Andy Borgmann's Blog

It's A Small World is by far the worst amusement ride in the history of all amusement rides. And I am pretty sure Al Gore designed it...

On May 24, 1956, Al Gore was 8 years old. He decided to take a break from inventing the internet and called up his good buddy Walt Disney. Walt Disney took a break from hating the Jews and decided to listen to Al Gore's idea.

Al's vision: design a ride to convince the world that it is smaller than it really is. Why? Because 50 years to the day - May 24, 2006 - Al Gore knew he would release the greatest powerpoint presentation ever called The Inconvenient Truth, and in order for the premise of the "movie" to be true, humans had to believe they were bigger than they really were.

A small world is to Global Warming like time is to Evolution. For Evolution to be true, it needs a lot of time (hence the reason the world keeps getting older and older¹). For Global Warming, we have to believe humans are actually of some real consequence of size when compared to the world. But it just isn't true...

The current world population is 6.6 billion people. The most dense city in terms of population is Manilla with 41,014 people per square kilometer. What does this mean? We can fit the entire world population in the state of Washington. Or maybe better put, humans only take up .108% of all the land on the globe, or .032% of the entire globe (including bodies of water).

Ok, but you say, Andy, who would want to live in Manilla. Fair enough, lets compare it to what I call the "good life." Fort Wayne, IN has a population density of 1,071 people per square kilometer. This means you can fit the the entire world population in the states west of the Mississippi plus Alabama, Mississippi, Tennessee, Georgia, South Carolina and Florida. Or better put, 4.114% of all the land on the globe, or 1.208% of the entire globe (including bodies of water).

Don't even get me started on the math when we switch from 2-dimensions percentages (area = people per square kilometer) verses 3-dimensional percentage (volume = people per cubic kilometer).

Now the question I pose: are we really as important and influential and in control of this world as we think?

Like I have said before, it isn't that I am against "global warming" per se, I am just skeptical. And despite what Walt Disney and Al Gore came up with, we don't live in a small world, we are just small people.²