Today is a wonderful February day here in Nebraska. It is a balmy 66 degrees as I write this, and it got me to thinking about our climate a bit. I’m not a scientist. I make no claims to understand or even be able to interpret the mountains of data available on global warming. I am a persistent observer of things going on in my neck of the woods though. I can tell you this, I have reason to believe a few things about climate change in my part of the world.
I have every reason to believe that, like so many things in our world, the climate systems of our planet function in cycles. I am not saying that humans don’t influence how this cycle functions, but I am not very certain that we as humans truly know how much or in what way we do affect this planet.
Here is a case and point on this why I feel this way. Here in Nebraska, our largest lake is the artificial lake McConaughy. It is just one of a system of reservoirs that were created to handle winter snow melt runoff from the Rocky Mountains. There is a real concern this year that major flooding of the Platte river could occur because there is projected to be a spring run off that is significantly higher than average. Every reservoir in the system is full, and McConaughy is nearly so. A good thing in a manner of speaking though, right? I mean the last time this happened was the fall of 1999.
After that the area endured a punishing drought that lasted for about ten years. During that time McConaughy was a poster-child example of climate change in action. There were real concerns that the body of water was going to simply dry up and cease to exist. At its low point the reservoir only held about a third of its capacity. During this same period you also found many supporters of the claims that global warming was happening. However, if you jump forward to today many are not so sure.
I can tell you from my own personal observations, that in the last two years alone, the seasons have seemed to be right on target with the calendar partners. The moisture we have got seems about right, and temperatures seem about normal. As I said in the beginning, I believe it would be quite short-sighted to believe that over 5 billion humans do not impact the planet. What I do question is how much of a cause we really are in a system that we understand less about than we do our neighbor the moon.
How is the weather behaving in your corner of the world? Do you believe that climate change by humans is the driving force to your weather?
Related Articles
- “Global Warming Hysteria: Weather Has Not Grown More Extreme Due to Warming” and related posts (firstthings.com)
- “Global Warming, Climate Change, Whatever You Call It: It Isn’t Making the Weather Weirder” and related posts (happycatholic.blogspot.com)
- “Britons going cold on global warming: Number of climate change sceptics doubles in four years” and related posts (awesternheart.blogspot.com)
- “Al Gore claims global warming caused last week’s historic blizzard” and related posts (swacgirl.blogspot.com)
Mike’s Take 