In his much-anticipated Berlin speech today, Obama singled out "cars in Boston" as one of two causes of global warming, declaring:

As we speak, cars in Boston and factories in Beijing are melting the ice caps in the Arctic, shrinking coastlines in the Atlantic, and bringing drought to farms from Kansas to Kenya.

Mere alliteration or scientific fact?  I called my scientist friend, Zed, and asked him if these two were now thought to be the main causes of global warming.

Zed, answering by email, said:

Obama is referring to what is known in scientific circles as "The Boston-Beijing Effect," a controversial theory gaining ground which narrows the source of droughts in Kansas and Kenya (and sometimes Kuwait, Kiribati, Kosovo, and Kyrgyzstan, too) to Boston's motorists, and fat cat bureaucrats in charge of Beijing factories, who are, indeed, connected by alliteration.

How, I asked him later over the phone, could we address these two pernicious sources of global climate change?

"It's simple," he told me. "Eliminate the alliteration, and you eliminate the sources of global warming."

I said, "well, what if we made Storrow Drive a toll road?  And fired everyone at the MBTA and hired Oompa Loompas, who will work a lot harder for practically peanuts (cacao beans, actually) and invested in light rail, and... and..."

"Mike—Mike," Zed interrupted me.  "Wouldn't it just be easier to say 'cars in L.A. and factories in, um...'"

"Limerick?" I offered.

"precisely," he said. "Your global warming problem is solved."

I've obviously underestimated the power of alliteration.