[shrinkermd]

Reindeer roamed where grapes now grow.

[Bob]

Reindeer roamed where grapes now grow.

That wouldn't have happened if the reindeer hadn't been driving all of those gas-guzzling SUVs.

[laotzu]

Global warming is caused by the big tobacco industrial complex.

I blame the native American indians, who introduced the scurge on humanity....or, at least, Ward Churchill.

[MNJohnnie]

Reindeer farts cause global warming! All the experts agree! Thats just an Inconvenient Truth the Capitalists in denial refuse to admit!

[HighlyOpinionated]

This is SO timely for me, personally. I have been arguing "Global Warming" and the "movie" "An Inconvenient Truth" with two egroups. One person went so far as to call me ignorant.

So this quote got sent to both egroups.

Not that I expect any apologies. Being vindicated from the eighteenth century is enough. I don't recall reading The Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire while in school, but I may have read excerpts. Those years are a bit of a blur due to lack of memory recall.

I do like being correct though (whether I'm 'right' or not!)

[InABunkerUnderSF]

The climate change observation was just a sidebar. Old Eddie was really blaming the fall of the Roman Empire on the rise of Christianity.

Gibbon, good 18th century disestablismentarian that he was, never figured out that what really did in the Roman Empire was illegal immigration. He points out that Septimius Severus abandoned the string of border forts call the Limes to save money and free up troops for his war in Mesopotamia but he never connects that fact to the large scale movement of people from Germany into Gaul. From then on the decline was irreversible.