Global Warming – No Sweat OR? UPDATE

I had a terrarium when I was a kid of 11. Frogs, crickets, fish etc inhabited Geneland. It was a sealed system. No air or water in, none out. The idea was that the O2 generating plants would trap the CO2 and keep the O2 using animals alive. In subdued light it worked pretty well. Oh, we had the occasional muerte. But it went on for weeks.

Then I had the bright idea of exposing it to a great deal of extra sunlight.

So I did.

It was instant global warming at least for the residents of Geneland.

HereÂ’s what happened. Plants wilted, things on the surface of Geneland became crispy. Frogs hated this and spent more time in Geneland lake. Crickets headed underground. Life changed.

Then something happened that I thought about yesterday. All at once the whole environment became very sultry. Sticky, humid, and everything was wet. The inside of the terrarium dripped. The plants were soggy, and the frogÂ’s little tongues hung out.

What happened was after the first flush of drought resulting from the increase in temp, the moisture was trapped in the air and precipitated out. This happens with Meringue if you bake, this happens when you try to soften bread rolls in the oven or microwave.

The first thing is a crisping, a crusting, then moisture is released and everything gets soggy. Your flambe' is ruined.

So, let's think about a larger terrarium, oh, let'’s say, THE WORLD.

We live inside a closed system. For one reason or another our world is warming. That warming accelerates the production of decomposition of previously frozen tundra and that releases even more warming atmosphere that increases the decomposition etc. This is a cycle that has repeated itself every 20,000 years for a while.

People who are smarter than us (they say) who will tell you smugly that they have a degree in Science and that makes them better able to think are for the most part unable to do so beyond what ever the herd mentality allows them to think.

Maybe the end result of Global warming is a GOOD THING. Of course it will mean change, and all change is interpreted as loss to people. But, Here'’s a hypothesis based on a 50 year ago terrarium experiment.

The world temp increases 10 degrees in the next 100 years. THAT'’s a LOT. Instead of everyone baking in the sun and dying, what if the net result of that is a radical increase in the worlds Rh factor. Humidity. Steamy. Tropical rainforest conditions. Nearly pole to pole.

The humidity in the air has the net effect of making much of the planet look like the Amazon, or the rainforests of Washington state.

That would be bad because........................?

It would be different. Huge rainfall would create lakes where none were before. It would make deserts that formerly were forests reforest again. Sahara and the West China deserts would blossom and flourish.

Much of the western USA would become verdant and the east would become lush. Rainfalls of 100 inches per year would be common on the globe. And in true rainforest fashion it would rain every night.

Look at Florida, southern India, Indonesia, Philippines, Central and equatorial South America. Maybe instead of toasting, drying up and blowing away we will swelter. And things will grow and people will eat, and animals will thrive and life will change.

I can'’t prove my theory, that a higher temp will evaporate more of the water from the planet into the atmosphere and cause an ultrahumidification of our global climate. It seems to me that to extrapolate straight line that warmer means drier as we hear from some people with degrees in science is as valid my as thinking there may be an inversion coming by a shift in the hydrological cycle. A release of global humidity driven by a radical speedup of the Water Cycle we all learned about in School. More heat, more water, more atmospheric potential, more rain, more clouds, instant tropics.

My bet is that the increase of heat on the planet is net net net a GOOD thing for everyone. Change, but good. Besides there is NOTHING you or I can do about it. We didn'’t cause it, we canÂ’t cure it. You would do just as well to sacrifice a virgin (if you could find one) on the top of Mt. St. Helens to the God of weather as most of what the Kyoto treaty wants us to do. It'’s useless.

Oh, and the frogs and crickets in Geneland? I let them out after the frog ate the fish. There are descendents of Frog and Cricket walking the earth today talking of this myth of how the Gene created all.

I wonder what ever happened to that dumb terrarium. I know this, that once I removed the lid, life went back to "“Normal"” in Geneland and it wasn'’t better. I hope the creator of all of this doesnÂ’t remove our lid. I'’ll take whatever comes.

There is no other choice.

Based on the comments from the intelectual left who only parrots what misleaders say here are other voices. I wish I could take full unmerited credit for this thesis. I can't. I can just support what may be the FACTS (not that it ever stopped the global warming mafia before).

