Is it about warming, or even about weather change like they claim, I don't know, but things are different lately. Everyone's interested in the polar bears and the glaciers melting. At first, I couldn't see why everyone was so worried, I mean, my winters seem to be colder every year.
For years, 'normal' winter was an average of ten degrees above zero Fahrenheit to ten degrees below zero, with cold spikes in November and February where it might get as cold as -30ish (F), but those spikes lasted only two or three weeks and it was back up, and then it would warm up into the 20s and 30s and snow (sometimes a little - sometimes a lot), and then back down to average. Come the latter part of February, the longer days start having an affect on the heat of the day, and by the end of March things start to melt.
Lately, the November cold spike kinda went away, which put freeze-up off until much closer to Christmas - really kind of a pain for me, but we can't control the weather. And the rest of the winter has been really quite cold, spending most of the time down around -20 if not colder. You know it spends a lot of time down around there when 0 to 10 above feels like a nice day.
Once was the time when a hot summer day was 70 degrees (F), and those days didn't show up until July. Any more, 80 degrees is fairly common and sometimes warmer, and they've been known to show up in May, if only for a few days. I still start melting at 70, and long before it gets to 80 I'm searching for dark corners and shade, and wishing for a root cellar.
Some time ago I friended this guy on Facebook who was all for dams and culverts to divert water to Californian farmers. Not that I have anything against farmers, I like oranges, when I can get them, and I'm all for everyone making a living. But my discussions with him prompted me to think about the cycle of weather.
Water evaporates, becomes clouds, and once enough accumulates up there, it comes down in some sort of precipitation depending on the time of year and the temperature. The more evaporation, the more precipitation, which, in this case, means more snow. It takes snow to make glaciers and the ice caps at the top and bottom of our globe. Not that I know how all this works, but in my thinking, running water and thrashing waves in the ocean are going to evaporate more efficiently and faster. Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe I'm not getting the whole picture.
When I brought this concept up to said friend, our conversation stopped. He said he'd look into my theory, but he never got back to me. So, are dams and culverts to blame? Probably not; I'm certain there's far more to it than that, but my train of thought leads me to think that 'global warming' isn't really such a bad thing. Warm air holds more moisture, more moisture in the air means more snow coming down, more snow means more of a nice white covering on the tops of our glaciers, which will slow down their melting. Glaciers were formed because there was more snowfall than melt during the turning of a year. So we want more snow, and we won't have more snow if we don't have more, wetter, precipitation.
What do you think?
