Roman Around

Just between you and me … I love doomsday movies. It’s a weakness.

The more inane and more incredible the premise, the more I enjoy it. I’m not sure what that says about me, but as long as buildings are being destroyed by monsters somewhere, continents are being threatened by hurtling meteors, and cities are being sucked into the ocean by Richter-scale shattering earthquakes, I’m happy. (I’m talking in the movies).

This is probably why I have such an affinity for global warming stories that forecast disaster for the Earth.

Unfortunately, so much absurdity has been injected into the discussion these days that to parody them is nearly impossible anymore. A disaster film about the effects a billion simultaneously melting glaciers, for instance, would more likely be seen as an instructional video rather than silly entertainment.

A few years ago while working on a project with the Young Republican Club of New York City, the idea came up that we could create a skit (for a TV presentation that never came to fruition) where a hard-nosed news anchor reported the threat of global warming being so serious that global cooling would break out. It sounded so ridiculous  – and potentially funny – at the time.

Today, it passes for just another disastrous by-product of the human race out of control.

Take, for instance, this paragraph from one of the better doomsday stories I’ve read in a while, composed by Seth Borenstein of the Associated Press, published yesterday:

Ironically, 2008 is on pace to be a slightly cooler year in a steadily rising temperature trend line. Experts say it’s thanks to a La Nina weather variation. While skeptics are already using it as evidence of some kind of cooling trend, it actually illustrates how fast the world is warming.

There it is.

That temperatures are actually falling now illustrates how fast the world is warming.

Indeed, the article is worth a read, if only for the use of the phrase “ticking time bomb” in the first paragraph and the equally endearing “time is running out” in the second. 

Who says objectivity is dead?

And for those who believe that the doom has already settled in, you may be right. Borenstein writes:

The amount of carbon dioxide in Earth’s atmosphere has already pushed past what some scientists say is the safe level.

Damn. That can’t be good.

The overall gist of the article is that new President will have very little time to get something done to save this planet.

Obama is stacking his Cabinet and inner circle with advocates who have pushed for deep mandatory cuts in greenhouse gas pollution and even with government officials who have achieved results at the local level.

Translation: Obama has put into place a team of radical leftist enivironmental freak jobs who will look to demonize business and industry by implementing ”green” standards that will hurt the country.

Period.

Remember … Obama is a centrist.

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