Global Warming is cyclical and normal

No one knows what the net effect is going to be and liars only say they do

These things have happened before and life goes on

As late as 12,000 years ago

So relax. It is what it is. No amount of hand wringing will solve this. No amount of artificial sacrifice will have any effect whatsoever.

Learn to live with Global Warming.

To Ken and Karma, who insist I must not read any scholarly scientific journals, I'll match my scientific reading and in depth science education (2 degrees and most of a masters in the life sciences) to anyone who decides to match mine. I'll match you journal for journal, book for book, degree for degree, and experience for experience. You don't know what you are talking about and you are living in a world driven by liberal delusion. You have been dumbed down and blinded. I would offer you books of scholarly treatises that will go against the conventional wisdom with competence and authority. You wouldn’t read them. It would mess with your worldview and could cause you to actually doubt what the ecomafia wants you to believe. Even if they told you the truth you wouldn’t believe them. You are blind to reality.

I only wish you would open your mind and start to just question what the ecomafia is feeding you. You are a sheepling.

Life is Short - so - Git-er-done

I got a call this morning from a friend of mine in the nursery business. He and I were supposed to link up this week. We didn't.

Then he told me his sister about my age was in her last days in hospice dying of cancer. He had been spending time with her. He knew she had been sick but had no idea it was terminal. She had been a nurse in Cleveland and worked hard all her life. No vacations, working hard.

Now with imminent death she made time to do some things she always wanted to do. His sister had spent the last year taking all kinds of life extending things and enjoying a bit of travel. I said made time. She didn't make time. She reclaimed it.

Biblically we are told to redeem the time. Get it back from the tyranny of busy.

The same is true of Money. We think because we have little or it's scarce we can do nothing. It freezes our lives.

Well, I'm NOT dying of anything other than the disease called terminal humanity. 3 score and 10, 20 or maybe 30 which is how much my genetics proclaims I will have. I have tried to abuse my body so maybe 29.

There are two great truths reinforced this morning by my conversation with Doug:

1. We always have enough time to do the things we want to do. When people say they don't have enough time, what they are really saying is I don't want to. Oh, I don't mean to be unkind (see earlier post on kindness). But we have time to do what we want to. Deciding that and doing it are acts of true life.

2. We always have the money to do what is necessary or important to us. We find a way. If your child or spouse walked in with a broken arm or a hole in their head from a gunshot wound, would you say."We don't have the money right now to take care of that, so you'll just have to suffer". Of course not. We would find the money one way or another. The fact that we don't have the money to do certain things is an indicator of it's importance to us. We have whatever money we need for the things that must be done. If it's important we'll find the money. In America in particular.

So, in my most KIND way possible, don't ever say to me, I don't have the time or the money to do that important thing. You do and you know it. You take time and find the money to do whatever is important to you. If you don't, it wasn't that important. We get done what is important to us. We find a way. Heck and High Water won't stop us.

I'll get just a little political here. I liked Bill Clinton. Think it would have been fun to hang out with him. Think he would have been a fascinating night on the town talking about all kinds of things. I think he's a bright man.

BUT

I'll never forget how as President he kept telling all of us that "I've never worked so hard in all my life". I just can't get anything with this uncooperative congress (1994 Republican takeover). So for the years from 95-2001 he just marked time. Complained about things and did little.

I submit, that was all Billoney. If he had wanted to cooperate with and work with Congress he could have made things happen. Congress didn't help much (Impeachment) and Clinton leaned into the punch (Definition of Is is).

For the most part, Clinton was a decent President who could have been great if he had just moved out with courage and boldness.

In business as CEO of a couple large Corporations I had minions who constantly complained about how hard it was, things weren't happening, people weren't cooperating, they didn't have time, they didn't have money.

I had one tactic I always used on these folks. I said, "If I could take away that hindrance can you do the job?" In other word I called their bluff. Most of the time the real hidden agenda came out. We went to war a couple times. And, in the end I had to fire them or they quit. A few fessed up and stepped up to the plate, did the job and they outlasted me.

Life requires doing what's right and not what's easy.

