I recently read a Mallard Fillmore comic strip that bothered me. If you don’t know Mallard Fillmore, he is a conservative duck that makes Rush Limbaugh type outrageous remarks on the comic pages of many newspapers. I sometimes wonder if Bruce Tinsley the author listens to Rush Limbaugh and puts Rush’s words in Mallards mouth. Nice work if you can get it.
Many of the points that both Rush and Mallard make can be argued in a way to use facts to point to their predetermined conclusion. The same could be said for many extreme points of view.
But, Mallard (or Bruce) made the following statement about global warming in his January 5, 2008 strip.
“Mallard’s New-Year’s Prediction #12: All of those Scientists who predicted, wrongly, for the past two years… …that global warming would cause lots of catastrophic hurricanes will do it again!! (Eventually, they’ll be right.)”
There is a problem with this statement, and that is that Mallard is wrong. It is like the tree falling in the woods, and no one is there to hear it. Did it fall? Mallard is saying that there weren’t any major catastrophic hurricanes in the last two years, because they didn’t strike the USA. At least that’s what I am guessing, because in the last Hurricane season there were some quite dangerous storms that hit Mexico and South East Asia. In fact, two years ago there was a massive storm that hit China. Just because the storms don’t hit the USA doesn’t mean that they didn’t happen. Unless you are a conservative American with blinders on and don’t acknowledge that the rest of the world exists.
Global Warming causes the oceans temperature to rise. As the seasons change the heat generated in the latitudes nearest to the sun (Northern in the Summer and Southern in the Winter) will redistribute by convection. This means that heat rises in the tropics and it is redistributed toward the poles as the seasons change. If there is more heat, then the redistribution may become more vigorous. Hurricanes are nature’s way of pushing massive amounts of heat toward the poles. More heat creates more powerful redistribution. Whether the CO2 in the atmosphere is causing the global warming or not the heating is happening and undisputed. The conservatives that don’t want to cut our dependence on oil don’t even argue about heating any more. They claim instead that the heating is due to some natural cycle of overall heating and cooling. That position doesn’t matter for the point that the Hurricane intensities will rise if the Earth is truly heating up - regardless of why it is rising.
The problem with Mallard making this blatantly wrong statement to a national audience of people who are centered on America and not the globe in total is that these people are willing to say, “I didn’t see any Hurricanes hit the USA this year, so Mallard makes a lot of sense.” This is just irresponsible manipulation for political self-interest.
The point is that the Earth is heating up, CO2 levels are increasing and the heating of the Oceans will require redistribution of that heat by convection. That heat is pushed toward the poles more vigorously when the temperature differences are high. And, one thing that many people forget, those massive amounts of warm air pushed toward the poles actually impart momentum into that cold air that may actually be pushed further south than would normally occur. So, if you get snow in Florida it could be due to global warming. This is because a strong surge of warm air could push into Russia with such high intensity that the cold air sitting at the pole might be forced south over the United States and in effect freezing Florida. The over all effect is to mix the warm air and cold air as the overall temperature of the Earth increases.
The whole idea that weather changes in one part of the world are connected to other parts of the world doesn’t make sense to a person that only thinks about what they see when they look out their window. A person sitting in Boca Raton, Florida and sees the temperatures drops to record low temperatures isn’t likely to believe in global warming if they aren’t curious enough to ask the question - why? Rush and by extension Mallard see the record cold in Florida and say “Ha Ha Ha, those scientists were wrong.” But, the reality is that the record cold they are witnessing is due to the global turbulence induced by global warming. Ignorance is bliss when you only see things the way that you already knew that they were. Unfortunately ignorance also leads to inaction and disaster if we don’t try to do something before its too late.
-----------------------------------------------------
Don't forget what Stephen Colbert said, "Reality has a well-known liberal bias."
Cross Posted @ Bring It On, tblog, Blogger and BlogSpirit
__________________________
