freezingmybuttoff.ca

If you're a Canadian looking for a fresh new domain name for your blog, I've got a couple suggestions. Getyourparka.ca is available, and so is frigginwaytoocold.ca.

I have yet to hear a straightforward answer to a very simple question: If global temperatures are experiencing the biggest sustained drop in decades, while man-made CO2 levels continue to rise exponentially, how can global warming be factual?

Back in 2006 it was an indisputable truth that the earth was heating up to unsustainable levels as a direct result of human produced CO2.

But things have changed, not the least of which is the subtle abandonment of that phrase for a newer, more inclusive one: 'Climate change.'

I picked up a great deal at the University of Waterloo, where I got my undergrad degree in Environment & Resource Studies, not the least of which was the importance of politically expedient terminology to secure consensus on environmental issues.

I was around to witness the political birth of some of the most influential terminology in the modern climate debate; like 'sustainability', an infinitely complex term that can be applied to almost every facet of life on Earth.

From a political perspective, terms like 'climate change' and 'sustainable' are godsends: they are non-specific enough to invoke just the right amount of trepidation in the minds of the public public, neatly sidestep the need to address certain facts, and help bureaucrats portray themselves as enlightened problem solvers.

We've heard a lot about rising sea levels. There was considerable ice melt in Greenland during the Medieval warm period (this is when the Vikings colonized it), yet sea level did not rise higher than the sea level found today. How do we know? The Tower of London was built at sea level in 1150 AD, the sea is the same level today as depicted in paintings from the time it was built.

Global temperatures declined from 1945 through 1979, yet his was a period of rapid industrial expansion and increasing CO2 production throughout the world.

The increase in CO2 as a percentage of the atmosphere since 1750 is only 1/10,000th, or (100ppm). Of the 186 billion tons of CO2 that enters into the atmosphere yearly only 3.2% is from human activity, the rest is from the oceans, volcanoes, and decaying plant matter. Canada's contribution is around .03% of that 3.2%!

But widely known facts like those, according to politicians and the Hollywood enviro-elite, are simplistic. Non contextual.

In reality, you can't feel those facts in the pit of your stomach like you can when an influential Nobel Prize winner tells you something terrifying.

Like, for example, that in four short years from now (2013) according to Al Gore, the North Pole will disappear.

The facts - that polar bear populations are growing, along with Arctic ice levels, don't stand a chance against reprehensible political fearmongering that taps into the most primitive and ancient of human fears - fear of the future.

Not that I'm immune from such worries.

I checked, and afraid-of-freezing-to-death-on-my-driveway.com is still available.