The Ultimate Global Warming

“It’s clear and twenty degrees at 9:45, and I’ll be here as the temps drop until midnight.” Standard radio talk: as it was in the beginning, is now, and always will be, world without end, amen.

Well, forget the prayer ending, “world without end,” because this one (which the prayer does not refer to) deals with the planet where our buildings stand, upon which cats land regardless of how they fall, where mighty oaks from tiny acorns grow.

The sun doth grace us as it shineth forth upon our winter-weary bodies the fruit of its fusion, as heat and light rays that may have been trapped in its interior for a million years finally burst forth and make the eight-minute trip to our outdoor pools.

One of these days, that trip won’t take so long. Maybe a minute, perhaps less.

You see, we’re in deep doo-doo. The sun will be running out of hydrogen and, when that happens, it’s not quite like when your car runs out of gas and sputters to a stop. The sun starts to expand into a red giant. Thus expanding, it takes out Mercury, then Venus disappears. The good news? We don’t! We’re saved from destruction.

But everything on the planet is so close to the sun by now that it’s nothing but ashes, and I think even the ashes burn. Earth survives, so to speak, as a burned-out piece of coal when the sun then collapses on itself. Global warming wasn’t so bad.