...But nobody does anything about it.  So goes the age old joke.  But it's not so funny anymore in this, the age when an ever greater segment of the population seems to believe that we can do something about it.  Welcome to the Church of Global Warming, Reverend Al Gore presiding.

     This morning, a friend and I were cooling down after a run through a local park on a particularly nice morning.  Sunny but not too hot, low humidity...as good as it gets around here in the middle of the summer.  Since it was so nice, our conversation turned to the weather, and she commented on the long-term forecast for her upcoming vacation destination.  She said she had looked at the 10-day weather outlook for the city she was preparing to visit, shrugged her shoulders and said, "but you know those things are never right."

     She's correct, you know.  If we can't even predict precisely what the high temperature will be tomorrow, how can we know what it will be in 20 years?  I would venture that even armed with your local weather forecast, you would not wager your next week's paycheck that you can predict exactly what the high temperature will be tomorrow.  I wouldn't.  A variance of one degree, one way or the other, and you're eating mac and cheese until next payday.

     A one degree margin of error isn't much to play with, yet the Reverend Al and his disciples would have us believe not only that the 1.3 degree increase in the earth's average temperature over the last century is real, but is our fault.  We are also to believe that the International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) is correct when they predict an additional two degree rise in global average temperature in the next 100 years.  This prediction is brought to you by the same collective of scientists who cannot tell you with a similar degree of accuracy what the temperature will be tomorrow.  Now I am not a scientist, but I would think that the closer in time an event becomes, the easier it becomes to predict the outcome.  Of course, complicating the whole global warming debate is that there are also groups of scientists with studies that say either that it doesn't exist, or that it isn't caused by humans, or both.

     So it seems it all comes down to belief, and what are we to believe?  Well, you are of course welcome to attend the Reverend Al Gore's church, which believes that humans are powerful enough to change the very nature of...well, nature.  But that seems to me to be the doctrine of man as God, man as more powerful than nature.  I have a hard time with that.

     You see, in my life I have spent a lot of time outdoors.  I spent my childhood camping and hiking, with family and friends.  Walking in the woods after school with my buddies, swimming and fishing in the lake near my home.  I have explored the beautifully forested mountains of Appalachia, and marveled at the big skies and glorious views of the desert Southwest.  I have walked prairie grasslands, surfed North Carolina waves, and dipped my toes into chilly Pacific waters.  I have seen ice floes and the aurora borealis in the Canadian north.
 
     I remember one time as a teenager, camping in a canyon along the Rio Grande in northern New Mexico with friends, a couple of us woke up before sunrise, and everyone else was still sleeping.  We decided it would be fun to climb the canyon wall, and we reached the top just in time to see the sun rise.  I could not begin to describe the view as the sun rose and reached into that red sandstone canyon, but I can tell you how it made me feel.  Small.  It made me feel that I was a tiny little observer in a great, beautiful, and mysterious world, a mere rider on this magnificent creation called Earth.  I understood then, as I understand now, that this world was created by someone or something greater than myself, and that the forces of God and nature are infinitely more powerful than humans can dream of.

     So we are powerful enough to raise the temperature of the earth, even accidentally?  Or more significantly, as Al Gore and his disciples would have us believe, that we can lower it at will?  The arrogance.  Why stop with trying to control the temperature to within a degree or two?  Let's stop hurricanes and tornados.  Let's stop flooding.  Let's stop blizzards.  What arrogance.  Arrogance born of a belief that there is nothing more powerful than man.

     Believe Al Gore if you want, but I happen to remember that feeling of smallness born in that canyon sunrise almost 30 years ago, and I know that we are specks in this universe.  The planet will do as it pleases, whether we like it or not...we are only along for the ride.  We can treat it with due care and respect, and we should.  But when this world is finished with us, it will shake us off as a dog shaking off fleas.  And there is nothing Al Gore, or anyone else, can do about it.  A little humility, please.  We are not God.