NO EXCUSES. If you were assigned a job to do and don't do it, the man in the mirror is the problem. I'm not the sports fan my friend Barry Kolb is but, I suspect this is an area of agreement I would have in spades with Bobby Knight based on what I read in Barry's Blog. I need to get one of those armbands that asks the question, WWBD? What Would Bobby Do? Then do that. How much do you want this Coach Sheldon in my high school used to ask. If we wanted it bad enough we got it. Jesus asked the Rich Young Ruler how much do you want it? The King who threw a wedding feast ended up with a lot of people who were pretty busy with Oxen, Land and Marriage problems. They missed out. Life's like that, enough excuses as to why you can't do something and life passes you by.

Life's too short to do it stupid. Get it done. Or, is the truth you really don't want to?

Sorry, kid. You got the gift but looks like you're waiting for something. (the Matrix: spoken to Neo by the Oracle in the Kitchen).

Truth is Kind.

Not NICE but KIND

At a recent conference in conversation with other ministers the comment was made about me, "You're not Nice but you are Kind".

I took that as a high complement. I hope to be Kind. I hope never to be mistaken for nice. I know that I was hearing in the conversation a rehash of a recent sermon this minister had just given. We all do that. Give something we have poured our lives energies into at the drop of a hat rehearsing it back. I mean we have a new audience who hasn't yet heard our sermon. I can always tell.

But there is something revolting to me about the idea of a God (Jesus) who is syrupy nice. IF I met Jesus face to face I would most likely tremble in my shoes and fall to the ground as if I were dead. That's what happened to the Apostle that Jesus Loved, John, when he met the resurrected Jesus. Revelation 1:12-18

12 Then I turned to see [whose was] the voice that was speaking to me, and on turning I saw seven golden lampstands, 13 And in the midst of the lampstands [One] like a Son of Man, clothed with a robe which reached to His feet and with a girdle of gold about His breast. 14 His head and His hair were white like white wool, [as white] as snow, and His eyes [flashed] like a flame of fire. 15 His feet glowed like burnished (bright) bronze as it is refined in a furnace, and His voice was like the sound of many waters. 16 In His right hand He held seven stars, and from His mouth there came forth a sharp two-edged sword, and His face was like the sun shining in full power at midday.
17 When I saw Him, I fell at His feet as if dead. But He laid His right hand on me and said, Do not be afraid! I am the First and the Last, 18 And the Ever-living One [I am living in the eternity of the eternities]. I died, but see, I am alive forevermore; and I possess the keys of death and Hades (the realm of the dead).

I am not the only one revolted by the idea of supersweet Nice God. In the Tribune today two articles piqued my interest. I would commend them to you. It costs nothing to sign up for this service and it's worth it. One is about a movement called GodMen that has a basic tenet, I THANK GOD FOR MY TESTOSTERONE.

The Other is about a man I never met but that a friend of mine knew quite well. Jay Bakker. Scion of Jim and Tammy Faye. He is now a "Preacher" in his own right. His ministry sounds anything but NICE. I think I might like attending his church.

These two articles are signposts along a highway that is leading us away from a namby pamby Jesus, babe in the manger, all nice all the time, to a Jesus who is here to kick some serious devil butt. I can relate to that.

I have relatives who struggle with the fact that I'm not nice. I ask hard questions. I don't give up. I stay with an issue. I'm Kind. I'm not Nice. I don't plan to change. Is it NICE or KIND to yell at a kid running out into heavy Traffic? Sometimes LOVE compells me to take actions that others may see as not nice. If its not driven by love it's just so much clanging gongs. I always hear this from people who take offense and my lack of NICE, "You could have picked a "Nicer" way to say that". OK, I'd translate that ineffective and obscure. You may be familar with the concept of Minnesota Nice. If you grew up in Minnesota (or as I did near it) you know that is code for mumbling indirectness while looking at your shoes hoping the hearing party catches onto the nuance. WHAT? Say it already! The other argument for nice is that you can't get others cooperation by not being nice. OK, so what? If nice is the driving force for your cooperation it will dissolve into a heap of BS very soon. Just as soon as someone doesn't do what you or they thought someone did or didn't do and has their feelings hurt. I'm just sick of it. MEN, be a man, KIND, caring, compassionate but don't try to be nice. Be strong but not cruel. Life is too short to be nice.

