Global Warring

Bright and sunny outside today but I’m not buyin’ it.  Even though the radar is echo free at present, I fully expect the skies to darken into faux night time again by early afternoon followed in order by that familiar rumble from above then endless relentless waves of rain creating rivers of water gushing through overflowing gutters onto ground that was already way over saturated from previous record breaking downpours. Then, of course comes the telltale tick, tick tick of hailstones; oblong frozen spheres that look like the eyeballs of a goat, banging into the windows threatening breakage with each thwack.

Worst of all, of course, is when something even more devastating than rain and hail descend from the black clouds which happened in Wessington Springs where a tornado tore through town ripping up dozens of homes but, thanks I believe, to plenty of advance storm warnings through the media, lives were spared.

So, what’s the deal with all the weird weather we seem to be having more of  every year..big snows..no snows..ice storms..floods..droughts..tornados by the dozen one year..none the next?

Well, after this latest deluge, it hasn’t taken long for the experts to offer their learned explanations such as Kasey Abbott who made this Facebook comment on my friend, Mike Henricksen’s timeline: “ Unfortunately, it is not at all surprising that we are seeing this. 9 of the 10 warmest years on record since 1880 have occurred in the last 10 years. People can argue all they want about what is causing this warming, but no one can dispute the fact that this additional heat energy causes more evaporation, and that the amount of moisture that warmer air can hold increases dramatically. This moisture has got to come down somewhere. A review of the weather data shows a considerable increase over the last 60 years in torrential rains.”

Except when it’s dry and there’s drought…or “drouth” as my Norwegian uncles used to call it.  Last year, the Midwest did see more precipitation than normal but darned if it didn’t result in the largest corn crop and third largest bean harvest on record.

When the ditches and fields dry up, like they will, I wouldn’t be surprised if this disastrous rainfall will be just a memory come October..provided we get a good rain in late July and a couple nice showers in August.

Okay, I realize that those of us who have a few questions about all this panic over what’s happening to the planet’s climate are, in the mind of most scientists, misinformed lunkheads too  stupid to grasp the reality about what CO2 emissions are doing to the earth’s protective ozone layer. Why, we probably go out and club baby seals to death  on the weekends so the wife will have something nice to wear around her neck at the NRA convention.

Well, here’s a shocker: I’m not denying that the planet is getting warmer but I’m sure as hell at a loss as to what I’m supposed to do about it. To me, it’s just irresponsible to scare the bejesus out of people saying millions upon millions world wide  are doomed as the ice caps melt causing the oceans to rise and city’s to flood then blame us without offering a workable realistic solution. Oh, I see all the P.S.A’s about how we can drive less, put more air in our tires for better fuel efficiency, recycle, change light bulbs to those squiggly kind, use less hot water and plant trees but I don’t think that’s going to do it.

Half the homes in the country get their electricity from coal fired power plants. There are over 600 of them and they shoot a lot of carbon dioxide into the air; even more than the methane from farting cattle that environmental/vegetarians have been trying to eradicate. President Obama recently announced the EPA is cutting those coal plant emissions by 30% by 2030 and any new coal fired plants must be built to run cleaner. It may just be lip service though. Experts (including several former EPA heads) say the move won’t have any significant effect on CO2 pollution unless countries like China, Brazil and India agree to play along.

So, perhaps it’s a P.R. problem.       I’ve come up with a few suggestions.

Rather than making movies about it being my fault that polar bears are running out of ice chunks to float upon, we get our best government promotional people to approach the heads of those major polluting countries, who depend on America for much of their livelihood, and tell them we’ll be shopping elsewhere if they don’t clean up their act like we plan to do….and mean it.

Back on the home front, we have to know for sure if big oil companies actually do put roadblocks in the way of fossil-fuel-free vehicle development. If the world as we know it is going to end unless something is done to stop CO2 emissions, those companies have to be made to see the big picture or put out of business. How do you do that? I would suggest the government offering a major financial incentive to the first auto manufacturer to successfully develop an affordable electric or hydrogen-powered vehicle that meets public demands both stylistically and from a performance standpoint. I know this sort of thing has been tried before but..hey, Armageddon is coming so the stakes are pretty high this time  It has to be a sizeable prize.  This is still America though..so once the reward is given, the blueprint must be shared with other auto makers and then pollution-free production of all kinds of different cars and trucks can begin in a spirit of competition much as we have now which will not only hold prices down but offer consumers the variety they desire. An added bonus would be sticking it to the Arab oil producing countries who’ve been sticking it to us for a century and been the cause of way too many wars.

Nobody’s going to pay attention to this, of course. We’ll continue to be bombarded with partisan B.S. as if this was a political problem. Environmentalists will continue to group all of us Americans into one big stinking pile of CO2 violators hoping that guilt will convince us that wrapping our water heaters in a blanket is going to make a global warming difference. Maybe, like my friend and former Keloland News colleague, Steve Hemminsen recently wrote, it’s time to stop trying to stop spinning..beginning with the latest terminology.

Climate change is one thing, global warming is another.  Of course we’re having climate change.  We always have climate change.  Lake Hendricks wasn’t here until 10 thousand or so years ago when there was “climate change” and the glaciers melted, probably some cosmic or natural cycle.  Man sure had nothing to do with that one.  Do our  last couple of winters represent global warming?  Hard to make that case.  Do they represent climate change?  Maybe, although a lot of us remember a lot harsher winters and hotter summers in our youth than we’ve had until the last couple of years. 

Linda and I won’t live to see how any of this turns out, I suppose. But our grandkids and their offspring likely will.. and we naturally want them to experience earth’s joys and challenges too.

I only hope the next generation gets their noses out of their phones long enough to figure out ways to make it possible.