By Peter Hannaford on 9.30.09 @ 6:06AM
Ms. Henny-Penny is back, dizzy with climate warming.
Some time has passed since we'd
heard from Ms. Henny-Penny, founder and recording secretary
of The Holy Order of The Sky Is Falling, so we went around to the
farmyard to see how she was doing. We found her in a state of
high excitement. Why so aflutter, we asked:
Ms. H-P: That wonderful U.N. General
Secretary Ban Ki-moon gave a thrilling speech the other day. He
said we have four months to save the planet.
Us: You mean it will burn to a
crisp from global warning in four months?
Ms. H-P: No, silly. He was referring to
the international climate change conference in Copenhagen in
December. That's when we will pass the international plan to save
the planet from global warm -- er -- climate change.
Us: You had one of those
conferences last December and nothing came of it. Then this
spring Mr. Obama came back from a G-8 conference proclaiming that
all had agreed to cutting carbon emissions by a huge amount by
2050, but no one signed anything.
Ms. H-P: This time it will be
different.
Us: How? The Indians recently
told Hillary Clinton, thanks-but-no-thanks when she urged them to
sign on to an agreement to limit carbon emissions, and the
Chinese have always said, "no."
Ms. H-P: I think THOTSF's pontiff, Al
Gore, may give the keynote address at the Copenhagen conference
and that will change minds.
Us: You're kidding.
Ms. H-P: You skeptics are like Holocaust
Deniers, ignoring the facts.
Us: The Holocaust was real and
there's plenty of evidence to prove it. As for global warming or
climate change or whatever you want to call it, I have some bad
news. A group of distinguished scientists has written an open
letter to Congress which declares, "You are being deceived about
global warming. The sky is not falling; the Earth has been
cooling for 10 years, without help. The present cooling was NOT
predicted by the alarmists' computer models, and has become an
embarrassment to them."
Ms. H-P: That's just what you
think.
Us: No, it's what such scientists
as Richard Lindzen, professor of meteorology at MIT, and Robert
Austin and William Happer, both professors of physics at
Princeton, and several others say in their letter.
Ms. H-P: Nevertheless, it's better to be
safe than sorry and if the Senate will pass the cap-and-trade
bill we'll all be safer.
Us: The only thing THAT would do
is add to everyone's electricity bills and cripple our economy.Of
course it would also give Congress and the administration a new
pot of money to dole out to favored interests.
Ms. H-P: That's a small price to pay for
global leadership. Besides, Pontiff Gore always speaks the truth
and he says global warm -- er -- climate change is settled
science.
Us: Ms. H-P, somebody has slipped
something into your water dish. Mr. Gore's movie, An
Inconvenient Truth, is filled with exaggerations and
falsehoods. After all, he is a
politician.
I could tell she was getting nervous. She looked as if she might
froth at the beak any moment when she said.
Ms. H-P: You'd better go now, you Global
Warm -- er -- Climate Change denier you, before I get really
angry and ask Ban Ki-moon to come here and knock some sense into
that thick head of yours.
(Mr. Hannaford lives in northwest California, which
has just had another cooler-than-normal summer.)
topics:
Global Warming
