doublegunshop.com - home Forums General Discussion DoubleGun BBS @ doublegunshop.com Duck hunting and climate change

and who said warming is bad? for all we know there was another ice age heading our way and we forstalled it with all our gas passing. in 1980 or 81 I spent christmas eve day basking around the pool in Houston and got a bad sunburn. we didn't even have SUV's then.

Global warming thrives on short memories. Remember the 1970s? A blink of the eye in our own past, and a mere spec on the historical record. It was global cooling then, the great lakes were at high tide, beaches disappearing, shoreline homes falling into the water (with dramatic clips on the evening news). Life as we then knew was predictated to come to an end in another ice age.

Blink. Oh! Now the weather pendulum has swung and Chicken Littles who suck at the jive job tit of government salaries and/or grants to prepetuate their newly discovered and carfully cultivated self importance have declared that by "consensus" we are having a warm spell, or are we? It was record cold here in Northern IL the end of November and continues to be below normal, snow, sleet and ice nothwithstanding. It's 29 degrees and raining today, a real mess, but not unprecedented. And when our local weather wizzard gets on the tube the high and low records are for all to see, but one might ask: How far back? and How accurate are these records?

At first consensus the hurricanes were supposed to diminish because the warming narrowed the disparity of temperatures thought to generate the circular motion. But then we had a couple above average tropical storm years (2004 & 2005) so the story got reversed; this year we had no hurricanes so the forcasters are laying low.

And here's something: The benchmarks the forcasters were using were faulty in so far as back before the advent of wireless, storms that did not reach shore were not reported by ships at sea to become part the data base. Today every tropical wave that never matures to circular motion (much less a named storm)is part of the overall equation and a eye-rollin' topic on the evening news. Once actual scientific method was applied to the helter-skelter data base, adjusting for historic differences in reporting, Viola! Hurricanes are actually below historic norms, which either means the original guess about global warming diminishing them was right or, maybe, that the pundits know not what they profess to know.

Next time you hear some Jive-job talking head or Al Gore lecturing about how it used to be, consider the state of the art a short 131 years ago. Nobody but the Indians knew how many of them were in the Valley of the Little Big Horn River in 1876, but today's experts will tell you the temperature then and for hundreds of years prior. Some people believed the alarmists 35 years ago and feared the cold, now it's the heat that's gonna get us...if the sky doesn't fall first. So remember the prefatorial buzz word that hedges the bet of today's Chicken Littles: "consensus." Scientists and physicists do not attach similiar caveats to to demonstratible facts: Newton will always take the apple on the noggin, hence the Law of Gravity, and the earth is round by observation, not interpetation or consensus; water boils at 212 degrees f. at sea level barom. 29.92 every time.

So what can we do to capitalize on the paranoia by consensus? I for one really like the Wilbur Beans at Famous Dave's rib restaurant. But the carbon footprint! The methane! You know, the earth is going to hell in a hand basket because of cow farts. And I feel like I'm running up carbon emissions as fast as Al Gore's electric bill and jet set global hob-nobbing. He may have the franchise on buying indulgences by way of tree planting, so I'm thinking of selling carbon credits on eBay. For a price I will abstain from Wilbur Beans for a defined period of time. The winning bidder can dispose of his dirty old money through PayPal, feel better about himself saving the planet; I'll eat at the IHOP rather than Famous Daves, and my wife will really appreciate the diminished flatulance around the house. Win, Win, Win situation. No more drowning polar bears on my conscience. EDM

Wow.

Any person who has any true global understanding knows the temperatures are rising and yes the glaciers are melting, melting rapidly around the planet. And many deleterious weather conditions are happening around the globe.

My family hikes mountains all over the world, every major mountain on every continent, and yes the glaciers ARE receding at dramatic rates.

Making fun of it or attacking the messengers does not make climate change caused by humans untrue.

However the facts are that about 50% of Americans do not even think climate change is real or that it is a big deal, Or the most common question---gee what is wrong with global warming? We haven't had a nicer November!!! (In fact many rant long and eloquently, colorfully poking fun at it, ha-ha..er.... ha)...