On my bookshelf are large heavy books of Greek and Hebrew words. I looked up any reference to NICE in any iteration in the Bible. Smooth Words was a close as I came and they were not in a positive context. Had to do with a whore soliciting business.

But Kindness. Lots of References. Like Romans 2:4

Do you think lightly of the riches of His kindness and tolerance and patience, not knowing that the kindness of God leads you to repentance?

So, I thought, what does it mean in the original language. Here's what I came up with.

Kindness in it's meaning Biblically has to do with Demeanor, not necessarily action. It has to do with justice and generosity. With being Tolerant at the right time and intolerant at others. Patience when patience is proper and direct when not. It has to do with appropriate Gentleness and proper distance when Gentleness isn't correct. Some translations confuse the word Gentleness for Kindness. They are not the same word. In Galatians 5 as the word is translated it seems to go either way, but it is not the word Kindness as used in the rest of the Bible (Mostly). Getting at the root of Greek and Hebrew words is more art than science but in a way unless you do you miss the color of the meanings.

I think the best way is to say, kindness is how a child feels when her Father who loves her is at her side. She knows that he might deal with her if she gets out of line. She knows while she is by his side and that his purpose is only to do her good and protect her. He will discipline her, sometimes severely, but not harm her. In Lewis' "Lion Witch and Wardrobe" series there is a description given by Mrs. Beaver of this "Kind but not NICE" God type Aslan the Lion King.

"Is -- is he a man?" asked Lucy. "Aslan a man!" said Mr. Beaver sternly. "Certainly not. I tell you he is the King of wood and the son of the great Emperor-Beyond-the-Sea. Don't you know who is the King of the Beasts? Aslan is a lion -- the Lion, the great Lion." "Ooh," said Susan, "I thought he was a man. Is he -- quite safe? I shall feel rather nervous about meeting a lion." "That you will, dearie, and make no mistake," said Mrs. Beaver, "if there's anyone who can appear before Aslan without their knees knocking, they're either braver than most or else silly." "Then he isn't safe?" said Lucy. "Safe?" said Mr. Beaver, "don't you hear what Mrs. Beaver tells you? Who said anything about safe? 'Course he isn't safe. But he's good. He's the King, I tell you."

It's my goal in life to be Kind in every way possible and never to be mistaken as nice. I want to emulate my King. As he grows in me I will be thankful for my manhood and it's kind but not nice nature. I hope as I get old(er) it will be said of me, "He's a very kind man, but he can be a little testy".. The worst thing they could say is, "He's a nice old man". What a disdaining thing to say.

I am thankful for a Jesus who is at the same time Kind (Not safe but good) and you can trust Him. I have seen all the pictures of him with a lapful of lambs and all. That's OK, but lets see if we can get a better picture of him.

Kind but not Nice.

Maybe those lambs were for Lunch? Now that makes sense.

Now, don't get all offended on me you old religious spirit; I love a good rack of Lamb, crusted with herbs and dried mustard, baked to perfection, YUM!

I think I'll go make some right now.

I'm not from There anymore.

Being from North Dakota and about to embark on a long trip to the "Old Country" as my Grandma Lee used to call Norway, I read this column in the Chicago Tribune from an occasional correspondent of mine and a man who is of the same vintage as I who carries a well-written wisdom worthy of reading.

Read this:

Charles M. Madigan
Even in the familiar thicket, we're not from here anymore

Published December 12, 2006

A few weeks ago, we were in the town of Summit, Pa., which sits, appropriately, at the top of a mountain on the Pennsylvania-Maryland border, when I heard a comment that planted itself so firmly in my head I have not been able to forget it.

My wife and I were looking for directions to the burial place of a poet-theologian ancestor in her family. A woman at the library was helping us.

"We're not from here anymore," my wife said. "We need to get to Mercersburg."

That statement, "We're not from here anymore," struck me as profound.

Of course we are no longer "from" Pennsylvania. We are literally "from" Evanston now.

The less obvious part, and the one that applies to me, to my wife, to all of us as a matter of fact, is that the place we were from is no longer literally there anymore, not the way it was in our youth.

To say "We're not from here anymore" is a statement that recognizes the nature of change in one's own life, and in the life of the place where it all began.

Briefly put, there is no "here" in my life anymore.

