Friday, December 4, 2009

Beer Drinker's Guide to Global Warming

The other day I got into a conversation about global warming with a friend of mine. No matter what facts I would present, many of which he agreed were valid, he would dismiss their credibility with what he thought was his trump card. That trump card is that fact that the average global temperature has only changed a fraction of a degree. So, how could there be global warming if the world was not getting appreciably warmer?

After a little more discussion, I was able to give him a smaller example of global warming that explains why global warming can occur, but the global average temperature not spike. The example seemed to work, so I decided to modify my little example so more anti-global warming people could relate to it. Here goes.

Let’s say I am a Tea Party member on a warm summer day. I plan to go to a Tea Party rally being held the next day in a nearby town and I need to prepare for it. I head down to the local convenience store and buy a 20-pack of Coors and a couple of bags of ice. As I drive back home I wonder how all those northeast, Harvard educated, intellectuals could be so stupid. It might be a warm day, but it is the summer and it is no warmer then I could remember. When I arrive back at home, I go out onto the porch and throw the beer and ice into a cooler.

While the beer cools down, I head back into the house to get my hand gun. I want it to be clean and shinny for the rally. No self-respecting Tea Party member would show up at a rally with a dirty gun on their hip. I finish cleaning the gun, put it away safely and head to the cooler to see if the beer is cold. To my luck, the mountains on the can are blue.

As I start drinking that first beer, I start thinking about what I want on the poster I am going to bring to the rally. As I drain the last drops out of the can of beer, I decide that I will go for shock value and head to my computer. In a matter of minutes I have a picture of Hitler printing out. I grab an old poster board, which my daughter used for one of school projects, and head back to the porch picking up other supplies on the way.

I grab another beer from the cooler and I notice that although the ice level is going down, the mountains are still blue. As I put together my poster I marvel at the similarities between Hitler and the President. Hitler blamed a small percentage of his countries population for all the countries problems to gain control and then proceeded to try to exterminate 12 million people. Our elected President is calling for everyone to work together to solve his country’s problems including finding a way to give everyone affordable healthcare. While I finish the poster, I drain the beer. As I go for another beer, I re-think how eerie the resemblance is. I put the poster inside the house and as I start thinking about my next task the telephone rings.

I answer the phone and it is my cousin George with some great news. George tells me that he was called back to work at the automobile parts supplier. He was laid off 18 months ago due to the economic slowdown. The timing could not be better since the extended unemployment checks he was getting were about to run out. I am not sure how to feel about this since his company supplies parts to GM. As I think about George and his family my eye is caught by a copy of Glenn Beck’s latest book on the counter. I quickly tell George that I am glad for him, but have a lot to do. We end the call without having to get into a discussion about how this country is going socialist. George just does not understand that this country would be better off if the President just let GM, and Chrysler, fail. I don’t even want to tell him that I agree with Rush and support a boycott of GM even though it means some of my friends, neighbors, and relatives will lose their jobs. They will be martyrs in the fight against the socialist President.

I notice the time and realize that I only have a couple of minutes before Sarah will be on T.V. for an interview. Thanks twitter for the heads up. I grab another beer, with blue mountains, and turn on the television. The interviewer asks her a “Birther” question. Sarah holds her ground in that it is still a legitimate issue even though many in her party have publicly said it is nonsense. She is such a maverick. ;-)

The mail should have been delivered by now, so I grab another beer, notice that about half the ice has melted, and head out to check the mailbox. I check the label of the can and the mountains are still blue. As I walk to the mailbox I think about the great buy I got on the cooler. Half the ice is melted, but the beers are still as cold as that first one.

The mail only has two pieces of any importance. The first is a note from my credit card company telling me that my interest rate is going up. I wonder how much more money it will be before I payoff that HDTV I bought last year. The other piece of mail is a doctor’s bill. Seems I still have not reached my deductable, but I am still glad since I remember that the tests were for my son and that the tests showed my son did not have a rare disease. If he did it would have cost a fortune and when he was older he would not have been able to get his own health insurance.

I head back to the porch and grab a couple of beers and then head to the garage so I could wash my new Mazada Tribute. I lament that it is too bad that Americans can’t build the same kind of quality vehicles as the Japanese. The lack of quality must be because of those evil unions. I remain totally ignorant of the fact that the vehicle was produced in a Kansas City plant.

I finish the car wash and head back inside. I grab one more beer and notice the ice is mostly gone, but the can I grab still has those wonderful blue mountains. They are more of a light blue, but still cold enough to drink. I head back inside to finish up the last few tasks I need to get done to prepare for the rally.

After finishing everything up, I head back to the porch for a final beer and to just sit on porch looking out at my collection of vintage cars scattered in the backyard rusting. I go into the cooler for that last beer to find a little ice left, but not enough to keep the beer’s mountains blue. As I close the lid to the cooler, I thank G-d that global warming is only a myth or else I would have had to drink more then one warm beer.