Year 2, Month 2, Day 20: I’m Too Young To Marry

The Tulsa Beacon’s publisher is Charles Biggs. He writes a long screed on why global warming is bunk a: because it’s snowing, and b: because scientists aren’t willing to give out certificates of causation. And Al Gore is fat, most likely. He finishes with some unrelated jokes, of which this one was the best:

• There was once a man from the city who was visiting a small farm, and during this visit he saw a farmer feeding pigs in a most extraordinary manner.

The farmer would lift a pig up to a nearby apple tree, and the pig would eat the apples off the tree directly. The farmer would move the pig from one apple to another until the pig was satisfied, then he would start again with another pig.

The city man watched this activity for some time with great astonishment. Finally, he could not resist saying to the farmer, “This is the most inefficient method of feeding pigs that I can imagine. Just think of the time that would be saved if you simply shook the apples off the tree and let the pigs eat them from the ground!”

The farmer looked puzzled and replied, “What’s time to a pig?”

Because Tulsa is part of Oklahoma, I added “James Inhofe” to the tags. Sent February 11:

Dear Mr. Biggs,

May I try?

Let’s start from the beginning. Picture a puddle of water on a hot sunny day. It disappears quickly, doesn’t it? That’s because it evaporated, which means the water turned into water vapor and became part of the air. Air with a lot of water in it is “humid.” Now, what happens when it’s really, really humid? It rains, of course — but only if it’s above freezing. And when it’s below freezing? Well, you know the answer: it would snow. Heavily. You can’t have precipitation without humidity, and you can’t have humidity without evaporation, and you can’t have evaporation without heat.

The term “climate change” is now preferred to “global warming” simply because it is a better description of people’s experience. Ask around; everybody’s talking about the weather (including you!). Big heat waves in Europe, droughts in South America, huge floods and a cyclone in Australia, lots of floods in Pakistan, a massive, paralyzing blizzard in the US. Sure, all of these things have happened before. But never all at once, which is why it might be a good idea to listen to what people who study the climate closely have been predicting about atmospheric CO2 and the greenhouse effect. Since the 1950s, by the way.

Mr. Biggs, you’re wrong about climate change — but I really liked your joke about the pig.

Warren Senders

And a day and a half later, he wrote me back:

Mr. Sanders,
You may be right and I could be wrong. Words have meaning. We just set a record for snowfall AND record low temperatures in Oklahoma. And yet many people (you not included) cling to global warming and that’s what they teach in science classes in high school.
I think you may give mankind too much credit for affecting the weather. A volcanic eruption can affect weather patterns for years and yet we still can’t predict accurately if it will rain Tuesday.
Thanks for your thoughtful remarks.
Charles Biggs

I haven’t responded yet, but I will.

Kudos to anyone who can identify the provenance of the headline.