Not Picking this Battle

I’m putting The Weather Makers down and moving on. I was planning to write favorable copy, but general opinion discourages me. Apparently, my Southern neighbors believe global warming bogus.

I see their point. The South has always experienced hot, sweltering summers. This summer’s drought, the same 2 summers ago as thirty years ago, is normal. If we are truly experiencing a warming effect, it should be even hotter.

They do admit to the milder winters. It has been a good thirty years since ponds have frozen over. To Southerners, skating in your tennis shoes on the farm’s pond indicates an extra chilly winter.

I shouldn’t type cast all Southerners as non-believers. I give credit to author Tim Flannery for knocking me off the fence, having approached the issue as a skeptic. It is only through his vast research my stubborn views changed.

The book can change other Southern minds, too. I commit eagerly to book talking this honorable title, one-on-one. Using visual cues to judge my effectiveness, (like a seer) I adhere to rule number three, “Every book his reader.”

The Weather Makers (notes)

“The best evidence indicates that we need to reduce our CO2 emissions by 70% by 2050.” p6

“70 percent of all people alive today will still be alive in 2050, so climate change affects almost every family on this planet.” p7

“The CO2 from breath last week may now be feeding a plant on a distant continent, or plankton in a frozen sea. In a matter of months, all of the CO2 you just exhaled will have dispersed around the planet. Because of it dynamism, the atmosphere is on intimate terms with every aspect of our earth, from the mantle upward. No volcano belches, no ocean churns—indeed, no creature breathes—without the great aerial ocean registering it.” p22

Not Picking this Battle

http://maggiereads.blogspot.com/2006/08/not-picking-this-battle.html