Last year was ridiculously snowy as well… to which I say, "so much for global warming." "But," so the man-made global warming people say, "this is proof that the planet is warming!" So several years in a row of the coldest winters all over the country can "prove" that the world is getting hotter? Hmmm. Now, do I doubt the world is or at least WAS going through a warming trend? No, actually, I don’t. I just reject the idea that it is man-made. Too much evidence has come out now that the "scientists" rigged their experiments to make them say what they wanted, so that we cannot trust any "evidence" they have gathered. The research needs to be started over again, with honest, non-biased scientists. But I think by the time they collect new evidence, the planet will be in an official cooling trend. Yes, folks, for those who do not know, the earth’s temperature fluctuates in trends.
Does anyone else remember that in the 70’s many world-renowned scientists were warning us that we were headed into a mini ice-age? And I own the proof – a book, written in 1986, called A Creed for the Third Millenium, by Colleen McCullough. Set in the beginning of the 21st century, so about NOW, the world had cooled so much that much of the United States had become uninhabitable, government had applied a strict "one child per couple" policy unless a woman won a lottery to have a second child, and the entire nation was suffering from depression. The government sought out a new "messiah", some great motivational speaker who could help people learn how to live in this new, frozen world. It was fun fluff that I read as a teenager, but it indicates the real fear that existed at the time. Fast-forward 25 years, and now we are being convinced of the opposite.
Nonetheless, there is historic proof that the world constantly fluctuates in temperature, controlled primarily by sunspots, but certainly NOT by man. Consider the Vikings. Geological and historical evidence seems to suggest that the Vikings got on the move because of warm, wet winters that caused their food supply to fail. They were used to a certain lifestyle, and their plants were used to a certain weather, and when the weather changed, they needed to find new lands and new food. We all know what a scourge they were upon Europe, but they also traveled as far as the Atlantic coast of North America, and created thriving settlements in Greenland and Iceland. Interestingly, Greenland at the time was quite habitable. There was enough arable land along the coast and the weather was warm enough that a large settlement of Vikings grew up there around 1000 AD. However, within a couple centuries, the world cooled again, making Greenland unfit for farming, and the Vikings finally abandoned their villages there. Consider also that, during the time of Charles Dickens, England was enduring a "mini ice-age" of its own. Winters were cold and snowy, unusual for England nowadays, but the main setting for many of Dickens’ most heart-wrenching stories of the suffering poor.
Long story short, the earth’s temperature fluctuates naturally. I don’t personally like freezing weather any more than I like it boiling. But the world does not revolve around me. It revolves around a rather capricious sun, with hot spots and flares that affect us, and since I have no choice but to stay on this planet, I’m just going to have to get used to it, I guess!
Happy Snowball fighting!