As with most theories that come out of the la-la-land of liberalism, this one, too, suffers from their common ailment: Ignorance. From the point of view of outer space, the the Earth has no priviledged up-down, or top-bottom position. Thinking of the north pole as the "top" of the world, or the south pole as the "bottom" emerges from our own horribly chauvinistic, eurocentric point of view located as we are in the northern hemisphere of our planet. (My apologies to my Australian readers.) And you'd think that liberals of all people would have been the first to abandon that point of view quite a while back.

I remember about ten years ago the standard mercator projection of the world was under attack for being discriminatorily eurocentric by expanding, unnaturally, the size of the countries of the northern hemisphere in invidious contrast with the countries of the third world, most of which lie along the equator or in the southern hemisphere. (My apologies to my Australian readers.) In a mercator projection, you see, the laws of geometrical perspective dictate that the northern lines of latitude be expanded relative to latitude at the equator if you want to have any hope of representing a sphere on a flat surface. But, truth aside, that unfairly emphasizes the eurocentric countries which dominate the northern hemisphere.

The solution to eurocentrism in map making was to produce "equatorial" projections of the world, the countries at the equator enlarged relative to those in northern climes. I suppose that's just the correct way to see the Earth since it's obviously how it looks from outer space. As we all know, that's exactly how God views the planet, too.

Maybe the real culprit here is Euclid who was, after all, one of those white eurocentric males. As the developer of the science of geometry, we have no choice but to reject him for his obvious white European bias.

I actually saw one of these ridiculously insane politically correct projections of the world for sale in our college book store. What really angered me was the continued chauvinistic bias that favored the north pole over the south! There it was, still at the top of the map. Boy, did my blood boil. All those evil white male eurocentric countries were still given "top" billing! Now, an equatorial projection that had Antarctica at the top, now that would be the right way to go. Why, even the term 'Antarctica' contains an inbred bias in favor of north as the "true" arctic region.

Of course, what an equatorial projection does is to reintroduce all the distortions of a spherical surface that Mercator was trying to eliminate, so that a map of the entire world could be easily readable on a flat surface. But truth, reality, even convenience is no obstacle to liberals when having the right feelings is what's really at issue.

In the current problem, we notice how ridiculous is the idea that the atmosphere in toto at the equator is rising into outerspace in order to draw down colder air at the north pole. If that were the case, we should always have unusually cold winters since outerspace is almost infinitely colder than any air mass on the Earth. In point of fact, colder air masses at the poles are always, quite naturally, migrating towards the equator regardless of what the air at the equator is trying to do. And vice versa, air at the equator is always tending to migrate towards the poles, regardless of what the air at the poles is trying to do. This is the quite natural convection movement of the atmosphere that occurs even relative to pockets of denser and less dense air. Air in a low pressure system wants to find its way northward, in the northern hemisphere, southward in the southern hemisphere. This coupled with the coriolus effect is why air circulates counter-clockwise in a low pressure system and clockwise in a high pressure system. The reverse happens in the southern hemisphere. (Sorry, you'll have to attend one of my philosophy of science lectures to get the Rube Goldberg explanation of this one.)

Now you'd think that the same principles would be at work with global warming. Rather than trying to leave the planet, warmer air masses would be migrating towards the poles, both north and south. The result would be pockets of warm air moving north just as much as cold air moves south. Unfortunately, this is not observed.

Some other curious glo-baloney emerged this week. Supposedly, Europe is headed for another ice age as a result of global warming. Now here's the Rube Goldberg side of this one. The Gulf Stream keeps most of Europe rather mild in winter, even though places like England are the latitude of Labrador. What causes the Gulf Stream is cold water near the arctic sinking and then falling back towards the equator, behaving just the way the atmosphere wants to. That "pulls" warmer water northward and with it warmer air that warms the continent. But as the water warms at the pole, due to global warming, this "pull" lessens in strength.

Well, that's how the story goes, anyway. But there's always two sides to any "pump," especially natural ones. If the arctic water is less cold, isn't the equatorial water more warm? And if it's more warm, shouldn't that compensate for the weaker "pull" in the arctic with a stronger "push" north from the equator? One would certainly think so, wouldn't one?

But I suppose that would be to foster a eurocentric conscience in the basically third world equatorial water, which is why the effect is ignored by the glo-baloney-ists.

Admid cries that polar pack ice is melting (funny, you never hear that said about Antarctica. More eurocentrism I suppose.) which endangers the poor polar bear, Norwegian glaciers are actually growing. So, global warming is causing the pack ice to melt at the same time it's causing Norwegian arctic glaciers to grow. I'll just have to wait for the next Rube Goldberg explanation to figure that one out.

Meanwhile, as the air at the north pole warms due to global warming, it's rising. This creates a draft that pulls up warmer air from the south. Unfortunately, this is not observed.

Heil Gore!