{"id":624,"date":"2015-02-05T07:43:28","date_gmt":"2015-02-05T15:43:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jocularious.com\/?p=624"},"modified":"2015-02-05T13:57:47","modified_gmt":"2015-02-05T21:57:47","slug":"embracing-climate-change-fun-profit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/jocularious.com\/?p=624","title":{"rendered":"Embracing Climate Change for Fun and Profit"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/strong><\/p>\n

By Jack Edwards<\/strong><\/p>\n

The last time I wrote about \u201cclimate change,\u201d which I so primitively referred to as \u201cglobal warming\u201d (so pass\u00e9), I failed to anticipate that otherwise peaceful, loving people, many of whom were nurturing mothers whose hands regularly caressed the soft cheeks of their precious newborns, would come after me with steak knives. In their defense, they were not savagely attacking a real human being. All of them could no doubt pass a lie detector test that I was, in fact, a sloped-foreheaded Neanderthal. (They wouldn\u2019t be the first to make this mistake.) But in the spirit of saving my own skin, please discontinue reading this week\u2019s column if you can\u2019t take what we in the humor industry refer to as a \u201cclimate change joke.\u201d We \u201cclimate jokers\u201d are a small but mighty band of fearless warriors fighting on the cutting edge of the untamed plains of the humor frontier.<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t want to brag about my scientific credentials, particularly my credentials in the area of meteorology, but suffice it to say that I watch my share of television. I have a PhD from the Meteorology School of hard knocks. And I\u2019ve come a long way from the Jack Edwards that wrote the column Confessions of a Global Warming Agnostic<\/em> (http:\/\/jocularious.com\/?p=128). I\u2019m still a climate change agnostic, but now I\u2019m a climate change agnostic that has decided to develop a \u201cPlan B\u201d in the event that this whole climate change thing is as eminent as that multiple-mansion owning, private jet flying, \u201ccarbon credit tree selling\u201d Al Gore claims it is.<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s my take on it. The modern American automobile emits practically zero carbon emissions these days compared to years past. And they\u2019re only getting more efficient and less polluting. But the population of the United States is about 350 million, and many of these people are still in middle school, so they can\u2019t drive yet. Whereas India and China for example, are filled with BILLIONS of people who drive three-wheel jalopies that emit, to my eye, the equivalent of a year\u2019s worth of one US car\u2019s carbon emissions simply starting up their contraption. Does this mean we should just surrender our fight against climate change? Does this mean that we should just throw in the towel? Yes! That\u2019s absolutely what we should do! If the world\u2019s climate is, in fact, changing, it\u2019s hopeless.<\/p>\n

If getting a \u201cC\u201d in Economics taught me anything, it taught me about supply and demand. And from what I see of melting glaciers and sad looking polar bears clinging to the last remnants of floating sheets of ice, the price of \u201chigh ground\u201d is about to shoot through the roof faster than an emperor penguin can say, \u201cWhere did that ice shelf with my family just go?\u201d Let\u2019s put it this way, some say \u201cfoothills,\u201d I say \u201cfuture ocean front lots.\u201d The time to invest is now, people.<\/p>\n

And in case you think I sound callus, that I\u2019m simply a cold hearted, money grubbing piece of scum, well\u2026 that would be hard for me to defend against. But slow down there cowpoke, I also consider my neighbor\u2019s well-being. That is why I support federal legislation requiring that by 2017, all high school graduates are proficient in engineering the design and construction of those houses that sit on tall poles over the tide water. I also support requiring that Physical Education programs include a full unit on the lost art of walking on stilts.<\/p>\n

Well, I have to run now. I need to get a nose job and change my name. Based on my prior experience, if only one single loving mother continued reading this column after the first paragraph, right about now, she\u2019s heading to her kitchen for a steak knife.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Jack Edwards The last time I wrote about \u201cclimate change,\u201d which I so primitively referred to as \u201cglobal warming\u201d (so pass\u00e9), I failed to anticipate that otherwise peaceful, loving people, many of whom were nurturing mothers whose hands regularly caressed the soft cheeks of their precious newborns, would come after me with steak knives. […]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"Embracing Climate Change for Fun and Profit http:\/\/jocularious.com\/?p=624","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[2],"tags":[467,473,474,221,51,18,532,475,471,33,472,468,470,469],"class_list":["post-624","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-humor","tag-al-gore","tag-carbon","tag-carbon-emissions","tag-china","tag-climate-change","tag-funny","tag-humor","tag-india","tag-joke","tag-laugh","tag-meteorology","tag-penguins","tag-polar-bear","tag-polar-bears"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_likes_enabled":false,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/jocularious.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/624","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/jocularious.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/jocularious.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/jocularious.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/jocularious.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=624"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"http:\/\/jocularious.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/624\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":630,"href":"http:\/\/jocularious.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/624\/revisions\/630"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/jocularious.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=624"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/jocularious.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=624"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/jocularious.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=624"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}