ASK DR. SCHUND (C)1989 Alan M. Schwartz Dr. Schund, what is the Greenhouse Effect? The Greenhouse Effect is the source of all life on Earth, cruelly warped into a propaganda password now meaning a hysterically described approaching thermal catastrophe leading to total destruction of the Earth's biosphere -- the environment of the seas, the land, and the atmosphere that supports all life on planet Earth -- and that life itself, in truth caused by the insane monomaniacal depredations of environmentalists, vegetarians and lawyers. Supercomputer-based mathematical modeling of the biosphere already hints that it may be too late to save the Earth and its children from the odious effects of whale overpopulation, biome hyperdiversity, chlorofluorocarbon depletion, carbon dioxide insufficiency, radionuclide decay, manure scarcity, stratospheric ultraviolet absorption... In short, the Earth may already be irreversibly on the road to disaster because environmentalist Luddite fanatics seeking to recapture the pure and primitive suffering of the Maunder Minimum and the Little Ice Age have been given their way. Let us rise above the crude and shrill hucksterism constituting the bulk of the environmentalists' dogma and examine the facts. The Earth is not especially well placed to harbor life. It is only through the finely tuned chemical alteration of the biosphere that complex life can survive at all. This alteration is intrinsic to the life process itself. The sun's output is 1367 watts/square meter from the deep ultraviolet to the far infrared at our orbital radius. 892 watts/square meter are transmitted through the atmosphere. 236 watts/square meter are absorbed at Earth's surface. At a mean temperature of 59 degrees F, the Earth's surface radiates 390 watts/square meter. It is by the narrowest escape imaginable that we have avoided becoming a great orbiting iceball, lifeless and unable to pay taxes. It is only because organisms learned to keep the heat in by producing copious quantities of carbon dioxide, methane, nitrous oxide, chlorofluorcarbons... precisely those substances deranged environmentalists would have us forever ban, that Earth has managed to survive and, let us militantly demand, greatly prosper into infinity. This is the normal Greenhouse Effect, the loving accumulation of lifegiving warmth via the essential byproducts of life. Would you have this end? I say, NEVER! Environmentalists have responded to an ever increasingly crowded Earth by demanding that the snail darter, the Furbish lousewort, the whole dripping, stinking, rotting Amazonian rainforest be forever preserved and unboundingly enlarged both in space and in numbers. What amusement is to be had by viewing massed lawyers demand the salvation of the condor, a 70 pound vulture that eats well-rotted meat and is too stupid to reproduce except in captivity? There is enough human suffering in Biafra, Bangladesh, the Sahel... to be sufficient to mollify bloodlusting environmentalist shock troops, screaming harpies decrying the minutest alteration of the natural land. A single Ralph's or Von's or Safeway allowed in a shopping mall in any of these countries could save millions of lives, forever ending the pall of starvation and death for tens thousands of children. What kind of world do you want for your children: Abundant food, health, leisure, wealth, and Garfield dolls stuck on car windows; or bloated bellies, starvation, intestinal parasites, and oceans greasy with whales and land covered by weeds-as-God-meant-them- to-be? Take your pick, air conditioning or swamps full of alligators. There were no environmentalists and there were no environmental problems from the earliest dawn of human awareness to about 1960. Starting in that accursed decade, the environmental movement was created and, very oddly, environmental problems were discovered too. As the numbers and militancy of those in the environmental movement continued to unboundedly grow, like some metastasizing cancer in the body politic, so has the life-created, life-giving environment of the Earth continued to deteriorate. Like fire eaters kindling their own fire, the environmental movement has sacrificed the entire foundation of organic life on Earth to their own cheap thrills and petty profits. The Greenhouse Effect is the natural warm embrace of life on Earth for its own planetary mother. The evolution of human life and technology has now made it possible to enhance this "hug in celebration of life" through the production and release of carbon dioxide, CFCs, and many other materials and processes possible only through our inventiveness, labor, and dedication to prosperity. Ice ages and the suffering and death they would bring would be necessary to get rid of the rainforests. We can do it in a single generation by clearing them to grow cattle for our fast food restaurants. Do not shrug off your responsibilities to your natal planet. Eat, excrete, and party!