Anthropogenic Global Warming: Color Me Skeptical

I've given the topic of anthropogenic global warming a lot of thought in recent months, and while I've always been extremely dubious concerning the doomsday predictions of Al Gore and his ilk, it's been hard for me to put my finger on the precise reasons for my incredulity. I now think it's because the proponents of the "Gore" theory (i.e., that increasing concentrations of CO₂ caused by various human consumptive activities are effectively causing the planet to burn up at some geometric rate) were operating under a series of prior assumptions that placed them 95% of the way toward their ultimate conclusions before they had even looked at any of the actual data. Therefore, I feel they could have looked at virtually any data indicating a slight global warming trend and come to more or less the same conclusions. (Which also explains why these same people, or their predecessors, were so quick to assure us that the slight cooling trend between roughly 1940 and 1975 portended a human-caused New Ice Age.)

What are these prior assumptions? First (and foremost), that mankind is destroying the planet. Second, that any evidence of climate change can only be reasonably interpreted in light of the first assumption, above. Third, that environmental catastrophe is always imminent, meaning we must act now before the Earth reaches the proverbial "tipping point" past which no remedy exists. And finally, that capitalism and technology are always the cause of the problem, whereas government intervention/regulation -- that is, socialism -- is the only thing that can save us from ourselves.

I'm certain these people would deny (with characteristically vicious vituperation) that their philosophical leanings have had anything to do with their conclusions. However, I believe that if anthropogenic global warming were not primarily a matter of faith (the real science still being decidedly unsettled), its adherents wouldn't feel such a great need to squelch dissent and move precipitously to restrict individual liberty and choice. The truth will out, eventually; we can only hope that the powers-that-be haven't totally ruined the global economy (along with technologies that might actually improve the environment) by the time it becomes apparent that the recent warming trend has had less to do with human carbon output than with other factors that are beyond human control (e.g., solar anomalies, periodic tilt in Earth's rotation, volcanic activity, bovine flatulence, etc.). The beauty of being an environmental activist, however, is never having to say you're wrong; instead, you simply move on, without missing a beat, to the next ecological chimera du jour.

Cheech & Chong - Comic Geniuses

I was first introduced to the comedy of Cheech and Chong when I was a 13-year-old eighth-grader in early 1973. I found their first two albums (Cheech and Chong and Big Bambú) to be supremely irreverent, deliciously obscene, and absolutely hilarious, and I listened to my vinyl copies of them until the grooves wore out. (My cousin Randy Baca and I even attended a church Halloween party one time dressed as C&C, Randy wearing a bandolier -- a la Cheech -- filled with fake doobies in lieu of bullets.) I had great portions of their routines memorized and can still quote extensively from them today; I have a couple of friends at church who are roughly my age, and we all still get a kick out of some of the old lines. I couldn't get into a lot of the later material (e.g., Los Cochinos and Cheech & Chong's Wedding Album), as it seemed to cross the line into "gross" for me; however, I now have CDs of both of the first two albums (along with C&C's Greatest Hit compilation), and they seem even funnier now than when they first came out -- probably because they were and are utterly politically incorrect. (No one could get away with their brand of humor nowadays!)

In closing, I will quote the Pope (live at the Vatican): "In nomine patri, et fili et spiritus sanctus...sanctus...sanctus...sanctus.... All-a you wops-a get off-a da lawn!"

Oh, man, I can't go on.

Sleep Disordered

I've been suffering from chronic insomnia for some time now--at least five years and probably longer--and lately it's seemed to have an increasingly negative effect on my health. I've tried just about every treatment option imaginable, but it's a complex problem with multiple causes, and an effective resolution has proved elusive. My sleep disorder has three primary components: (1) environmental (typically virulent New Mexico allergens, one or another of which seems to affect me throughout the year; my wife's snoring; and a bad bed); (2) psychological (which I first realized five years ago, when my wife started teaching an early-morning religion class at our church and had to get up at 4:45 am on school days, which in turn immediately caused my sleep habits to become much worse), and (3) physiological (at least some of my problem has to do with obstructive sleep apnea, resulting from an airway that becomes occluded in certain sleep positions.)

