Monday, January 09, 2006

Must be all that global warming


Ok.
So I got a thing for China lately. Bear with me.

"Almost 250,000 people in north-western China have been trapped by heavy snowfall, as the country faces its worst winter in 20 years."

I'm always amazed at the constant whine of 'global warming', 'global warming' from the leftist utopian i-hate-america crowd when stories like this fly in the face of those chicken little types.
And the disaster doesn't end there.
Japan is experiencing its worst winter in 60 years with reports of record cold and snowfall. As many as 56 people have been reported dead as a result of the harsh weather. If anyone knows of links or other info to contribute to relief efforts in either disaster, post them here.

Also, because of all that 'global warming', the Baffin Bay narwhals are having a hard time in their habitat over by Greenland. Narwhals are the so-called 'unicorn whales' because of their sharply protruding snout. According to the Smithsonian National Zoological Park, the bay is icing up and has been for many decades. Despite the article's obligatory bias toward wanting global warming, the article concludes:
'Satellite data collected over the last two and a half decades shows a trend toward increasing ice coverage of the bay. Climate change models predict that this trend could continue for the next 50 years'.

And on the other side of the globe, the Goddard Space Flight Center published a report back in Aug., 2002 that satellite imagery confirms an overall increase in Antarctic sea ice. 2005 update here.

Is global warming real?
Sort of but it has little to do with human influence. The warming is more like a fluctuation in the life cycle of this rock. Another ice age is predicted by some computer models. The ebb and flow of this planet's geology and the wildly fluctuating effects of that small star off our horizon scrambles this planet's climate much more than mankind's meddling ever could. And don't forget that monthly marvel the moon which floodels the ocean levels constantly. We are so full of our own self importance that we project ourselves onto a planetary scale when we are nothing more than tiny mammals making a mere dent into the life of this rock.

Much ado about nothing really.
Our smarty pants ego and myopic world view often clouds our judgement and heats the discussion past boiling, but the subject does sell newspapers rather well. There's a lot of money is at stake and many careers in the balance as to who is right on this one.

What I see is a planet that has been around for many eons with many a change under its belt (much of it cataclysmic) and it is still rotating in a very clock work manner. It will still be here long after we are gone.