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Yard Gnome (my buddy Yg) wants to know what the heck happened to global warming.
“I’ve been up to my butt in snow for THREE DAMN WEEKS!”
“Yeah, Yg, I sympathize with you. I spent 30 hours last month moving this stuff off our block’s sidewalks and driveways.”
“So where the heck is global warming?”
“Folks in Wisconsin and Missouri suffering through January tornados could probably tell ya.”
“That’s not helping my cold butt any bit.”
“Yeah, Yg, I hear ya. Another week of this and I’m taking up a petition to rename this street Glacier Point.”
Yg’s right. The last couple Decembers have been brutally cold and snowy here. And high wind along with the cold! Unprecedented. Baja beckons.
I’m thinking this global warming deal is sort of like the stock market. Different sectors, or even the whole market, can go down on any given day, but the overall trend- long term- is up. Or so they tell me. I can’t tell it by looking at my pissy little portfolio this year, just like my street does not evidence any sign of global warming this month. So! Is the average global temp rising even though Yg and me are freezing?
Yep. I do believe it is.
Can we change that?
Damned if I know.
But it sure can’t hurt to try. The use of more wind, solar, geothermal, even clean coal technologies can’t be a bad thing.
Unless, it seems, you’re on the raging fringe of the environmentalist movement.
This fringe group seems not to like anything. Some of them have gone so far as to burn down car dealerships and ski lodges in recent years in protest of - well- pretty much anything useful.
So now comes wind energy, growing and proving itself daily. And some of the crackpots on the fringe are worried about the BIRDS!
Yep, these windmills, so say some folks, are going to kill birds. The birds will run into them and die.
Well, Hell. Sometimes a bird runs into one of my windows and dies. So, should I tear down my house?
Sometimes a nut in a car runs into a street light and is hurt or dead- so tear down the street lights. BUT WAIT, there’s more. Sometimes a nut in a car will run over a cliff and die really dead. So- do we level all the cliffs, Mr/Ms. Environment? Sometimes people drive into lakes and die. Or out onto some ice and break through. So- do we get rid of the lakes and ice? WAIT- that’s what the environmentalists started out to save-- before one of them saw a dead bird.
I think most birds will be fine with the windmills, just like most birds avoid my windows. Just like most people are fine driving AROUND street lights and cliffs and lakes and ice.
Where’s my evidence?
Right here in my cold front yard. Yg pointed this out to me.
This bird nest was built last summer. It was a nice home for a nice family until the leaves fell away. But the nest remains. It has been there for months without the shelter of leaves. It has endured brutal rain, wind and snow storms. Months of them. And yet it remains intact.
No architect designed this, no government contract went to study and ponder and draw and design and study and pontificate on it. No tax dollars or insurance protects it. No congressional committee studied it, no city issued a building permit. A bird built it. In a matter of a few days. And it has weathered the worst that Wyoming can throw at it. And it still stands.
I think the birds will be fine.
I worry about the people.
Just build the damned windmills.
Stay safe and be happy.
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