Days of Future Past

In days of old, there was a distinct passage of time punctuated by such things as Indian Summer and the January Thaw. Both were, more often than now, reliable events that made winter a bit more bearable. Fall came on slow and a period of several days to a week of freezing temperatures would often occur, then relent for a few days where the temps would skyrocket (relatively) to around fifty for one last hurrah of beautiful weather, before winter clamped down around Thanksgiving (Late November). Likewise, we had the long cold stretch during the holidays that signaled the advent of Winter proper, with all that Winter brings, but then around mid-January there would be a thaw that threatened to overflow the stream banks and inundate low lying areas. Shirtsleeves were not necessarily in order, but the warmth felt wonderful.

In recent years we have been forced to alternately wonder if a January freeze were more in order, or instead of Indian Summer, we have been tempted to call it Indian Fall, nearly skipping over some of the most wonderful days of autumn to be plunged into arctic air even before the frost has fallen on the pumpkin. Likewise, there have been springs recently that seemed to last but a week, again robbing us of the delightful lengthening days and the moderate temps that we used to have as winter loosened her grip. Since my earliest days, studying ecology and meteorology, the logic behind "Global Warming" seemed to be a reach. If you have ever heated up a stone and left one room temperature then taken them outside in winter, you can feel heat escaping far more rapidly from a warm rock than a cool one. If we ever manage to raise the temperature of the entire globe, it will just radiate faster out into space. However, the destabilization of the atmosphere, that is a different story.

Every BTU of heat that we generate excites molecules. These excited molecules just want to escape, they go in every direction, but more go up than go out, because the sky is the limit so to speak. Humans have become adept at wasting energy and wherever we gather together, cities have domes of waste heat and expanded air hovering over them like invisible mountain ranges. This has been clear for decades. The reason it really never gets talked about is because even scientists don't like to admit how little they know about the phenomenon. The media thinks it is out of the realm of being understandable to the majority of people and the government is not interested in holding anyone accountable for their waste heat signature.