Climate Change or Global Warming?

Climate change or global warming?  Potato, potahtoh, tomato, tomahto. 

I'm sure the climate change advocates kick themselves every once in awhile when they hear the terms "global warming"; they wish other terms had been chosen to express what is happening to our planet.  The trouble with the term "global warming" is that when we have brutal winters like the last two, it gives fodder to Inhofe and his ilk who say, "Global warming? Where?"

A more accurate description of what is happening to our planet Earth is climate change.  I remember the brown winters in Oklahoma.  Brown winters had no snow, brown winters found me outside a lot playing basketball with the neighbor kids.  Brown winters found me wishing for snow.  Brown winters were full of moderate temperatures, short days, long nights, but no ice storms and blizzards. Snow was a treat, maybe coming every three to four years, not something to be dreaded.

The climate is changing and it is because of humans.  The Industrial Revolution brought more than labor saving devices.  It also brought factories that belch noxious fumes, automobiles that do the same.  Perhaps the largest change has been that not only the Western world, but the Rest of the world, wants and is gaining access to automobiles and everything else that we have enjoyed for over a century. And why shouldn't the Rest of the world have these things too?  All these emissions can't help but change our earth's atmosphere, and this change affects our global weather.

Humans do make a difference in their environment, for better or worse.  Even if one believes there is no climate change or global warming, live as if there  is.  We should conserve energy where we can, when we can.  We should be more mindful of our daily choices, from what we eat to what we wear, to how we clean, to what the temperature is in our homes.   Encourage alternative energy sources. 

Be more mindful.  Think.  This can only improve us.

People who choose Public Service as a Career

In the current hue and cry against people who are in the employ of tax payers, otherwise known as public  servants (this is a cycle that occurs about every 20 years-I'm on the downhill side of the mountain and my memory is long), let us please remember that people who choose to serve in their local, state, or federal governments in any public capacity also PAY TAXES and SPEND THEIR INCOME.  Public employees, in effect, pay their own salaries. 

Public servants get married, have children, buy food and clothing, travel, celebrate holidays . . . just like everybody else.  They are not sitting in a rarified atmosphere getting rich off tax payer's money, believe me.  Our current inability to accept the fact that taxes need to be raised will hurt us in the long run. 

That first call to the police department or fire department . . . minutes, hours tick by . . . as we wait, or visiting the local library, only to find the hours have been shortened,, or a service we counted on is no longer available.  The Tea Party and their ilk want something for nothing;  the fact is if everybody gives a little, everybody gets a lot.

As to the current collective bargaining broohaha in Wisconsin:  public servants deserve collective bargaining.  They are public SERVANTS, people, not public SLAVES. Actually, anyone who works deserves collective bargaining.

I'm a big believer in a rising tide lifts all boats and when everybody does better, EVERYBODY DOES BETTER.

It seems like periodically the citizens of the United States of America are asked, by events, to decide if we are, in fact, the UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, or a bunch of separate individuals who happen to live in this country known as the USA.   United we succeed, separately we fail.