The endlessness of human stupidity

In today’s Standard Freeholder, a local Canadian publication, the editor blames the Modern Man for the cataclysm of Global Warming. His rhetoric brings to mind the famous quote of Albert Einstein about only two things being endless – the universe and human stupidity.

A small excerpt:

Global warming, if explained in laymen’s terms, is not all that difficult to understand. Geologists and their kin tell us that climate change in the distant past was brought about by natural events, volcanic eruptions on an unimaginable cataclysmic scale and/or similar explosions in outer space. Then came the Industrial Revolution. Not to be outdone by nature, modern man has been busy inventing a way to produce the same results, with less drama.

He has built billions upon billions of mini volcanoes around the world in the form of smoke stacks, chimneys and various other kinds of exhaust pipes, belching out much of the same pollutants as volcanoes into the earth’s atmosphere. He has even gone one step further by adding poisons and toxins previously unknown to nature and our environment. How difficult is that to understand? Some estimates tell us we have already wiped out close to half of all life forms on this planet in the process. That’s the legacy we are busy leaving our grandchildren.

I especially like the comparison between cars and volcanoes. Mr Editor seems to obtain his knowledge not from science, but rather science fiction. Calling carbon dioxide a pollutant does not exhibit much insight. And stating that we (the humans) have already wiped out close to half of all life forms on this planet is simply absurd.