Over the past thirty years, scientists and very activity-deprived weather aficionados have noticed something strange while conducting daily pan tests. A pan test calculates how much water evaporates from a pan in one day, and some people enjoy filling a pan with water and measuring this phenomenon daily. The pan tests have been showing a decrease in the rate of evaporation, just as there seems to be an increase in global temperature, which according to people like Paul Joseph, seems to be counterintuitive.

Conventional wisdom would say that the more heat we have, the more evaporation we would get. However, a lucky side-effect of pollution seems to be making evaporation slow down, and could also slow down the rate of global warming. That side-effect is global dimming, which basically means that we have less sunlight than we did years ago. Soot and other pollution that gets into the air creates clouds that reflect the sunlight and keep it from evaporating water in pans. Now that the mystery is solved, a coalition of oil and energy company scientists have suggested we increase use of soot-creating pollution so that we can reflect more sunlight away from the earth and offset the effects of global warming even more.

If ice-ages are caused by volcanoes or asteroid crashes spewing soot into the air, then a few extra coal power plants, diesel engines, and forest fires should be able to cool the earth’s surface down a bit, suggest the scientists. “We simply need to find a happy medium,” claims Secretary of Energy Samuel Bodman. “Sure, hybrid cars and wind turbines have their role, but if we need to increase certain kinds of pollution in order to save the polar ice caps, then America is up to the challenge. Just imagine if we’d signed the Kyoto Treaty—we’d be handcuffed and unable to help protect the earth from the harmful effects of the sun. We are poised to take the lead in soot-emitting pollutants in this country, and we are proud of our record so far.”

Environmental groups are confused as to how to react, relegated to such comebacks as “Two wrongs don’t make a right,” when evidence appears to show that two wrongs can in fact make a right. The Bush Administration has suggested the formation of a pollution generation committee to study the safest forms of soot pollution that can be increased. When asked about his view of the global warming issue, President Bush had this to say: “It isn't pollution that's harming the environment. It's the impurities in our air and water that are doing it. Natural gas is hemispheric. I like to call it hemispheric in nature because it is a product that we can find in our neighborhoods. Natural gas needs to move in our hemisphere. It needs to move easily across our borders to find markets, to be able to ease the pressures of reduced supply all around the country.  But even more efficient, however, is the transference of heat and cool as a result of circulating water below the -- it's called thermal heating and cooling -- okay. I want to build pipelines to move natural gas. I want to develop coal resources. It’s an issue I know a lot about. I was a small oil person for a while. Some of the scientists, I believe, haven’t they been changing their opinion a little bit on global warming? There’s a lot of differing opinions and before we react I think it’s best to have the full accounting, full understanding of what’s taking place. "