Global Warming ?

Global Warming?

Winter, I remember the winters of my youth in Keego Harbor, MI. The snow seemed deeper, the winters seemed longer and in retrospect the summers seemed hotter. Is this the memory of an adolescent child? Sure it is but there also is some reality to it. The winter of 1963 comes to mind, the November when Kennedy was assassinated I was 11 years old and the one thing that stands out in my mind is the snow. Cold, desolate, dreadful weather sort of mirroring the events in U.S history. The winter of 1966 was so snow bound that I believe that it was the snowiest winter on record.

Now we hear the global warming rhetoric and quite frankly it for me is a little hard to swallow. I believe that the weather is somewhat cyclic and is really controlled by the sun. Sunspots and events that are far above my pay grade affect the weather. I understand that this winter of 2007-2008 has been equal or exceeds the winter of 1966. The .75 temperature gain the alarmist had been saying was going to start a global flooding event and melting of the polar ice pack has been wiped out by one single cold northern winter. Now we have 10 inches thicker ice pack than we have ever had in recorded history, according to scientist who do studies on such things. Eliminating the 40-year warming trend in one year. “An inconvenient truth” does not seem to be so inconvenient or true.

Are we now going to go back to the fear mongering folks who will tell us we are going into an ice age? Are we going to stay with the people saying we are in a global warming nightmare? I quite frankly will buy into the notion that we are using up our natural resources and need to conserve so that we do not run out of a finite supply. I will also buy into the idea that we need to not pollute our environment so that it is usable by future generations but please don’t try and tell me something that isn’t happening is happening.

So as I set on my porch with the Franklin stove flickering it’s warm flames and look out the window as snow swirls down on the lake one hundred yards from my door supporting the snowmobile and ice fishermen scurrying about I wonder “ will summer ever come”. Sure it will, some days warmer than others. 70, 80, 90-degree days lie ahead for us in Michigan. I say conserve what you can, protect the environment at every opportunity and hope that the environmentalist get there act together and come to a conclusion that we all can support.