Most husband and wife stuff is private, but I disappointed my wife in a very public way and the only way to really apologize is to make it public.

One night last year, I think it was a Saturday, a tweet went out on Cali Lewis’ account about global warming being a hoax. It became a big controversy that ended with Leo Laporte saying he no longer wanted to work with her. People are split on the issue of anthropomorphic climate change so thousands of people rallied around her and thousands slammed her.

There is a major problem, though. She didn’t write that tweet and she didn’t hit the update button. I did.

Since we started GeekBrief.TV, I’ve studied media successes to learn techniques for growing an audience and keeping them interested. Publicly writing something controversial is usually a very good thing to do. You don’t loose as many people as seems logical because people want to stick around to see what you’ll do or say next.

When Cali found out what I did, it obviously it made her angry.  To her, politics is private and divisive. She doesn’t enjoy it in the least.

I apologized, but also argued my case about the benefits of the controversy. We had recently had dinner with John C. Dvorak and he explained how he has used controversy in his long career as a tech writer to keep people paying attention. I thought Cali bought-in to the idea of creating controversy, but I was wrong.

She was deeply hurt by what I did. She is the kindest person in the world and she didn’t want to embarrass me. She’s lived with letting everyone believe it came from her because of our relationship. The only way I can make it right is to publicly apologize.  A private apology is utterly insufficient because what I did pushed her into a public, political battle she didn’t want to fight. She lost friends and business opportunities because of what I did. I hope this blog post will mend some of those relationships.

I also want to apologize to friends of GeekBrief.TV and followers of Cali’s tweets. The controversy experiment just wasn’t worth it, especially without her participation. I’m sorry.

Alcoholics describe their experience with alcohol in a way that very nearly mirrors my experience with political news. I have to try very hard to avoid partisan political discussion because even a small amount of exposure can send me spiraling into depression and ultimately a sense of despair. Some people can handle it. I cannot.

Growing up, I watched This Week with David Brinkley with my grandfather on Sunday mornings. I loved Sam Donaldson, Cokie Roberts and George Will. That was where my addiction started and by the time I was in college, I was a political news junkie. I listened to Rush Limbaugh for three hours a day and National Public Radio the rest of the time. On Sunday mornings I recorded the political shows so I could watch This Week, Meet the Press and The McLaughlin Group back to back.

At some point there was a shift away from politics being a positive form of entertainment. It because a source of frustration for me, especially as I began to think of myself as more of a Libertarian.

When Rush Limbaugh returned to his show after re-hab, he talked about how it’s much easier to be a happy person when you distance yourself from politics. That was it. I walked away and now, as much as possible, I try my best to stay away from it. I’d rather be happy than right.

I’ve exchanged politics for technology because technology offers real solutions rather than false promises and power grabs. On Brief 377 we covered a Silicon Valley company called LS9. They’ve genetically modified bacteria to feed on wood chips or straw and excrete crude oil. Within just a few years their technology very well may eliminate our dependence on foreign oil. The political arguments haven’t changed much in years and years. Technology can transform our lives virtually overnight.

I won’t always be able to avoid political discussions, but I’m trying as hard as I can. Live is much more fun without it.

Someone posted a comment on BigTrip.TV:

I’m interested to know what you’re doing to offset the carbon emissions from this “trip”.

I love that he put the word trip in quotes, as if it’s somehow suspect and not really a trip at all. Surely our true intention is to destroy the planet as we know it with our harmful carbon emissions. I don’t care to argue, so I replied with a joke, “We’re going to eat more cows.”

We live in a time where environmental fascism is being pushed so hard and so often, that thinking, logical people are bending over and giving into global, irrational, unscientific peer pressure. You can’t turn on a television anymore without hearing environmentalist nonsense about being green to save the planet. The planet is not in danger.

As a thinking person, I can’t base my opinions about the environment and global warming on emotional arguments like those offered by Al Gore and his allies in Hollywood. My gut feeling is that their arguments are nonsense, and oh you cannot imagine how much, I would love to ignore these people and just go with my gut.

My gut instinct is based on simple logic. If scientists cannot accurately predict the weather next week, they also cannot predict the weather next century. It’s the same logic I used to discount disaster theories about Y2K. When everyone was worried and spending millions of dollars on solutions, I changed the clock on my computer to see what would happen at midnight, January 1, 2000. Nothing happened, so I knew nothing would happen anywhere else, and I was right.

I can’t rest with simple logic, though, because the people making arguments based on emotion appear to be winning public support. In order to continue to believe what I think is true, I have to spend time reading the science behind the arguments to see for myself it the emotional arguments have scientific validity.

The emotional argument is that the scientific community has reached the consensus that global warming is a reality and it’s caused by human activity. Global warming is necessarily bad, and since it is caused by humans, it can be corrected, but only if we act now before it’s too late.

There is nothing scientific, rational or even reasonable about that argument. To begin with, scientific fact isn’t determined by consensus. I worry about the state of science education if we don’t remember what we learned about the difference between law and theory in science.

It is a fact that the existence of global warming and its causes are based on climate models that could turn out to be accurate, but could just as easily turn out NOT to be accurate. It is also a historic fact that warmer periods in the past have resulted in global economic prosperity, so global warming, if it exited is more likely to be good for us than bad for us.

It is not, however, a fact that global warming exists. The planet hasn’t warmed since 1998, and 2007 was cool enough to offset all warming that has taken place over the past century.

One of my favorite presidents in history is Teddy Roosevelt. He loved nature and he lead us to set aside parts of our nation to be preserved in a natural state. Nature is good. Pollution is bad. Protecting nature is good. Making people feel guilting for using resources is evil.

Rather than bowing to environmental fascism, religious fundamentalism or any thought system not based on reason, I choose to embrace logic and balance. I have full confidence, when we go too far as humans, a little something God built into nature called homeostasis will bring everything back into balance.

My favorite climate scientist is Dr. Roy W. Spencer. He just released a book explaining climate science. It’s called Climate Confusion. It’s based on science not emotional arguments and I highly recommend it.

If you read this and disagree, feel free to post scientific research that contradicts what I’ve written. I would love to read it, but I’m not going to get into an emotional argument with anyone about science.