Whether or Not the Weather is Hot

So, global warming due to citizens of the United States was supposed to kill the planet over the summer. I'm not sure why global warming isn't due to the carbon dioxide in China and that we should understand that one-sixth of the planet should get to emit huge amounts of carbon dioxide while make lead coated children's toys while we should cower in angst-ridden fear – but there you have the Kyoto crap in a nutshell.

Regardless of what the cause is, it has been slightly warmer. Not as warm and the doomsayers like to pontificate on, but warmer. Since we have been studying the weather with ever refined instrumentation, we have a huge store of knowledge without any understanding. We measure FACTS without knowing the meaning of them.

Since there have been ice ages and mini ice ages since before mankind hit the planet, what sort of hubris demands that we take the heat – at it were – for this newest step away from the last ice age?

Glaciers used to cover Canada and reach into Ohio, where I am from. You can look at the archeological evidence in places seeing where the weight of tons of ice carved grooves into the bedrock. Really sort of neat to see. Even with natural weather erosion, the grooves were so deep that they remain today.

In Ireland, The Burren is a hundred square miles of boulders dropped by a receding glacier. Ireland has a mild climate now. They get a little snow up in the northernmost portion of the island nation.

Glaciers in Alaska are in retreat except for one that isn't. And somehow THAT is also a problem. If the glacier advances as it has been for another year or two, it is going to ice over the mouth of a river and turn that river into a lake and flood the region and cause havoc and ruin. If it recedes, then there is havoc and ruin.

Not to mention earthquakes and volcanoes and tsunamis and tornadoes and all sorts of volatile weather and geologic transgressions.

And then there are hurricanes and cyclones. This was to be a very busy hurricane season. We were to be attacked by more and larger hurricanes and they would eat Florida right off the map along with taking out Caribbean Islands right and left. There was much hoopla about this prior to the season's start.

They have managed to have lots of Tropical Depressions. Our measurement systems are so precise and so vast that any drop in the millibars – whatever they are – makes a new storm appear on HOAA's site. They seem relieved to finally get a storm. And then the poor dear peters out and dissipates and goes away while still just causing a few waves in the Atlantic.

But they have named the storm. We have had up to Melissa now. Eight storms in September in the Atlantic with three of them actually, almost gleefully, turning into hurricanes. Eight storms ties a record – since we've kept track. But please remember that before the sensitive data collection apparatus was in place, many of these smaller storms that stayed at sea were never named, categorized, or even noticed.

Six hundred years ago, Europe didn't even know that the Americas existed. They had no idea the land was here and inhabited by tons of people already. They certainly didn't know about our hurricanes if they didn't know the land was here. I read somewhere how shocked they were with the first hurricane breezed through after they located us.

So weather is volatile. It gets hotter and colder. The planet has earthquakes because the tectonic plates crash together – or pull apart. The largest and most volatile earthquake region in the US isn't along the San Andreas fault, but in the center of the US where Yellowstone's geyser is helping to equalize the pressures from the plates slowing tearing apart. When it last burped, the shock waves were felt in Washington, DC.

What we don't know can hurt us. What we do know isn't always correct. We keep refining our measurements and then pointing to how much MORE of something there is. Because with our new equipment we have moved the labels.

There are no storms presently brewing in the Atlantic. Sigh.