The Scientific Method

A modern Jonathan Swift summarizes the dangers of global warming:

It is melancholy to contemplate the disastrous effects that global warming must have on this, our once splendid planet, should the horrific trend now underway be allowed to continue unabated. In this, I am not speaking of the increase of the oceans, as, with a current rise rate of one inch per decade, the expected inundations must perforce come in a time so afar and away into the future so as to expose he who would raise alarm thereby to ridicule, a result which would defeat my purpose. No, it is rather the consequences already apparent here and now that must draw our attention and inspire us with a due sense of alacrity to immediate and forceful countermeasures.

Let us consider: As a consequence of global warming, in nearly all places on our planet the last killing frost of the spring is occurring earlier, and the first killing frost of the fall happening later, than was customary in the past. This lengthened season of growing, combined with a general increase in rainfall, and an over abundance of carbonation within the air, has so encouraged and expanded the growth of plants as to fill the stalls of grocers everywhere with such an abundance of fruits and vegetables that must perforce have the most unfortunate results — to wit the gestation of further multitudes of unwashed, uncouth, and ill-mannered hordes of noisy unwanted and unnecessary personages to infest our world with their brutish countenances, bestial customs, and unattractive complexions. Furthermore, even were it possible to stem such unfortunate propagation of rabble by other means, it would still be the case that the excessive flourishing of wild botanicals induced by global warming would threaten to fill the world with so much banal greenery as to leave the desert-craving visual palette of the refined sort so impoverished as to make life hardly worth living for those who truly deserve to live.

And he has a solution:

[I]f we are truly to deal as we must with the threat of climate change, our horrid health care system must clearly be reformed from top to bottom. This imperative cannot be denied or forestalled, as its adequate solution is the key to unlock the entire dilemma. And while much of what our new president has said in this line gives me great hope, still other remarks indicate a confusion of aims and objectives so severe as to instill some concern that determination might be lacking to push reform far enough to achieve the necessary result. For certainly, in the face of the climate emergency, the time is long since past for politicians to go on prating about improving the health care available to the general public, when the obvious necessity is to make it worse. Our glaciers are in danger! How then, can anyone even propose measures that might pointlessly continue the harmful lives of so many millions of miserable carbon footprinters, who otherwise could so easily been allowed to pass mercifully out of existence? And while I understand that Mr. Obama’s plan will accomplish nothing of the sort, but simply provides an innocent means to increase the overall cost of the health system by shoveling tax dollars into it — which, needless to say, taken by itself is an excellent idea — still it sidesteps the fundamental problem, which is modern medicine itself. It is the practitioners of this craft, as well as their allies among those who seek grandeur by striking a pose as defenders of the public from microbes or other helpless creatures, who, unbound by any finer feelings or sense of environmental ethics, have filled the Earth with those whose otherwise unnecessary maintenance must perforce cause so much damage to its climate. . .

Therefore, in order to resolve this difficulty in the most practical way possible, I propose the following simple measure, which must surely be recognized by all people of sound opinions as elegant and proper.

To wit; that it be enacted as the cornerstone of the necessary reform of our health care system, that, prior to engaging in any action that might potentially extend a human life, that a doctor, nurse, or other medical professional simply be required to file an environmental impact statement in which the carbon emission consequences of said life-extension are clearly set forth and arrayed against any environmental benefits that might ensue from the preservation of the individual in question.

(via Instapundit)