The people who worry about "global warming" at the rate of two degrees per century are probably surprised that any plant or animal survived that 95-degree temperature swing. Ninety-five degrees in one week works out to a rate of change of about half a million degrees per century.
Of course I understand this was a fluke. A freak occurrence. A creak in the noise floor.
Another few days at that rate would have made Kansas unbearable. But the global warming alarmists have been telling us for the past 20 years that we have to "save the earth" from a two-degree average temperature increase because our environment is so fragile, and multiple species would be wiped out by it. There is already a long list of otherwise unrelated developments that are being blamed on
global warming even though the warming seems to have stopped by itself in about
1998.
In the room where you are sitting now, the difference between the air temperatures at the floor and the ceiling is probably about one degree. If the temperature increased two degrees per hour, you would most likely find it imperceptible, at least for the first hour. Two degrees is practically nothing.
To believe or assert that global warming of two degrees per century would wipe out any plant or animal, you first must believe that today's temperatures are "just right." Then you must be able to ignore the comparatively large temperature swings between day and night, and the even larger changes between summer and winter -- of which there will be several, before a century elapses.
Here is the great irony in all this: Many of the people who say they're worried about global warming are the same people who preach "survival of the fittest" in the public schools. They have no choice but to trust that plants and animals can adapt to global warming. I'm confident that they will -- at least in Kansas.
Andrew K. Dart is a broadcast engineer in Dallas, Texas, and is also the editor of akdart.com.
