What exactly is the Greenhouse Effect? What is it going to do?

Are we going to have more continents? Or will we lose a few?

After studying all the facts, those of a scientific mind

Should get to the core of the matter, leave indecision behind.

For years they've said conclusively that as the planet warms

The people of Chicago will go to the ocean in swarms.

It so happens the beach they'll have, the one to call their own

Will be the Gulf of Mexico. If so, let us now for sins atone.

But wait! there is a new belief, one not quite so harsh,

It says the other theory's wrong, what it postulates is farce.

The waters will not rise, for by analogy to water and rice

We'll end up with less water than thought, but more, by far, of ice.

This theory has as hypothesis that as the temperatures rise,

The atmosphere will hold more water and then it is surmised

It will cool over the polar regions, and fall as rain, then freeze,

Resulting in more water, for sure, but no flooding, if you please.

You'd think that all these theorists, pontificating such decrees

Would cease their foolishness and stop fooling us by degrees.

They can't even look at daily facts, to tell us if it will rain,

Yet tell us heat will produce more ice. It's "water on the brain!"

What if they're both correct? Then we're worse off than we think.

We'll toast Chicago's new shoreline with icebergs in the drink.

But I have a sneaking suspicion that neither camp is right,

Before we drown this earth'll succumb to some other major plight.

Copyright © 2011 by Frank Koerner