![\"hail](\"http:\/\/blog.keloland.com\/lund\/files\/2014\/06\/hail-eye.jpg\")
<\/a><\/p>\nWorst of all, of course, is when something even more devastating than rain and hail descend from the black clouds which happened in Wessington Springs where a tornado tore through town ripping up dozens of homes but, thanks I believe, to plenty of advance storm warnings through the media, lives were spared.<\/p>\n
So, what\u2019s the deal with all the weird weather we seem to be having more of \u00a0every year..big snows..no snows..ice storms..floods..droughts..tornados by the dozen one year..none the next?<\/p>\n
Well, after this latest deluge, it hasn\u2019t taken long for the experts to offer their learned explanations such as Kasey Abbott who made this Facebook comment on my friend, Mike Henricksen\u2019s timeline: \u201c\u00a0<\/i>Unfortunately, it is not at all surprising that we are seeing this. 9 of the 10 warmest years on record since 1880 have occurred in the last 10 years. People can argue all they want about what is causing this warming, but no one can dispute the fact that this additional heat energy causes more evaporation, and that the amount of moisture that warmer air can hold increases dramatically. This moisture has got to come down somewhere. A review of the weather data shows a considerable increase over the last 60 years in torrential rains.\u201d<\/i><\/p>\n
Except when it\u2019s dry and there\u2019s drought\u2026or \u201cdrouth\u201d as my Norwegian uncles used to call it.\u00a0 Last year, the Midwest did see more precipitation than normal but darned if it didn\u2019t result in the largest corn crop and third largest bean harvest on record.<\/p>\n
When the ditches and fields dry up, like they will, I wouldn\u2019t be surprised if this disastrous rainfall will be just a memory come October..provided we get a good rain in late July and a couple nice showers in August.<\/p>\n Okay, I realize that those of us who have a few questions about all this panic over what\u2019s happening to the planet\u2019s climate are, in the mind of most scientists, misinformed lunkheads too \u00a0stupid to grasp the reality about what CO2 emissions are doing to the earth\u2019s protective ozone layer. Why, we probably go out and club baby seals to death \u00a0on the weekends so the wife will have something nice to wear around her neck at the NRA convention.<\/p>\n Well, here\u2019s a shocker: I\u2019m not denying that the planet is getting warmer but I\u2019m sure as hell at a loss as to what I\u2019m supposed to do about it. To me, it\u2019s just irresponsible to scare the bejesus out of people saying millions upon millions world wide \u00a0are doomed as the ice caps melt causing the oceans to rise and city\u2019s to flood then blame us without offering a workable realistic solution. Oh, I see all the P.S.A\u2019s about how we can drive less, put more air in our tires for better fuel efficiency, recycle, change light bulbs to those squiggly kind, use less hot water and plant trees but I don\u2019t think that\u2019s going to do it.<\/p>\n Half the homes in the country get their electricity from coal fired power plants. There are over 600 of them and they shoot a lot of carbon dioxide into the air; even more than the methane from farting cattle that environmental\/vegetarians have been trying to eradicate. President Obama recently announced the EPA is cutting those coal plant emissions by 30% by 2030 and any new coal fired plants must be built to run cleaner. It may just be lip service though. Experts (including several former EPA heads) say the move won\u2019t have any significant effect on CO2 pollution unless countries like China, Brazil and India agree to play along.<\/p>\n So, perhaps it\u2019s a P.R. problem. \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 I\u2019ve come up with a few suggestions.<\/p>\n Rather than making movies about it being my fault that polar bears are running out of ice chunks to float upon, we get our best government promotional people to approach the heads of those major polluting countries, who depend on America for much of their livelihood, and tell them we\u2019ll be shopping elsewhere if they don\u2019t clean up their act like we plan to do\u2026.and mean it.<\/p>\n Back on the home front, we have to know for sure if big oil companies actually do put roadblocks in the way of fossil-fuel-free vehicle development. If the world as we know it is going to end unless something is done to stop CO2 emissions, those companies have to be made to see the big picture or put out of business. How do you do that? I would suggest the government offering a major financial incentive to the first auto manufacturer to successfully develop an affordable electric or hydrogen-powered vehicle that meets public demands both stylistically and from a performance standpoint. I know this sort of thing has been tried before but..hey, Armageddon is coming so the stakes are pretty high this time \u00a0It has to be a sizeable prize. \u00a0This is still America though..so once the reward is given, the blueprint must be shared with other auto makers and then pollution-free production of all kinds of different cars and trucks can begin in a spirit of competition much as we have now which will not only hold prices down but offer consumers the variety they desire. An added bonus would be sticking it to the Arab oil producing countries who\u2019ve been sticking it to us for a century and been the cause of way too many wars.<\/p>\n Nobody\u2019s going to pay attention to this, of course. We\u2019ll continue to be bombarded with partisan B.S. as if this was a political problem. Environmentalists will continue to group all of us Americans into one big stinking pile of CO2 violators hoping that guilt will convince us that wrapping our water heaters in a blanket is going to make a global warming difference. Maybe, like my friend and former Keloland News colleague, Steve Hemminsen recently wrote, it\u2019s time to stop trying to stop spinning..beginning with the latest terminology.<\/p>\n Climate change is one thing, global warming is another. \u00a0<\/i>Of course we\u2019re having climate change.\u00a0 We always have climate change.\u00a0 Lake Hendricks wasn\u2019t here until 10 thousand or so years ago when there was \u201cclimate change\u201d and the glaciers melted, probably some cosmic or natural cycle.\u00a0 Man sure had nothing to do with that one.\u00a0 Do our \u00a0last couple of winters represent global warming?\u00a0 Hard to make that case.\u00a0 Do they represent climate change?\u00a0 Maybe, although a lot of us remember a lot harsher winters and hotter summers in our youth than we\u2019ve had until the last couple of years.\u00a0<\/i><\/p>\n Linda and I won\u2019t live to see how any of this turns out, I suppose. But our grandkids and their offspring likely will.. and we naturally want them to experience earth\u2019s joys and challenges too.<\/p>\n I only hope the next generation gets their noses out of their phones long enough to figure out ways to make it possible.<\/i><\/p>\n \u00a0<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Bright and sunny outside today but I\u2019m not buyin\u2019 it.\u00a0 Even though the radar is echo free at present, I fully expect the skies to darken into faux night time again by early afternoon followed in order by that familiar rumble from above then endless relentless waves of rain creating rivers of water gushing…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[60],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jodystaples.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3590"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jodystaples.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jodystaples.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jodystaples.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jodystaples.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3590"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.jodystaples.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3590\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11601,"href":"https:\/\/www.jodystaples.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3590\/revisions\/11601"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jodystaples.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3590"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jodystaples.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3590"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jodystaples.com\/main\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3590"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}<\/a><\/a><\/p>\n