As I watch the news and talk to my friends and associates, they all tell me the debate about global warming is over.  Many explain to me that we are destroying the planet by driving our cars and polluting the atmosphere with CO₂ gas.  That’s carbon dioxide, the gas in soda pop.

Imagine that.  The late, great planet earth destroyed by a giant Orange Crush or Pepsi.  Who’d a thunk it?  What an ignoble end.

But I’m here to tell you this is not true, not true at all.  It’s not all the cars and soda pop driving us toward doom.

Global warming is caused by cashmere sweaters!

How is this so, you might ask.  Well, my research has uncovered these little known facts.

It turns out that cashmere is made from the hair on the belly of a special kind of goat.  Personally, I would have preferred this to be the hair of a Yak because it would make my story more interesting – but I must stay true to my journalistic principles, so goat belly hair it is.

And not just any goat living in any old place.  It has to be a special kind of goat that lives in a very harsh climate.  This causes the goats to create a special kind of soft, warm insulating hair that is known as cashmere.

It’s a little sad that the goats have to live in such harsh places and suffer like this.  No doubt many would rather spend their time in Miami Beach, perhaps at Mangos, listening to hot Latin music, bleating and swaying to the beat, slurping margaritas and checking out some nicely filled out dancing cashmere sweaters in the process (indeed, this is what I was doing when I came up with this theory).

But I wasn’t bleating.  Everything else, yes, but not bleating, just to set the record straight.

So anyway, back to the sweater theory and across the ocean to the people in England , who used to have a lock on the cashmere goats because of their dreary climate.  The English have never seemed to mind this much as they hang out in the pubs all the time, and who’s to blame them really.  So while they were swilling pints away inside the warm pubs, their goats were outside suffering, doing their duty and making cashmere hair on their bellies to stay warm.

It was the natural order of things.

One day the Chinese caught on to this gig and one of them said #%#@*+!$$ which sounds phonetically like “cam chon fin seng mucho dollars” (simulated Chinese), which means, loosely translated, “We can do this for half the cost by using cheap labor goats and make MUCHO DOLLARS.”

So they got started on their project chop chop!

Now the Chinese have the perfect place for this with a really lousy climate called the Steppes.  No one has ever seen any steps there, actually, and there’s really no need for steps since it’s flatter than Kansas, but that’s what it’s called just the same and so we’ll just go with this.  Also note that this ties in nicely with Tom Friedman’s book on the global economy, entitled, The World is Flat.

The Chinese always do things in a big way, and recently inspired by a translation of Carl Sagan’s works, in-sourced billions and billions of goats to the Steppes.  The little goats suffered, as was the plan, and made cashmere for billions and billions of cashmere sweaters to be sold at Wal-Mart’s around the world – you know, that global economy thing again.

There was just one little problem, really.  The goats ate all the grass on the Steppes, so now they really suffered, and great dust storms started swirling across the land.

All the dust went up into the atmosphere, and carried by the trade winds (that global economy thing again) blew all over America from San Francisco to New York, trapping heat underneath the dust cloud and altering the weather in a gigantic greenhouse effect.

And there you have it.  As soon as you say “greenhouse effect” it’s global warming for sure.

Global warming is really responsible for everything these days.  For instance, when it’s blazing hot in Kansas in August, that’s global warming.  When it’s freezing in Chicago in January, it’s global warming.  And when they have droughts in the desert Southwest, or your bank account is overdrawn or you run out of beer during the super bowl, well, it’s definitely global warming.

And all because the little cashmere goats (also known as scapegoats) ate all the grass on the Steppes in China.

So I think the whole thing is irrefutable, really.  It’s hard to deny solid facts and evidence such as this.

But wait, you say. I love my cashmere sweaters.

No problem.  I’m all for saving the planet, but I’m not one of those uptight environmentalist.  After all, we still have to have fun and enjoy life.

So I say, go ahead and wear your cashmere sweaters, particularly if you fill one out rather nicely.

And let’s all meet at Mangos for margaritas!!! (chuckle).  Bring a freezing little goat if you have one (as long as they don’t bleat).

Have a nice day - J. Daniel

Note 1: Al Gora invented the cashmere sweater, but refuses to take any personal responsibility for the damage he’s done to the environment.  Now there’s an Inconvenient Truth for you.

Note 2: I bet you think I made this whole thing up, don’t you?  But truth is stranger than fiction.  There actually is some factual basis to this post (granted – cashmere sweaters are not the only cause of global warming).  But it turns out, the little goats really DID eat all the grass on the Steppes, which did create dust storms, which possibly has affected weather in other countries – including the United States.  You’ll find the following web site articles from The Encyclopedia of Earth, Times Online and News Public quite interesting.

http://www.eoearth.org/article/Eastern_Gobi_desert_steppe

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/article744158.ece

http://news-public.com/index.php/world-news/south-east-asia/90-china/1537-dust-bowls-sandstorms-in-china-affects-other-countries