.

His wife spends all of her time in Vancouver.

Remarkably enough, I once had a girlfriend in North Vancouver and was thinking of emigrating there. It's an incredibly beautiful part of the world (with some of the most incredibly beautiful women, too.)

Why am I not there myself? It's too long a story.