Flare Up

Today is a really hot day. I know this because not only is today scraping in off the coat tails of yesterday's heatwave, with the thermometer peaking at 29°C [That's 84°F if you're country hasn't upgraded to the metric system yet], but I was also helping my father in the garden this morning. The dirt, sweat, sun and stifling heat of yard work was almost enough to melt my eyeballs. But having showered and escaped the heat, and the promise of watching a musical theatre classic on the big screen in an air conditioned theatre, in my very near future, I have been pondering flame, heat and warmth. Such as the heat of the sun, sunlight and it's effects on the earth. And inevitably, of course, it lead me to think about Global Warming.
That's right, I'm going there. The Word of the Day is 'HEAT'.

Heat /heet/ n. 1. The quality or condition of being hot; hot temperature. 2. A sensation of hotness or warmth; heated bodily condition. 3. Warmth of intensity or feeling. 4. The height of intensity of any action: the heat of the moment.

It's poetic that 'Global Warming' seems to incite such heated argument. [haha, Puns: I love them, because you hate them]
There's a whole lot of nonsense going on in the media about Is Global Warming Real? Is it Not Real? What can we do?!" And the people who believe think the people who don't believe are a bunch of snub-nosed, ostriches with their heads in the concrete; while the critics see the believers as a sack of screeching cats, screaming green and forcing everyone to change their light bulbs.
So I want to get this out of the way quickly. But please, if you don't agree with my position (or you do) please read on. You might be surprised...

I don't believe in 'Climate Change'. Though, I don't identify as a 'climate change skeptic' because that brings to my mind images of a man sneering over at the numbers and raising an eyebrow thinking "Well, is that what you think?". And the word itself is insulting. It says "Oh, so you're a skeptic...?"
Well, no. I'm not like that. I'm a realist. I look at the numbers. Global Warming is 'real' in the sense that, yes, the world is getting hotter.
But Climate Change is a steaming pile of misapplied numbers. I'll try to put it into layman's terms.

See, we are currently in what is known as an interglacial, which is a fancy way of saying "not an Ice Age". You see, an Ice Age, like the movie franchise, doesn't happen just once. Rather, Ice Ages happen a lot, in a series of: Ice Age; Interglacial; Ice Age; Interglacial; ad nauseum
If you want to know how the hot, cold, hot, cold dynamic looks, feel free to check out this graph from globalwarmingart.com showing the temperatures, ice volume and something else from the Helocene period.
You see, we shift from hot to cold all the time, and as I understand the variances in temperature are caused by anything from continental shift & ocean currents, to changes in Earth's orbit & the power output of the sun.
Now, as I understand and have had explained to me by a Chemical Engineer [thanks, Dad], we're actually a lot colder now than most Interglacial temperature peaks, so it's actually supposed to get a lot hotter, naturally. It's all perfectly understandable.
Now, don't worry, I'm not demeaning the position of people who believe in Global Warming. The reason why scientists are worried [and think Mr & Mrs Average Citizen should be too] is because we're heating up quite fast. As in, a lot faster than ever before. And they are worried that we'll 'over-shoot' the usual peak temperature and hit a sweltering interglacial period that could melt ice caps and stuff.
So for those that don't understand that is why the Climate Change cats are so worried. They think that if we stop carbon emissions, lessen wattage of lightbulbs and walk more, we can cool the planet and stop Global Warming.
And here's where I shake my head. Although our atmosphere does affect the temperature, it is one criterion of at least six other, bigger criteria that affect Global Warming.
So, there's not much you can do about it. It's what nature intended. But now that I'm done picking on the believers, let's piss off the skeptics. Because, you see, there's one thing I don't understand about this argument:
The skeptics non-compliance stance.
Sure, Climate Change is bullshit. But how are they fixing it?
Stopping Pollution; Reducing Energy; Recycling & Saving Money. Dude... I like ALL of those things. Even though I don't agree with the reason why, I like clean air, and less energy costs. I like reducing waste and I REALLY like saving money. So where's the downside here?
We make some paranoid cats happy, and we make the Earth a little bit cleaner. Then, when Global Warming happens anyway and we're all cooking on our own bones in 2100, we get to be smug about it!
Win Freaking Win, Baby!

In conclusion, I hope that this has been a swift breath to cool the smoking gun of the climate debate. Because, no matter who's right, we should definitely clean up after ourselves.
Keep cool, peace out and I'm gonna go watch Les Misérables.