My parents are gone. The railroad that built my hometown, Altoona, is gone. Most of my friends are gone. The old neighborhood is strange, not as meticulously kept as when the Pennsylvania Railroad employed 54,000 people at very ripe wages. My grade school is gone. The convent is gone.

My first newspaper is gone.

I still have my brother and my sisters. But everything else that was familiar exists in my head, not on the ground.

I found that a pretty sad thought until I concluded that what doesn't change much in the formula is the individual and some rituals.

That was why there was a powerful resonance for me in being in Pennsylvania in the woods on the opening day of deer season.

Hunting is a ritual, like church. Even though the weapons have changed and the gear is fancier, it's still about the season, the quest, the win or lose prospect of coming home with your deer.

A week into combined buck and doe season, hunters had worked the deer far up into the mountains. At altitude (2,000 feet is high in the Keystone State) it was not unusual to run into little herds of deer high-tailing it for the Maryland border. It was rainy and in the 60s, unusually warm for the post-Thanksgiving hunting season.

I had witnessed this season many times in my youth. The symbol used to be the front-fender deer carcass, which you would see all the time as hunters hauled their trophies down the highway. Now the hills are alive with sport utility vehicles and pickup trucks of every description, so the deer are stowed before the trip home begins.

Hunting season eve seemed pretty much unchanged, at least at the little store where we stopped to pick up some food. A long queue of hunters waited to pay, armed to the eyes with turkey and deer jerky, lots of canned food, meat for dinner. Some of them wore orange coveralls.

That, in retrospect, was somehow comforting.

I talked with a man in the checkout line. He said the deer were not as plentiful as in previous years. Lovely as they are, deer behave like 200-pound rodents. They are dangerously wild, especially if accidentally confined. A big herd causes trouble, and a good hunting season will solve much of the problem.

Because we planned to be in the woods with our cameras and our eyes as the season played out, we stopped at Wal-Mart and purchased, for $3 each, orange Wheaties "Breakfast of Champions" hats to warn hunters that we were not a part of the harvest.

Happily, this worked.

A few cabins away from us, I talked with a young man who was icing down a big buck and a doe that were tied to the porch rafters, legs spread to open their cavities.

He told me the story of his hunt for the buck, and how his dad, who had just joined him on the porch, shot the doe a few minutes later in the same location. He was proud and I was honored to hear the little saga.

To some, I know, hunting sounds brutal. But I also know families who depend on deer season for their winter's meat. We're not all townspeople. We're not all well paid.

I felt that sense of loss, deep in the woods, that I was not from there anymore.

But it was comforting to know that this part of life, the deer-hunting ritual and the stories it creates, has not changed.

We didn't get our deer this year, but we got deer meat. 5 of them, thanks to the Frankhauser Gang who never met a deer they didn't shoot.

So, venison is still on the plate if you come to visit the Redlins in 2007. But, I didn't shoot it, I'm not from There anymore.

Oh, and if we do invite you to a nice plate of Deer Liver, There are no hormones in Deer Meat; Other than Lead.

Good Riddance to Bad Rubbish

I am very pleased that Kofi Annan gave his LAST speech to the world yesterday. Pleased that is was his LAST!

He has been the most horrid leader of the UN, a disgraced entity, that is possible to imagine. He represents all that is bad about the UN. And that is saying a lot. It would please me if tomorrow the UN just dissolved. But that's another Story.

So the king of Corruption and inaction goes to Independance MO to the Truman Library and goes off on the USA, GWB and all things American. What an idiot.

What makes this so unique, this coming from a man with no discernible gonads. Whiny and hopeless. I only hold James Earl Carter ex pres ret in lesser standing. But that's another story.

Today's Chicago Tribune has a brilliant piece in it's lead editorial.

excerpts:

Annan said when the U.S. "appears to abandon its own ideals and objectives, its friends abroad are naturally troubled and confused." Translation: Have I told you this week how much I resent the U.S. for enforcing the 17 resolutions against Iraq that my Security Council adopted but then abandoned?

Paul Volcker called Annan's reign a "culture of inaction"--that aggravated one crisis after another:

- The corruption of Annan's bureaucracy in the oil-for-food scandal is Exhibit A. While UN swells slept (or shared in the booty), Saddam Hussein funneled fortunes looted from his own people to his influential pals in Russia, France, China and elsewhere.

