CBS News Presents: The Age of Warming

Sunday, January 20, 2008. CBS TV presented "The Age of Warming" as a replacement for 60 Minutes. This is an email I sent to CBS regarding that program. This is also a rant so it's rather long. Go to the sunset or watch the elephant if you prefer.

Jim Hanson was an interesting interview on this program. But his words were about as meaningful is Jim Henson's would have been on the same subject. (And people might be more inclined to follow the guidance of Kermit anyway.) Any study of earth climatology and the rise and subsequent extinction of any species would reveal that human beings, mankind, are an insignificant blip in the long term existence of this planet we call home. Why we, as human beings, seem to think that we are the ultimate results to evolution, that now that the world is inhabited by people that it is wrong for any further change to occur is laughably silly. Throughout the 4.55 BILLION years that this planet has been here we, as a species, have occupied it for a teeny tiny scant 2 million years. That's .044% of the time this planet has been here. Dinosaurs inhabited this planet for something like 75 million years, 1.65% of the life of the planet. And it took only 65 million years, or 1.43% of the life of the planet, for the planet to recover from their extinction. That's nothing! The fact that we have used up all the the planets so-called natural resources in a microscopic instance of less than 200 years, (.00004%), is frightening on the surface, but ultimately insignificant, unavoidable and meaningless. There is a limited supply of everything and there is no avoiding the fact that we're going to run out eventually.

OK, there's no arguing that we, as human beings, are destroying the environment on which we depend to survive. And except for the fact that we as a species depend on the environment for our survival on this planet, the rest of the something like 10 million other species currently inhabiting this cosmic grain of sand will continue to evolve and fill ecological voids whether we're here or not. Why do we, as human beings, think the we are so important that the evolutionary life of this planet should stop now that it is inhabited by homo sapiens?

Yes, the planet is warming. But ice core samples indicate that it has done so in the past. Yes, we are in fact speeding up the process this time around. Yes, the planet was once cooler. And it will be cooler again. How long did it take for the glacier that cut through Yosemite to do it's work? Did anyone, any species, panic because that glacier eventually melted away? Was there a problem with that?

I think your program this evening was very interesting and entertaining. But I think that all you did was follow the underlying political control of the planet in airing it in the first place. The planet is going to change. The climate is going to change. Yes, we have speeded up the process a bit, but even if we hadn't, it would have happened eventually anyway. Why are human beings so important to this planet, this universe, the neighborhoods in which we live, that in the long term any course of action that we may decide to take will mean anything at all in the long term? For that matter, what has ever been gained by a war other than enjoying the peace and benefits of it ending?

I agree that we, as a species, should do everything that we can to slow down the global environmental changes that we have accelerated. Not for this generation so much but just because it's politically correct to pretend that it means something to our children. We didn't start these changes. We only happen to be one of millions of species that have inhabited this planet and taken advantage of the resources left to us by it's previous inhabitants. In finding ways to extend our own existence and essentially putting the brakes on our own evolution as a species we just used them up a little faster. And just like them we will disappear and some other species will evolve to fill the void. Let's hope that 65 million years after human beings become extinct that the next top of the food chain species will find a better use for the "fossil fuels" which we will become.

The earth is changing, has been changing, and will continue to change until Our Mr. Sun checks out. As a species we get our 15 minutes just like the rest of them. And the fact that we will disappear won't effect the planet in the least little bit. It will recover. It will change. A new species will come along to take our place at the top of the food change. And no matter how concerned we might be, no matter how well produced the television special is on how we can "prevent" global warming, it, or some other species canceling event is going to happen.

I do what I can to help the environment, limited mostly by the limits to which my community and so-called public services will accommodate the need. My only joy in all this is that I was lucky enough to be born after WW2 and will likely die before global warming will have any significant or direct impact on the existence of my species. My guess is that it's the generation that my children spawn that will suffer the most. But by then we will have run out of fossil fuels and the overpopulation of the planet and our dependence on "natural resources" will have created an entirely different problem with which that generation will have to deal with. The fact that the polar bear will by then have become extinct is perhaps a little sad, but in the long term of things, insignificant. Our planet has about another 5 billion years to go, but human beings will have long been forgotten by then.

Your program was very entertaining. But I can't help but think that, at the fundamental foundation of it all, at the deepest root of the existence of the network, it was presented to sell ad space. For me it didn't have any more impact than the sensationalistic coverage of the current presidential race. Everything these days is either the sensationalism of mans inhumanity or the human interest that results from that inhumanity. Neither Hillary, Obama nor McCain can afford to take a real effective stand on global warming, "the war", health insurance or so many other situations that could make a real positive change in this world and retain any hope of being elected. True change is not an option for the masses. We are programmed to believe that God put us here and that evolution is not an option. En mass, people follow anyone who can promise that things will NOT change. Our fate, as a species, depends on the popularity, not the effectiveness, of our global leaders. How can anyone not see the irony in the fact that life on earth, as we know it, is dependant on a political popularity contest? We are sooooo silly. It's enough to make a cat laugh.