Arctic blast

The country is being creamed by an icy blast from Canada this week. We're at freezing right now (no snow of course) even though it's sunny and 3 in the afternoon. We're doing much better than other parts of the country where it hit -52 for a wind chill in North Dakota, and is below freezing all the way down to Florida where the crops are being watered to actually keep them warmer and apparently iguanas, who are cold blooded, are falling out of trees! Snow is flying and ice is causing crashes and 150 mile long freeway closures from Wisconsin to Georgia. It's quite a mess out there but hey, it's Winter and this has happened before. Last night on Facebook someone wrote 'Screw Al Gore and his Global Warming ass, I'm freakin' cold'. I wrote back 'How quickly we forget the 68 days we were at or over 100 degrees last summer'. We do quickly forget but even more importantly it's amazing how we all suddenly become scientists/meteorologists that are experts on this subject. At the same time we don't want to listen to the people that have actually dedicated their lives to the study of the climate and see the trend. I don't have a meteorology degree, but I've been studying weather and climate for 30 years, wanted to get that degree (but Oklahoma and A&M have the best programs and forget that!), and I did get my degree in Geography (minor) and History (major). I've studied and been fascinated by the history of weather since I was a kid and a tornado flew over our house the day after my 6th birthday. I know there's a lot of political windbaggery on the subject of global warming and of course when politics is involved there's people trying to profit from it. We just can't seem to help ourselves. What I try to explain to people is that weather and climate are about balance just like every other earth system. There are cycles to it all land if it's really freakin' hot eventually it will get really freakin' cold to make up for it. With the global warming issue, we may be too late to change what the earth is going to do by itself to 'balance things out' and we may just need to look at how to survive whatever that may be. I don't think it will be the end of human civilization like some scaremongers want to push. What I have seen is that galvanizing events can cause change. In 1969, the Cuyahoga River in Cleveland caught on fire because it was so polluted. This led to the Earth Day movement a year later. Now cities are a LOT cleaner than they were in 1970. How much more cleaner do they need to be? Greenland melting, glaciers disappearing from mountain ranges, and each year being the new 'hottest on record' can definitely be a galvanizing force if we use it right and make the needed changes to at least try and slow the process. But a week of icy weather shouldn't take away the fact that we're still heating up. It's all part of the 'this is what's happening right this moment' syndrome. Global warming involves long range thinking, something we are sorely lacking.