- Sudanese officials may have slaughtered Muslim villagers "with genocidal intent," a UN panel reported in 176 pages of blather. But the mass killings in Darfur aren't "genocide." How convenient for Annan. A finding of genocide by the UN would have forced the rest of the world to act. Russia, France and China didn't want embargoes or sanctions to gum up their trade with Sudan--and Annan didn't apply the muscular diplomacy that might have persuaded those governments to help stop the killing.

- A 2004 internal UN report admits that the body is hamstrung by "an unwillingness to get serious about preventing deadly violence." Two years later, nothing has changed.

- Iran ignores an Aug. 31 Security Council deadline to halt uranium enrichment. Does Annan demand sanctions? No, he flies to Tehran and, with the naivete of a 3-year-old, announces that Iran's president "reaffirmed to me Iran's preparedness and determination to negotiate" a solution to the nuclear confrontation. What? In Mahmoud Ahmadinejad we trust?

- North Korea sets off a nuclear device. Kofi Annan's UN ... blinks. No pressure, no punishment. How better to teach other rogue governments and their mad-hatter rulers that acquiring nukes is the best way to snub the world?

- A new UN Human Rights Council replaces a disgraced Human Rights Commission that coddled member nations with dreadful records of oppression. Except Annan's new panel blames almost every indignity it mulls on Israel. Even Annan fusses briefly. And then does nothing.

It has been said that if the oil-for-food scandal alone had occurred in any legitimate organization on Earth, its CEO long ago would have been ousted in disgrace.

Today Jeff Skilling began a 24 year prison sentence for the Enron situation. This in itself is a travesty. But if there was any justice Kofi Annan would be in the cell next to Skilling and I would hope he would find a nice 300 pound "girlfriend" named bubba.

As to Annan. I don't like him much. Good riddance to bad rubbish.

American Taliban

A few weeks ago I saw a sad video of a little girl from Gaza who was rehearsing for her parents her hatred of Jews and Americans. She rehearsed how they (The Jews) were pigs and apes.

It was horribly sad. I thought, it's going to take a great deal of reprogramming to get that child to even be partially accepting and adapted into the world at large. Or she will be marginalized and maybe die a homicide bomber.

Then I saw this video. An 8 year old child. Indoctrinated by the hate speech of the left.

I only have one question. True or False. The Taliban is alive and well in America. Destroying young minds with hatred and evil. If you think this is OK for this child to spew this kind of hate the liberal left routinely spews, you are a sick person.

Between Two Worlds

I am between two worlds right now.

I'm feeling more peaked than usual. Sniff, Cough, Ache.
But I'm a tough old goat, I'll get back to the otherworld of wholeness soon.

My business days are wrapped up for the year. We are in the process of finishing things up and beginning for next year. That is the nature of seasonality in the nursery business. Between two worlds. Good world in the year gone by, hopeful one in the year yet coming.

I'm back to a routine that is December for me, It's one I value and nurture. I was in Dallas. Another World. At a conference that opened my eye to a world I have long been a part of but on the outside looking in. Now I'm back in my world. Very interesting. Without elaboration, I was changed and see the world differently as a result of that conference.

During the Conference we stayed at what must be the largest resort hotel in the world. Maybe it isn't. But it was for me. The Gaylord Texan in Grapevine TX. WOW! I honestly have never seen anything that intentionally grandueresque (if that's a word) in my life. And, I'm hard to impress. I have traveled all over the world. I have been lots of places. It was another world. I found it interesting to go there but I wouldn't want to live there (in the hotel).

In about 13 days we make our occasional trip to ND for Christmas. It is going to be interesting, painful, difficult and perhaps enlightening. We will only be there for 5 days. Long enough and short enough. That is for me now another world. A world of familiarity and yet strangeness. Son Kevin is coming in to help drive his older than he parents to Dakota land. It's always good to go to that other world and then to return.

In the end, I'm happy where I am, doing what I do, with whom I do those things. I couldn't do what I do elsewhere. I feel sorry for those who are less than content with life as they know it. It's so short and so terminal, there is little reason to spend one minute of it in a world not of your first choice.

There are two worlds, choose carefully.