I've tried surgery: I had a septoplasty (with turbinate reduction) done in 2003, and I had UPPP surgery (with no tonsillectomy--that happened when I was five) in February of this year. The septoplasty was a success and had some salutary effect, but that effect is often offset by nasal congestion due to allergies. The UPPP surgery does not appear to have been a success, as its only noticeable effect has been the permanent "foreign object" sensation that I have in my throat due to having a stump where I once had a uvula. I've also tried CPAP/BiPAP, but it actually seemed to cause many more apnea episodes of the "central" variety than it ever cured of the "obstructive" kind. Literally, every time I'd start to drift off to sleep, I'd simply stop breathing out against the inbound air pressure, and I'd have to wake myself back up, gasping for air. Four or five nights of that, and I can assure you I was ready to go psycho! I've also tried prosthetic mouthpieces and even acupuncture and Chinese herbal remedies. Right now, I have to take a combination of 3mg Lunesta and OTC benadryl to get a few tortured hours of sleep every night; not only is it a miserable routine, but I'm certain it's contributing heavily to the overall feeling of worsening health that I've had for several months. (I've lived for years with physical exhaustion due to poor sleep patterns; this is something else.)

I do have one more hope, however: on January 24, 2008, I'm having another sleep study done using something called a "VPAP Adapt SV" (http://resmed.com/), which is designed to treat complex-apnea problems like mine. My brothers run a home medical supply company in Utah that does oximeter studies and CPAP placements, and they tell me their sleep tech has placed over 100 "VPAP Adapt SV" machines, with almost uniformly excellent results. This new machine, I'm told, acts like a ventilator in that it senses when an apnea episode is occurring and will not allow the user to stop breathing. I'm trying not to be overly optimistic about it, since my hopes with regard to other remedies have always been dashed in the end; however, I'm happy there's something else I can try now that seems to be specifically designed to address my particular ailment.

I hope and pray that the "VPAP Adapt SV" gives me some relief and allows me to get things back together, as I sense that I'm not long for this world otherwise.

This Is Me

I don't have much time right now, but I wanted to give this blog a start. I've long wanted to have a personal website, but I've never been able to get it off the ground; thus I'm happy sites like Blogspot are available for personal blogs, at least. A little about me: I'm 48 years old, live in Albuquerque, New Mexico, have been married to my wife Dorine for 23 years, work as a financial analyst at Sandia National Laboratories, and have five kids (four girls and one boy, ranging in age from 29 to 15) and four grandchildren. We are LDS (Mormon), something about which I'm sure I'll write much in the future. I love the outdoors and enjoy activities like hiking, family camping, backpacking, climbing (bouldering these days), and caving (less so now than a decade ago). I play guitar and enjoy inventing various riffs and chord progressions, although only rarely do I find sufficient inspiration to write a complete song with lyrics. I very much enjoy playing my electric guitars (all Squiers -- Fender's foreign-made budget line) through my Line 6 Spider 112, an extremely versatile amplifier that produces a variety of interesting sounds. I'm sort of a movie and music buff, although only within certain temporal and genre-based parameters. My favorite music is rock and pop from the 1960s, although I find myself revisiting the rock music of my youth (1970s) more and more these days. I used to enjoy playing sports -- especially slow-pitch softball, volleyball, and basketball -- but the combination of age and a botched radial keratotomy in 1994 (which left me with slightly impaired night vision and depth perception) eventually killed off my interest. These days, I play no sports (although I do run a lot at the gym to maintain at least some level of conditioning), and I can really only bear to watch soccer on TV. (My interest in soccer is a product of both the time I spent in Chile as a Mormon missionary in 1979-80 and the fact that several of my kids played youth soccer here in Albuquerque.) I am an inveterate diarist, something that ensures I will upload regular updates to this blog. Politically, I'm pretty conservative with regard to social, economic, and foreign-policy issues; however, I don't regard myself a right-wing ideologue by any means, and my future posts will probably reveal that I have significantly more "nuanced" ideas regarding various topics than do many Mormons (your mileage may vary).

Well, that's enough for now.