Stubborn is a great quality……when it is called for. Examples include complex issues requiring manual dexterity, where experience will win the day, directing traffic at an accident scene and when confronted by a child that is reticent to follow your direction and accept guidance. It also takes a little humility to admit that stubbornness in the face of overwhelming opinion and evidence contrary to your opinion just might be dumb. I abhor the thought of granting a concession to the left, primarily because their Commander, Biden, is such a disaster. I will go to my grave (I am in no hurry) shaking my head at the woke culture that is becoming prevalent. Humor me a bit as I wander into the Climate Change arena…a concept where my stubbornness has shown it’s butt. Here we go.
Something is going on. We have lived with “hot spells” for as long as I remember. I have sat quietly through the heat of a South Carolina July with nothing more than a box fan in a window for relief. I have sweltered in the lush greenery of Vietnam where I solemnly swore that I would never again pass up the opportunity to sit quietly in an air conditioned environment. This past week, I agreed to cut and trim a new building that my daughter and her family are building at the Lake of the Ozarks, with the cutting being done under a little beach shelter set up outside to provide shade while we ran the saws. Before the day was over I referred to the tent as a funeral tent…….sure to cover our remains after we succumbed to a heat stroke. Another broken vow. Maybe the heat gets to me, but I am starting to consider what climatologists and now the American Medical Association are suggesting is climate change. Folks say dinosaurs once roamed the continent (dinosaur bones have been found near my beloved Truman Lake) and that rivers were formed by glaciers back, way back, before our time. There is ample evidence these things occurred. When I hit the road back in the early 70’s, we had snows that left snow banks on county roads well into early spring. The average temperatures in Missouri have clearly risen, summer and winter, over the last 10 years as opposed to the decade before. Just as the dinosaurs disappeared, we now have little critters called armadillos tearing up our lawns in Missouri on their migratory route into Iowa where the little hellions would never have been found 20 years ago.
Consumer Reports, another outfit that I attach great credibility to, consistently cites folks who have spent years researching this phenomenon and reached the same conclusion……it’s getting hotter. In fact, virtually every scientist with a shred of credibility is suggesting we are experiencing climate change. So it is that I am checking my stubborn inclination to resist the acceptance of this happening and conceding that it is, overall, getting hotter. I am a proud hillbilly and rely on nature rather than years of study to arrive at this admission. I can see the armadillos moving north, the varieties of row crops being genetically altered to be drought and heat resistant, the morphing of great western lakes into mud holes, and the melting of the remaining glaciers for what they are……..
Less my readers think that I am giving up and throwing in with the liberals on this topic…..that is not the case. My problem is with how they attack it. In my lifetime, if I don’t succumb to a heat stroke, we will see alternative powered vehicles…..with enough range to visit our grandparents on Thanksgiving. You have to transition to these forms of energy, not jump in before you see how deep the water is which is what the current crop of ideologues is doing. Weather is cyclical, period. Only a denier would suggest the cycles aren’t changing. Something is up, no doubt, with greenhouse gases being a part of the problem. We need to adjust accordingly. How to adjust is a political problem and politics and nature do not get along.
I’ll end with this thought. A sheepish grin is my way of cancelling stubbornness. You’ll never see a Biden/Harris sign in my yard. Just because they have a point relative to climate change does not make them right on woke nonsense such as tearing down statues, unchecked crime, unisex humans and a free lunch for everyone. Their way of dealing with climate change is sickening……..destroying America by abruptly cancelling fossil fuel is abhorrent. The numbers over the past couple of decades do not support cyclical weather patterns as the source of our current discomfort and the changes in nature……it is warmer. When they build a hydrogen powered one ton Ram with the grunt of my Cummins, I’ll give it a whirl. Meanwhile, Cirrus (the truck) and I will continue to enjoy the fruits of MY labor……
Have a great week!
SR
SR
srj641 