Well, I guess I'll get in the middle of this fray with my two cents. I agree that there has been a drought lately that is severe in some places. Just fifty or so miles south of me some of the lakes are at record lows but the Cumberland has managed to not suffer so bad. I look out in my back yard and it is up about 3 or 4 feet from normal moving the recent rainfall down to the Ohio. I'm not sure whether man is contributing significantly to the climate problem or not, but I tend to beleive that it is mostly natural. I've put in some time since I retired looking at this and the natural changes throughout history are phenominal. I remember back in the middle seventies, I think, when newsweek, time etc all had front pages with the global cooling scare. Some of the same people who said that we were all going to freeze are saying we are all going to drown from the polar caps thawing. I went back and found an article, and I think it was also in newsweek, where a lot of the scientists/experts were wanting to dump millions of tons of coal dust on both poles to help hold in the heat of the sun to increase the temp. Can you imagine what it would be like now if we had done that?
I have come to the conclusion that the experts don't know enough to really know what they are doing. Most of the global warming conclusions are based on the last 10 to 15 years and to me that seems like it would be looking at a millisecond in the total time of the world. Not much of a time slice on which to base a theory. As far as the lack of rain, I just look back at the 30's and the dust bowl. There have always been droughts and floods and everything in between. I saw an interview with a climatologist on the weather channel and he said the problem in the southeast the last couple of years was that there was not enough hurricaines. The southeast traditionally relied on at least a couple a year to come through the gulf and dump a lot of rain in the summer. After that year with the record number of really bad ones they have virtually stopped. Go figure. As far as the Colorado, there is only a finite amount of water in that area on a good year and the population keeps increasing. What to do?
Having said that, I also remember pictures when I was a kid in the 50's showing the industrial waste being dumped into the great lakes. That was really a mess and it was all man made, so we can have an adverse impact. Thank God we got our act together and stopped that. Nature has healed itself and is going on.
I think it is great to debate this stuff and get other peoples opinion, especially since it has an effect on us and our crappie fishing.
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A day late, a dollar short and two drinks behind.