Rumor has it that we are going to have a very snowy December that will help
but supposedly the rest of the winter is going to suck


Where'd you hear that? I thought this was "supposed" to be a good winter via
La Nina effects?

---------------------------
Leigh replies (and grabs his flak jacket):

FWIW, I believe that I started the "rumour" about this winter by merely
repeating in an earlier column what this year's Farmer's Almanac has to say.
However, Skip's earlier comments are very interesting, and corroborate some
extensive research done by Dr. Jim Ball of the University of Winnipeg.
Being a farmer, I've followed the weather to such an extent that if you
asked me what the weather was like during, say,  the third week of May,
1985, I could rattle it off the top of my head (I'm not kidding).  Ball is
probably Canada's best known spokesperson on climate and agriculture.

Back to the point, Dr. Ball postulates that both the short and long term
climate changes indicate cooling, not warming, temperatures.  The eastern
arctic temperature for example, which foreshadows climatic change for most
of NA, has been actually dropping for about a decade or so.  Ask any Newfie
what their summers have been like recently.

Ball's view, which I agree with totally, is that so called "global warming"
is nothing more than the latest "sky is falling" rallying cry of the
enviro-nazi movement.  This guy has some impressive statistical models to
back up his projections.  Frankly, I don't believe a word of the "junk
science/flavour of the month" that the enviros spew seemingly weekly about
catastrophic global warming, GM food, etc.....etc... and etc.

Climate cycles will come and go long after we are around to watch them.  Our
contributions are absolutely trivial compared to say, a volcanic eruption on
the scale of a Mt. St. Helens or Mt. Pinatubo.  The latter eruption alone
released enough ash and "greenhouse gas" into  the air to account for
somethng like the next 100 years of US auto emissions.  Sure enough, the
summer temps during 1984 were down more than 300 growing degree days as a
result of the ash filtering the light hitting the earth.

It is almost laughable that some people are so niave as to think we humans
count for much in the grand scheme of life.  However, I stop laughing when I
read about, for example, Vail getting busted for mistakenly driving through
a half(!) acre "wetland" because it was too dry to tell it was a wetland.
Now they have to leave about 5 million board feet of timber  to rot down on
the mountain because the access road is blocked.  What a bloody cryin'
shame.  Multiply this by any number of similar incidents every day, and no
wonder ski tickets cost so much.

Leigh [and damn proud of it].

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