Q: Why do people not believe in the greenhouse effect?

A: Because they are smart. The so-called "greenhouse effect" was conceived by a group of Berkeley drop-outs in 1967 as a way to stifle American innovation, cripple the economy, and secure life-long government employment.

You should come inside if you want to continue talking. I'm wearing SPF 175 and that only last five minutes at this time of day.

You see, these hippies hated cars. Hated them with a passion usually reserved for people who talk during movies or borrow books and never return them. The hippies rode bikes and bikes only and believed that the rest of the world should live as they live; thus cars must be outlawed.

The air quality is rather terrible today. You should put on this gas mask if you wish to remain conscious for the rest of this conversation.

As I was saying, they hated cars, and wanted them gone, but it's not so easy to turn public opinion against cars. People like cars. Faster than walking. Safer than catapults. Cleaner than rickshaws.

Don't feel obligated to keep you coat on. Or your shirt. Or your pants. It's stifling today. Supposed to go as high as 140. Feel free to strip down to your boxers, as I have. We might as well be comfortable/

Turning people against cars would be no easy task. You can't frame a car for murder. You can't get a car drunk, fill it with naked children, and take pictures. Even telling them Hitler designed the car didn't work.

Please don't touch those books. It's been rather humid lately,  for the past twelve years, and the books have grown  moldy. Some kind of toxic mold, I've been told. At least that's what I think the man said. They were his dying words after all. He wasn't exactly enunciating.

So, how do you make people hate cars? The hippies thought and thought for years, until one day, probably in one of their drug-induced hazes, they stumbled on the perfect idea. Emissions. Tell people that the emissions from cars rise up to the atmosphere where they magically create an invisible shield that traps in all the heat and turns the Earth into a kind of giant greenhouse. Have you ever heard anything so foolish?

I'd offer you something to eat, but it's impossible to find food these days. The Kelly's down the street used to be a good source,  but I ate the last of them two weeks ago.

A greenhouse effect? The Earth growing hotter and hotter by the year, melting the polar ice caps, raising the oceans, causing incredible storms and heatwaves? That's what they came up with? That was their story?

You should move over to that other chair. You're getting a little overcooked on your left side.

Funny thing was, people bought it. People started to believe this whole greenhouse effect nonsense. In retrospect I shouldn't have been so surprised. People believe in all sorts of silly things. Evolution. Love. Memory. Gravity. But the real funny part? It didn't work. Cars stayed. Cars became more prevalent than ever. They made bigger cars, faster cars, cars that burned more fuel and created more dangerous emissions than ever before. So, yes, in a way, a small way, the hippies won. But in a real way, in a big way, we won. All eight of us who remain.

Say, before dinner, would you like to take a look at garden? It was washed away in the mudslides of 2019, but if you close your eyes and tie this rope around your wrists and pour this marinade over your back, you can still picture it.