I hear tell.....

The former Motherland is experiencing the warmest spring since Samuel Pepys begins his diary. Just how warm it is over there right now, my source did not say; only that it is warm enough to bring out British butterflies, foreign and domestic, up to a month early.

That might seem pretty cool at first blush, having some 90 percent of your butterflies arrive way early. But think about it. They are early while their food resources and other essential host plants are not.

"Some of these species are coming out before their nectar sources are present, so will the food available be suitable and will there be anything for the caterpillars to eat?" ~ Matthew Oates, naturalist for the (British) National Trust

Martin Warren, chief executive of Britain's Butterfly Conservation, and others attribute the butterfly pattern shift to climate shift. Insects are responding to trending temperature increases, even if the plants they rely on are not; or, are responding, but at a slower pace.


NEWTON LEROY GINGRICH, who would be your President if he gets his way, also would do away with the Environmental Protection Agency on the grounds that curbing greenhouse gas emissions is bad for Business in general and the Energy Industry in particular. Gingrich, like most other newts, must be living under a rock!

On Moral Ground

"Assuring our own comfort at a terrible price to the future is not worthy of us as moral beings." ~ Moral Ground

I posted the above as my Facebook Status a couple hours ago and received this...

An interesting quote. However, if one loses a football game by one point because time ran out with an unused time out available is also unacceptable, no? Please do me the favor of extrapolating the analogy before answering.

...in response almost immediately from my good buddy Brad down at the radio station.

Now, I haven't known Brad all that long, and the first time we met (over the airwaves; him in his booth, me in my car) we immediately locked horns over his global warming and my climate shift. But Brad and I are brothers by high school and Don Cowan's choirs, and both of us are old enough--he's still The Kid!--and wise enough NOT to talk politics at one another. Moreover, we've done a couple shows together down at the theatre, and I can't help but like the guy, even if I didn't want to!

Clearly, the boy was at the radio station on the Saturday morning of Memorial Day weekend and not all that thrilled about it. "Extrapolating the analogy..."??? Well, there was nothing for it but to retreat to the yard and watch the birds and squirrels shower in the sprinkler. So I parried from my cell phone and got back this....

Is not using one's resources for the present (which is the ONLY reality) to protect the possibility of a future (which is at best, fiction) more or less "moral"?

Right away I sensed a problem or two. First, I'm not buying the today-is-the-only-reality construct. If that's the case, why do squirrels bury their nuts? Second, who said anything about not using resources?

Moral Ground simply holds that our species is responsible for the condition our world is in and that we as humans have a moral obligation to make it better for ourselves, our kids and their kids' kids. We have made a mess, and it's on us to clean it up.

Hello, Operator! I've been cut off....!!

Seems that tiny island cultures and polar bears aren't the only folks facing dispossession as our Earth's climate continues to shift. We may be waving bye-bye to WI-FI.

Scientists have been warning of more extreme storms as a result of climate change,

PlanetGreen.com reported this morning.

The events of 2011 could be an example, or at least a harbinger of threats to come.

This ability to reach out and touch someone far distant has come a ways since Aunt Era & Uncle Tandy's party line. Best I can recollect, their "ring" was two shorts and a long. And Lord help us if a long-distance call came in as that usually meant somebody just died!