Uh oh – turns out that the planet isn’t getting warmer after all!
Just as the dire predictions that hurricanes would relentlessly bash every American coast in the years after 2005 proved laughably false in the face of some of the lightest hurricane seasons on record that actually followed, so it turns out that the planet has actually cooled since 1998.
I’m going to repeat that, just in case Al Gore or his followers are listening: 1998 remains the hottest year on record. Every subsequent year has been cooler than 1998.
1998, b-t-dubs, for those scoring at home, was over a decade ago.
So how have we become a culture obsessed with global warming? A society that, instead of focusing on species preservation or deforestation or the destruction of the world’s oceans, has mortgaged the entire environmental farm for a few degrees? It’s almost enough to have me starting to think conspiracy. That, despite global warming sometimes seeming like a noble lie (I’m no fan of emitting things into the atmosphere, even if the consequences are less dire than Gore would have you believe), the lie might not be so noble after all.
The nobility of the lie hinges on the question I discussed in my prior post on this subject and whether the micro “solutions” being proffered to the first-world public are really just distractions from the real agents of environmental destruction or not. It’s starting to feel like no accident that the “green” movement is more about buying new technology than actually reducing any waste in a meaningful or broad-based way. Yay, lightbulbs! That’ll stimulate the economy and convince people that capitalism is compatible with being “green”!
Maybe it’s just another, more nefarious green that’s behind this whole co-option of the movement. So people will continue to eat meat and fish and contribute to overconsumption (buying 600 tote bags!) while the planet cools by itself and corporations continue to act with impunity. Hooray.
Man, my posts always end up being such downers.
