Dear Pat: Don't Just be a Foul-weather Friend of the Earth

Dear Reverend Robertson,

As much as I'd love to applaud your conversion to the way of the truth on global warming, I can't. Because I feel your conversion is almost literally a finger in the wind. If a deadly heat wave makes you believe in global warming, will this winter's lethal chills make you believe it's an ice age?

Yes, it's getting hotter than Hades in our hemisphere right now, but the truth of global catastrophic climate change demands more than fair-weather "belief." We have to base our approaches to the physical world on... hold on to your throne... evidence. This better'n-magic stuff, made of observations and numbers and people with non-fashionable eyeglasses, is strong enough to withstand the bitter wind chill you'll see in about 4 months.

Of course, the evidence is there to be seen. To be tested. And prodded. And squinted skeptically at. And spun upside-down by people with a vested interest in keeping oil company executives grinning. This heat wave, while extreme and viscerally tangible, is not the sum of evidence for global warming. Nor will November chills mean we've fixed it.

So please take a while to survey the evidence. Build a foundation for your belief that will stand up to time and weather and politics and every other fleeting threat. Then when you start selling photovoltaic cells and electric vehicles through Pat's Planet Pals(TM), I'll be first in line to support your conversion.

Stay cool,
-Dave