It is about the green, just not the green you think

About a year ago, I created a monster. I introduced my son to YouTube.

Now, unlike his dad, he does not care to search for nostalgic content that allows him to relive his youth, nor is he looking for the latest political satire, he's a 5-year old on a mission: He wants nature programming, damnit!

I can tell you that, since we started roaming through YouTube, I have watched quite a bit about whales (most notably blue whales and sperm whales), squid (mostly the giant variety), and, recently, dinosaurs. Now, I learned a lot about whales and dinosaurs when I was a kid. Not being allowed to watch a lot of TV, I spent a lot of afternoons as a kid reading every sort of educational book I could get my hands on. However, there was always one thing that always struck me as kinda strange, in everything I read about dinosaurs (and all of the other large reptilian life) and the era in which they lived, it always referred to them living in jungles and swamps. There was never any talk about dinosaurs living in deserts or even temperate climates -- the only habitats that are ever mentioned are tropical and sub-tropical ones. Why is that?

The answer is that, 65 million years ago, the Earth's climate was much warmer. In fact, the average temperature on the planet was 4° C (7.2° F) warmer than modern temperatures. This, in turn, raised the humidity levels on the planet as well.

Now, a funny thing happened between now and then. In fact, it's happened several times: the Earth's temperature dropped, drastically, causing periods of extended glaciation over areas beyond the polar circles. We call these periods "Ice Ages", the last of which ended roughly 10,000 years ago. This leads to two simple questions.

The first is obvious, "Why did the ice age end?" The answer being that it ended because the Earth's temperature rose significantly, thereby causing the ice sheets which were covering large amounts of the northern hemisphere to melt.

The second question should then be the obvious, "What caused the Earth's temperature to rise?" The answer being that we really don't know what caused it. However, we certainly know that we can rule out human activity -- 10,000 years ago, humans had wood-fueled fire for energy, they did not have petroleum-fueled internal combustion engines or coal-fired power plants.

So, where am I going with this? I am trying to prove something that you don't hear very often, if at all, from the "global warming" movement and that is this: the Earth's climate has been changing since the planet was formed and that it will continue to change in the future, with or without the impact of humans. This runs directly counter to the rhetoric of the "global warming" movement which would have you believe that human activity is the dominant operant in climate change and that humans are currently on a path which will irreparably destroy the planet's ecosystem, thereby making life on Earth improbable at best.

Why I'm skeptical of this is simple, I just don't believe the message I'm being given because A) I don't trust the science that I'm being told justifies it, and B) it's too alarmist. To me, when you synthesize the message down to its basic point, it doesn't seem very different from "Repent, the end is near", something you hear from a lot religious movements, especially those which spread disinformation in order to not only sell their ideas but to speed up their adoption. Maybe that's why Michael Crichton wrote about the Cult of Global Warming. As such, I really feel a need to question the motivations behind the movement.

As I wrote last year, altruistic movements like saving the planet do not gain traction without there being a chance for someone to make a significant financial gain. Well, last month, the BBC (of all sources) gave me the answer I was looking for: Al Gore is a partner in a venture capital firm which invests heavily in alternative energy companies. Regardless of how Gore wants to defend his actions, the fact is that the man is lobbying governments around the world to change their energy policies and he's seeking to profit from these changes. That makes him a lobbyist. Nothing more.

So, as I said, it is about the green, just not the green they want you to think of...

Easy on the"poor me"s

First, I'm going to begin by saying congratulations to the Philadelphia Phillies, who defeated the Tampa Bay Rays 4 games to 1 in the World Series and are Major League Baseball's 2008 champions. They outplayed the Rays and outlasted the rain and proved that age and treachery do beat youth, innocence, and a bad haircut.

That said, don't count me among those who feel the slightest amount of pity for Philadelphia's "long-suffering" fans who had to endure a 25-year wait between championships, because I don't want to hear it.

