'Murderous Pits of Shame'

A magnificent essay on compulsive obsessive warming from Tim Blair.

Speaking of house structures, Al Gore himself seems immune to any warming-caused mental distress. The panic profiteer recently plonked down more than $A10 million on an ocean-view villa in California, complete with (as the LA Times reported) “a swimming pool, spa and fountains … six fireplaces, five bedrooms and nine bathrooms.”

Let’s hope no obsessive-compulsives ever drop by.

Counting all those fountains and fireplaces and bedrooms and bathrooms – then recounting them, and recounting them again – would take forever. Still, Gore isn’t entirely to blame. The press must share fault, as study author Dr Mairwen Jones says: “Media coverage about the possible catastrophic consequences to our planet concerning global warming is extensive and potentially anxiety provoking. We found that many obsessive compulsive disorder patients were concerned about reducing their global footprint.”

They’d have an easier time of it if they were sent to the Gulf of Mexico to count slimy birds following the Deepwater Horizon oil rig collapse. Some days into the spill, the Wall Street Journal reported: “Wildlife rescuers are treating the first oiled bird.” It was a northern gannet, in case you’re keeping a wall chart. Then, on Saturday, the Associated Press had further oily bird news: apparently ”several birds” were spotted diving into the Gulf’s oil-fouled waters.

Thousands of crude-coated creatures will probably appear in news pictures by the time this column runs, but so what? It’s only oil – and organic substance, by the way, which bubbles to the earth’s surface all the time without human assistance.

The La Brea Tar Pits in central Los Angeles have been sucking down precious animal life for thousands of years. Walk down Wilshire Boulevard and you can smell the oil still bubbling away. Visit the nearby Page Musuem and you can see sabre tooth tiger skeletons yielded by the tar. Last year workers excavating a disused underground garage near the site found an entire ice-age mammoth.

Nobody seems to mind, however, because the tar pits are natural. If humans had been involved, though – we being “unnatural” somehow – LA’s gloopy ponds would be condemned as an environmental disgrace. Forget the occasional oiled gannet. These murderous pits of shame ate extinct species.

Here I always figured that smell on Wilshire Boulevard was a result of being downwind as Charles Johnson aired his shorts out following a long bike ride.