Global Warming

If you don't believe in global warming then you didn't spend the summer in Canada. Today, September 25/07, it is 30 C (90 F) which is rare indeed for this time of the year. It feels strange to be trying to avoid the hot sun while watching the leaves on the trees changing to fall colors. I think the relatively cool nights have allowed the leaves to change color and fall from the trees despite the warm daytime temperatures.

I'm a creature of habit and last week decided that our hot weather was over so I covered the central air conditioner beside the house. This keeps the falling leaves from filling it up and interfering with it's cooling ability in the summer. Now I'm hot as hell but just not prepared to uncover the air conditioner for this one extremely hot day. It will cool down tomorrow to about 25 C (80 F) on it's unseasonably slow downward curve to actual chilly days.

When I was a child we had snow for most of the winter, sometimes very heavy snowfalls but those are days long gone and Canadian winters now in my neck of the woods are just one grey, dry day after another. A couple of really heavy snowfalls can still be counted on to close the city down but it just isn't like it used to be. If it wasn't for the world effect of global warming I could almost enjoy having less cold weather.

My winters in Florida began as a means of escaping the frigid cold but I'm apparently only escaping the so-so cold now. What's more important is that I'm escaping the grey days. Florida is the land of sunshine no matter what the temperature is and that's why I love wintering there. We don't get terrible heat throughout the winter but a mixture of nice warm days occasionally interspersed with a cool day or two. I would love to have that kind of weather all year round.

With true global warming we will probably first see our food supply affected. Farmers' crops usually can't survive constant hot weather. Ponds dry up and water becomes a scarce and expensive commodity.

I'm not sure how human beings have brought us to this state but I read once that humans were the cancer of the earth and I'm beginning to understand why. For the most part we plunder the earth's riches and give little back. We pollute the air and lay concrete over healthy soil. And we may have let it get too bad to make it right again.