If you take a look at the major-league sports franchises in the “big four” sports (football, baseball, hockey, and basketball), you’ll see that there are 114 teams spread out across 40 metropolitan areas within the United States (I'm omitting Canada for a reason). Those metropolitan areas would be: Atlanta, Baltimore, Boston, Buffalo, Charlotte, Chicago, Cincinnati, Cleveland, Columbus, Dallas, Denver, Detroit, Green Bay, Houston, Indianapolis, Jacksonville, Kansas City, Los Angeles, Memphis, Miami, Milwaukee, Minneapolis/St. Paul, Nashville, New Orleans, New York-New Jersey, Oklahoma City, Orlando, Philadelphia, Phoenix, Pittsburgh, Portland, Sacramento, Salt Lake City, San Antonio, San Diego, San Francisco Bay area, Seattle, St. Louis, Tampa/St. Petersburg, Washington, DC.

Out of those 40 cities, 17 have won a championship in the last 10 years (this includes Philadelphia's World Series title this week). Here's how they break out:

Championship cities in the last 10 years:

Metro Area	Championships
Baltimore	1
Boston	6
Charlotte	1
Chicago	1
Dallas	1
Denver	2
Detroit	3
Indianapolis	1
Los Angeles	5
Miami	2
New York-New Jersey	5
Philadelphia	1
Phoenix	1
Pittsburgh	1
San Antonio	4
St. Louis	2
Tampa Bay	2

Of course, if we look back further, let's say the last 25 years, the list gets considerably longer. Now the cities where a championship was celebrated grows from 17 to 25 and now includes: Atlanta, Cincinnati, Green Bay, Minneapolis/St. Paul, San Francisco Bay area, Washington, DC.

Which means that the following cities have NOT won any sort of a championship in the last 25 years: Buffalo, Cleveland, Columbus, Jacksonville, Memphis, Milwaukee, Nashville, New Orleans, Oklahoma City, Orlando, Portland, Sacramento, Salt Lake City, San Diego, Seattle.

The problem with that list is that we have a lot of cities which are either new to the whole major league sports scene (Columbus, Memphis, OKC to name a few) or have only one team (or both). So, let's remove the cities that only one team calls home and those whose teams have been in existence for less than 20 years, we see list become a lot smaller. Buffalo, Cleveland, Milwaukee, New Orleans, San Diego, Seattle.

Hmm, that really draws a stark map of sporting futility, doesn't it.

Metro Area	Last Title	Mantle of Futility
Buffalo	1965	4 straight Super Bowl losses
Cleveland	1964	how many losing seasons since?
Milwaukee	1971
New Orleans	-	zero winning seasons in first 19 years
San Diego	-
Seattle	1979	only franchise to actually win a championship left town

Looking at it this way, it kind of makes that whole "haven't won a championships in 25 years" thing seem a little silly, doesn't it?

Why Columbus Day is more important than you think

Columbus Day, typically believed to be October 12th and, like most other holidays in this country, has been reduced to merely being observed on the Nth Monday of the month. The original purpose of the holiday was to mark and celebrate the discovery of America by Christopher Columbus and, by extension, western civilization.

However, we now know that Columbus didn't discover America. It was, in fact, right where the Irish, Scandinavians, and Portuguese would have told him it was, had he actually bothered to ask them.

So, why celebrate this day of discovery (or invasion, as certain groups are want to call it)? Simple, the day also marks a triumph in the ever-continuous battle between truth-seeking science and power-mongering religion.

Huh?

When Columbus' fleet set sail from Spain in 1492, he didn't just embark on a journey to extend Spain's imperial reach (although, that is how he sold the trip to the Spanish crown), he set forth on a journey of faith. Not faith in God, but faith in science. He set forth to prove that the pope and his minions were wrong and that the Earth was actually the sphere the ancient texts claimed it to be. And, upon landing in the West Indies, he shattered the lock and chain which the Roman Catholic church had used to bind the truth.

So, for that, Cristoforo, old boy, I salute you. Happy anniversary.