It’s not easy living in the DC area. The place is a 60 square mile enclave bordered by reality, where the phrase “I voted for George Bush” gets you looked at like you have two heads, while being a gay vegan is considered perfectly normal. No, really!

You can imagine how irritating it gets when out trying to enjoy a beer and one of Al Gore’s cult followers begins proselytizingsomeone&rsqu o;s belief system is pointless. Pointing out how Climate Change is based more on belief than fact quickly sets them off, and they usually proceed to cite heavily flawed studies or quotes from an equally unreliable source. You could go back and forth all day, or you can end the conversation fairly quickly - simply state that you don’t debate religion, and if you’re to be expected to treat it like science, your green friend has to do so first. They can accomplish this by answering three simple questions: to the cause of Global Warming. But I’ve discovered that like the followers of any other religion, debating

1) Given the age of the planet and how widely the temperature has fluctuated over time, what is the ideal temperature that the Earth must be, and how will we maintain it over time?

2) One of the foundations of scientific theory is that it stands up to defeating theories that prove it wrong. We’ve heard how shrinking glaciers prove global warming, growing glaciers prove global warming, more storms prove global warming, and fewer storms prove global warming. What events prove their theories false?

3) Every few years a new threat comes along that threatens our very existence unless drastic action is taken yesterday. Of course, the media provides sensational screaming headlines backed up by irrefutable scientific evidence to promote these scares. Off of the top of my head here are a few from the last 40 years:

• Population would outgrow food supply causing mass starvation
• Oil reserves would be depleted by 1980
• Global Cooling
• Dioxin threatened us all (until it was discovered a pint of Ben & Jerry’s contains 3,000 times the “safe” level)
• Oil reserves would be depleted by 2000
• The hole in the ozone layer would continue to grow at an exponential rate

Since all of these crises turned out to be wrong, why is it that this time is different?

Go read the rest.

Flopping Aces