Weathering...

While standing in the field watching the plumber backhoe down to the broken water pipe, I discovered I had a problem. As I breathed out, it was cold enough that the moisture of my breath was accumulating on my beard and mustache as small chunks of ice. This was a problem, but not the most disconcerting problem. The real problem was that some of those chunks of ice spanned from the hair of my mustache to the hair of my beard. My mouth was kinda frozen shut. I took off a glove and managed to melt those chunks of ice enough that I could open my mouth. Didn't really have anything that needed to be said at that point but I have grown rather fond of being able to open my mouth any time I want.

Standing out in a field with temperatures that low started me to thinking. I really had no choice. I was concerned if I didn't keep my two remaining brain cells moving they would freeze together and crash to the bottom of my skull. The most obvious subject to think about when you are this cold is, of course, global warming.

I was much tempted to think that the current temperatures, possibly record breaking temperatures, are stone cold proof that global warming is a bunch of frozen dinosaur doo. I would have been wrong. Just about as wrong as I was when I was watching record breaking high temperatures melt rocks and I was tempted to think, "I guess this pretty much makes the global warming thing settled science." I'm wrong about the weather a lot...just like everyone else.

The things that concern me most about the current proposal that humans are creating a trend of global warming are.. the monkeying, the disappearing, and the solutioning.

It seems pretty obvious now that there has been some monkeying around with the data being used to prove that there is human caused global warming. Possibly it was appropriate monkeying around, possibly it was inappropriate monkeying around. We can't really be sure because of my second concern..the disappearing.

It appears that a lot of the original data that was monkeyed around has disappeared. In the whole scientific process this creates a problem. Generally accepted scientific practice deems that when you monkey around with data you need to be able to let other monkeyers duplicate your monkeying to verify it was appropriate monkeying.

My biggest concern of all is the solutioning. There are a bunch of folks proposing solutions before we can really determine if there in fact is a problem that requires a solution. If the current temperature trend is in a warming direction then it's possible that the causes are the same as when this happened back in the medieval time period. This would mean that we would need to reverse and hold our living conditions to mirror those prior to the start in temperature increase at that time. I'm not thinking I'm gonna wanna to do that. Just a reminder...this was before the invention of indoor plumbing... I'm thinking that if the folks then started noticing the warming trend there was much rejoicing during those 2 a.m. kidney calls in mid-January.

My biggest concern with the solutioning is that those that seem to be the loudest and most strident about having the solutions to fix global warming don't seem to be altering their lifestyles to follow the solutions they want to impose on others. Flying all over the world to preach that people flying all over the world will doom us all to crispy critterdom seems a bit odd to me. Kind of like those politicians that want to "spread that wealth around a little" but don't seem to be spreading their own personal wealth around all that much. The change you seek in others must be first made within oneself... seems someone wise once said something along those lines.

Nope, I don't have any solutions...my life's path doesn't lie in the studying of temperature trends. However, I'm not really willing to alter a whole lot about my life as it relates to temperature trends until those who have devoted their lives to studying them clear up their monkeying, disappearing, and solutioning mess.