My Saturday started well. I woke up in Abilene, where I had done the play-by-play on a big high school football playoff telecast Friday night. That’s my bliss.
I left on the trip back to San Antonio well before sunrise. It was cool bordering on cold, unlike the balmy previous evening in that tiny broadcast booth. I had a full tank of gas, good driving conditions, great music and football programs on the radio, and a full vat of coffee thanks to a quick stop in Ballinger.
Despite getting a total of 7 hours of sleep over the previous two days, I felt surprisingly sharp and alert.
Four hour drive. All kinds of topography, including the cliffs, canyons and curves on I-10 East. It got pretty breezy starting in Kerrville, thanks to that overnight cool front. Two hands on the wheel.
And then I got home. And I saw the nuclear assault that leveled portions of six states.
Nuclear assault is not an exaggeration, in terms of net energy. This is all physics and chemistry. There is no mystery. These are not acts of God. And there can be no credible denial of what they are.
That was the biggest systemic tornadic event in American history. And it happened on December 10 into December 11.
Sure, we experience freak and even unprecedented events, including freak weather events. But singular freak events that would normally be separated by decades if not centuries now seem to be scheduled to leave the station every ten minutes or so.
I’ve heard people say that it’s the height of human arrogance to think that our species could be responsible for this. Actually, it’s the height of arrogance to think that we could not be. That is an acquittal not supported by the evidence. That’s O.J. insisting he didn’t do it.
Get online. Take a look at photos taken from the International Space Station. In particular, find a photo that shoots over the curve of the Earth. See the attached thin, glowing band?
That’s our atmosphere. It is at once nothing and everything. There’s not much there there.
But what is there sustains all life on Earth, human and not.
This is just physics and chemistry. Plug the right numbers into the established equations and you get accurate, reliable and repeatable results.
Pour enough toxins into the test tube or petri dish that is our atmosphere, and you can be scientifically certain that what has happened will happen.
But once again, we take a purely scientific issue and turn it into a political and cultural war.
That’s not rational.
This ought to tell you something. Cold, hard, analytical economists are quantifying the impact of human caused climate change, and forecasting its future course. These are green eye-shade guys and gals, not wild-eyed political activists.
You know who else sees it that way. Our United States military, which now regards human caused climate change as our most pressing national security issue.
You can look it up.
But you’ll have to wake up first.
