Global Warming Issue Comes Home: Change, made bite-sized

We will spend the rest of our natural lives debating the causes of global warming, worming and squirming with both political parties working mainly to blame it on the others as they usually do, which will distract us from the fact that we're doing nothing really about it, even if we arguably could. And so in a couple of hours from now, or a couple of zillion years, give or take a weekend, our primordially oozing imperfectly mammalian souls will explode across the Milky Way, the whole planet will rocket into the sun, and the last thing time will remember is some really cheesed off mutant polar bears bashing us with Coke bottles in poetic irony as the whole shooting match implodes on a worse ending note than a Wham! song.

Or else, it won't.

So, whether we are bound for oblivion, or likely to look back upon a hyped-up scare that makes Y2K look like child's play in comparison, the bottom line may be that nothing you or I do is likely going to change the course.

Even a nincompoop would would find it hard to say that climate change isn't real. A friend of mine is sailing the Arctic, documenting the melting of the polar ice cap as we speak.

The number of earthquakes we've had around the world lately seems extraordinary - is this something crazy happening, or are farflung disasters just getting reported on more? And this is the first winter I can ever recall that the state has issued multiple air pollution warnings right here in northwest Iowa.

Leading scientists around the world agree that average temperatures are up around 1.3 degrees over the past 100 years, and are likely to keep right on rising, likely faster, even if we did somehow stabilize greenhouse gas levels. Didn't feel like it this winter. About the time you are scraping the fifth ice storm of the coming season off your Extra Emissions Special Edition monster SUV, your frozen brain might think global warming isn't such a bad deal - if you can hang on long enough.

Iowa Scientists have suggested that Storm Lake weather will eventually become what deep-south Mississippi has now, and if California has to eat a tidal wave to get you there; well, que sera, sera.

Still, you have that little three-inch-tall version of Al Gore perched on your shoulder, and every time you fill up your 600 horsepower Vette at the pump or throw out your own weight in unrecycled garbage, Little Al hauls off and kicks you right in the earlobe of conscience.

Read more of this story in the March 6 Pilot Tribune.