Icebergs and Algae

Icebergs
I'm no scientist, but I take an interest in science. I read New Scientist frequently. They tell me that the globe is warming and the ice caps are melting at an alarming rate. I know enough to understand that "global warming" is a misnomer -- that all parts of the planet will not be affected equally due to changing weather patterns. "Climate change" is a more accurate description. Yet, it is still pretty damn hard to reconcile this global warming stuff with the frost bite on my ass.

We had a less-than-spectacular summer, an average fall I guess, and then came December:

I couldn't find daily normals so I used monthly normals for the comparison vs. actual temps and forcasts up to Christmas. For a fair comparison, since the last 6 six days are missing you should exclude the first 6. If you do that, you'll see that only two days did we get above normal for our high, and even on those two the daily low was far colder than normal. This is bullshit. I demand a refund.

When I was dying of hypothermia last March I noted that "things are looking up" because the long term forecast called for above normal temps. What the hell happened to that? Have a look at the Free Press web site: "New Storm Strikes the Northwest", "Plows hit the Streets", "Winter Rolls in Coast to Coast", "Deep freeze continues". Part of that may be lazy reporting. Just like at a party, the weather is the go-to subject when you have nothing else to talk about. Still, you gotta think that if the average temperature of the globe is increasing, then somebody somewhere must be pretty fucking hot.

Algae
Gary Doer is also no scientist, but will he listen to them? A article in the Sunday Free Press revived the debate about the $50 million plan to remove nitrogen from Winnipeg waste water, in an apparently misguided attempt to clean up Lake Winnipeg. Will the NDP listen to the experts and back off the plan? Many argue that there wasn't a whole lot of scientific reasoning behind the crack down on the hog industry expansion which has cost the province jobs. My guess is he plows ahead with the project so that he can claim he's doing something, even if he's really just wasting money. I guess you could look at it as a $50 million fiscal stimulus package to get our economy going.

Just for fun