Woody: The reasons for freezin'

By LARRY WOODY

Outside the cave an icy wind howled and snow and sleet swirled, but inside it was nice and toasty as Org hunkered by his campfire roasting a mammoth haunch and watching the Sports Channel.

Suddenly in burst his Neanderthal neighbor Gork, who ran over and doused the fire with a bucket of water.
"Hey!" exclaimed Org. "What the --"

"If YOU don't care about the planet, then it's up to ME to save it," said Gork, giving the smoking cinders a satisfied smirk.

"What on earth are you taking about?" said Org, glancing around at his already-cooling cave and wishing someone would hurry up and invent an electric blanket.

"The earth -- that's what I'm talking about," said Gork. "You're destroying it with your emission-spewing campfires."
"I don't get it," said Org. "How's me freezing to death supposed to save the planet?"

"Let me explain it so that even a cave man can understand it," said Gork. "When you burn fossil fuels, carbon emissions are released into the atmosphere that offend the nostrils of the Weather Gods. They retaliate by turning up the heat. It's called Global Warming. It's all very scientific."

"Global Warming my foot," said Org. "It's 20 below out there!"

"Sometimes the Weather Gods retaliate by making it colder," shrugged Gork.
"So what's it called then?" asked Org.

"Global Warming," said Gork.

"Let me see if I've got this straight," said Org. "If I light a campfire to keep from freezing to death, I'm going to die of heat stroke?"

"Correct," said Gork."Also, the icebergs will melt and flood my beach-front cabana."

"Didn't we go through an Ice Age a few eons ago?" said Org. "Half the planet was covered in glaciers, yet there weren't any emissions-spewing campfires and Hummers back then. What caused THAT ice to melt?"

"There's a new government report coming out that will explain it, along with why the moon is made of green cheese," Gork said. "Meanwhile, keep that campfire out."

"But," said Org, starting to shiver as he pulled his mammoth-skin bathrobe tighter, "without a fire I won't be able to have any more cookouts and invite cave-chicks over. Another side effect is that I'll freeze to death."

"Well, that's your problem," said Gork.

"Actually," said Org, it's your problem, too. How do you plan to heat YOUR cave without a campfire?"

"Solar panels," said Gork.

"Never heard of 'em," said Org, his teeth starting to chatter.

"Well, actually they haven't been invented yet -- right now we're still working on the wheel -- but I figure that within the next millennium or so we should have them in production and ready to install in every cave."

"That seems like a long time to go without heat," said Org. "Already I can't feel my toes."

"Oh, stop complaining," said Gork. "You're going to make the Weather Gods angry and they'll smack us with another Global Warming blizzard."