Another Day, Another Bash

I was listening to a well known right wing radio talk show the other day. I tune in once every three months or so to get the drift, the new points, the new attacks. I'm interested in knowing where this segment of the population is at.

Generally, its still the same bashing of "liberals." Also there is the same exclusion of the most recent sins of the right. Liberals are the problem, the right doesn't make mistakes, no need to even go there. This on a day when even the GOP is calling for the firing of the Attorney General. The fact that George Bush is about as popular as a hernia doesn't even make a ripple. The reasons why George Bush is as popular as a hernia don't even rise to consciousness.

Al Gore is a very popular target. The brunt of the attack on Gore is on global warming. Gore's film is regarded as a model in absurdity that goes beyond any previous absurdity that a single man or mankind has ever generated.

It occurred to me that perhaps we need a simple incremental questionnaire for the right in relation to global warming. The idea being to try and gauge the level of willingness to tackle the topic. For example:

Do you believe that you can get a toxic substance under your fingernails?

(Now the questions will push the envelope a bit more)

Do you believe that if you were in a room filled with poison gas, no open windows, and had to directly breath the poison, that you would get sick? Could you die from poison?

If several people were in a room filled with a toxic gas, could they become sick, or possibly even die?

Are you aware that there are rivers in the world that have become so polluted with chemicals that the river actually can burn, or has caught fire?

Do you know that there are "dead" lakes, lakes that no longer support fish because they are too acidic? Do you know where the acidity comes from?

Are you aware that there is air pollution in major cities sometimes called smog? Do you know that this smog can cause health problems?

Do you know that there are sections of the ocean that are "dead", that no longer support the abundant animal life that once thrived there? Do you know why they are dead?

(Now we are going onto even larger environmental systems so be careful.)

Do you know that there is a hole in the ozone layer of the atmosphere? Do you know why the hole got there? Do you know what substances have been banned in order to keep the hole from getting larger, and what measures mankind as a totality have agreed to take in order reduce the ozone hole? Do you know that there are risks to health and life as a result of there being no ozone?

Final question. If you have knowledgeably answered all of the preceding questions and can see that toxicity can effect small systems from one individual to a very large system like the ozone layer, and if you can see that pollution can drastically affect large environmental bodies like rivers, cities, lakes, and oceans, then why can you not take that understanding one step further and understand a global problem, called global warming?