Whereas, most of the people on the rest of the planet see it as the big problem it really is. Sad actually. How uninformed so many of the people in the US are about this problem... Misinformation is part of the determination to keep the consumer society relentlessly consuming... They wouldn't want some truth to cause the consumers to decrease the amount or the rates they consume or pollute. eat more. drive more. spend more. use more electricty. ...We have to have more nuclear plants etc etc. is the cry in all the papers... Yet if the we embarked on a real conservation effort, we would not need half the energy "they" say we need. (this is written by someone who makes his own power, and uses a small fraction of the resources of the average american)

I suggest you read up on the Medieval War Spell, AKA the Medieval Optimum, and the Little Ice Age that followed it.

In the Medieval Optimum wine grapes were grown in England, something that's only become possible again in the last few years.

In the Little Ice Age millions died from the cold and famine, including all the Norse settlers in Greenland. Glaciers in the Alps overran towns and some Eskimo hunters paddled their kayaks as far south as Scotland. In addition to the cold weather the change in the climate of the North Atlantic caused violent storms in Europe.

That scene of Washington crossing the Delaware occured near the end of that period, and the recurrent cold weather caused poor harvests and high food prices in France, where conservative peasants refused to switch from wheat to cold resistant crops like potatoes, and helped start the French Revolution.

Having spent too much time with my feet and hindquarters frozen on a deer stand after a zero degree night, I eagerly await a warmer world. The critters have lived through it before, a lot better than I can live through the cold.

Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.

-- George Santayana

Yes, Yogi, the temperatures are rising. If they did not do so, on average, my little piece of property would still be under 5000 feet of ice. It is the second part, "caused by humans", which does not stand the test of non-political analysis!

A someone with truly cosmic, no wait, infinite! understanding, I think the short term anecdotes are worthless. Glaciers receding - my brother's house is on a rebounded glacial plain. Those glaciers (there) have been receding for at least two hundred years. Longer if you view it in a longer frame of time.

This isn't denial, it's sceptical realism.

Case closed! So you make your own power (what ever that means?). I abstain from Wilbur Beans, and may sell carbon credits to the credulous save-the-earth alarmists while they are worshiping at the altar of faith based World's-going-to-hell-in-a-handbasket rhetoric. No wonder 50 % of Americans don't buy into the consensus. Science is not by consensus of spin doctors but historically has involved observable repeatable physical events. Some people have the big long-term picture and reserve judgement; others jump to conclusions largely based of fitting today's news into their predisposed view of things. A warm day fits their template; a cold November or no hurricanes this year are "Inconvienient Truths." EDM

and who is jumping to conclusions?

And I am sorry you do not know what it means to make your own power. I wonder what THAT means?

I live and hunt ducks in western NY. I have been hunting ducks in this area for 40 years. Global warming may be having an impact on the migration but I believe land use changes are having a bigger impact. 40 years ago this area was dairy farms and seasonal vegetables, little for ducks to eat. The dairy farms and vegetables have all but disappeared replace by grain, lots of grain. Bio-engineering has made it possible to grow crops like soybeans and better feed corn this far north. The local wetlands including federal and state refuges were small and scattered in the late 60's. We have always had open water year round due to our proximity to Lake Ontario and the Finger lakes. In recent years duck clubs, the federal refuge and state game lands have expanded in area and the quality of the habitat has improved substantially. I believe that land use in the northern areas has made it possible for the birds to meet there needs without migrating as far south. Man's use of the land and engineering of crops has made life easer for waterfowl. This is happening all across North America. I travel to North Dakota each year and farmers are growing corn and soybeans, unheard of just a few years ago. So large bodies of open water (some man made) grain crops, and improved habitat in the north is holding the birds more than global warming. The New York Times will publish anything that supports global warming. People in NY city have no idea that land use may play a greater role in migration changes than global warming, most never leave the city.