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There is global warming. It's been going on for about 10,000 years since the end of the last Ice Age. The miles or so of ice that covered Manhattan Island melted and left New York City to Boss Tweed. This warming occurred mostly before Newcomen invented the steam engine, probably the very beginning of the Industrial Revolution and the first truly extensive use of fossil fuels. In other words, global warming was well under way without our help.

Recently the warming has taken off at an accelerated rate since the invention of the automobile and the development of the Concord grape. But then so has the consumption of hot peppers. Now, methane is a more efficient greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide and many diners get gas from hot peppers, but we won't go there. The point is that even though the use of gasoline in cars has accelerated in the last century, there is little to make us believe that the one causes the other. Based on the fact that they occurred together I contend that the global warming caused the rise in the use of automobiles and thus their carbon dioxide emissions.

Some say there is scientific proof that the carbon dioxide emitted by our jalopies and industries caused the temperature's explosive increase in recent years, and they may have a point. The proof goes like this: First, carbon dioxide is an efficient greenhouse gas. Second, the irrefutable computer climate models predict the warming. QED. Hold on there — who says the computer models are scientific proof? Well, the climate scientists do, PhDs all.

But while the climate scientists were making their models, the astronomers were making their models of planet formation. Their model says that neither Neptune nor Uranus can exist, but they still use them to tell us unequivocally how the inner planets formed. The problem with the model is that the physics is screwed up. No one can solve nor even properly formulate the many-body problem, and there are at least ten large bodies in the solar system counting the sun and perhaps a few million smaller rocks and flying golf balls. Garbage in, Gospel out.

Once upon a long, long time ago in a galaxy far, far away I snookered a PhD out of one of our universities when none of the professors were looking. To pay for my daily gruel and hourly drafts, I worked on (are you ready for this) an atmospheric computer model of the ionosphere. Believe me. The physics and chemistry going on in the atmosphere is at least an order of magnitude more complicated and less understood than the orbits of the rocks and dust that formed the planets.

Since we have been able to measure global temperature on Mars and Jupiter, they also have been experiencing global warming. It's really difficult to figure out how some SUV's exhaust in Cucamonga can influence temperatures on Mars and Jupiter.

I'm not at all worried about carbon dioxide in the air causing global warming because if it is, we are home free. Without any scientific breakthroughs or engineering development we can remove the problem. There is presently in operation a pilot plant which removes 80% percent of the carbon dioxide in the air it processes. We can do it for less than a $1,000 penalty each time we buy a car. That seems exorbitant till you see Al Gore's movie which shows what happens if the carbon dioxide builds up in the air.