I like it when nature reminds us that man cannot control it. The massive ice shoves that piled up on the western and southern shores of Lake Winnebago over the weekend and threatened to engulf buildings were great reminders of that. We can put up breakwalls, piers and bridges–but just a little bit of ice plus wind can overpower those easily.
Another reminder has come in California this winter. Record drought has been nearly wiped out by almost daily heavy rains. Reservoirs that were dangerously low are now filled beyond capacity. Dams designed to hold back the water are failing because engineers never expected to get that much rain all at one time in an area that is for all intents and purposes a desert.
It’s these little reminders that show the fallacy that we humans could ever hope to control the climate. In California, the alarmists were positive that water levels would never return to what is required to sustain the hundreds of millions of people that live there. Water controls and rationing were going to be the law of the land for the rest of time. Remember when Tom Selleck got in hot water (pun intended) for using too much water on his pistachio orchard? That doesn’t seem like such a big concern anymore does it? Of course Governor Jerry Brown isn’t about to ease water restrictions–because then he and his liberal co-horts cant’t cause people to live in fear and put up with Government over-regulation anymore.
And remember, it took just a few months of rain to bring everything almost back to “normal”. Or at least the definition of normal that we like to use for the relatively short period of time that we humans have had the scientific knowledge necessary to measure and record what is going on around us. I look forward to the “hockey stick” graph of California rainfall to project 100-feet of precipitation annually by 2040. It’s also why I don’t worry when we talk about “record hot years” on planet Earth–because I know the dinosaurs enjoyed even hotter years while they roamed the earth as giant cold-blooded animals–and thick rain forests and jungles covered nearly all of the continents.
So the next time you get the urge to demand that the Government “do something to control the climate”–head on down to Lake Winnebago first and stop the ice shoves from forming.
