The Rain Has Gotten Me Thinking

"Everybody talks about the weather, but nobody does anything about it," is quote attributed by many to Mark Twain but some attribute the quote to a friend of Twain's named Charles Dudley Warner.  Regardless of who said it the fact is true. Everybody does talk about the weather and it does seem that no one does much about it.

The recent rains have gotten me thinking a good bit about the weather.  There is a lot of water falling from across the Great State of Georgia these days.  From the Okefenokee Swamp to the shadow of Lookout Mountain folks are getting wet.  A couple of Saturdays ago I spent an enjoyable morning sitting in my breakfast nook drinking coffee and watching the snow cover my back yard.  By afternoon, all that was left of the morning's dusting was nothing at all.  

All in all the weather has mostly been an inconvenience the past few weeks but nothing to cause any earth shattering changes to my life.  Others haven't been so fortunate.  There has been flooding in some places and I am certain there have been traffic fatalities caused by driving on rain slick roads.

Yet, for the most part we have talked about the weather but not done much of anything about it.  This allows for the possibility that there is something we can do about the weather.  

For the last several years there has been much talk of something called "global warming" and a less specific description of "climate change."  The theory is that due to pollutants in the air that the earth is now warmer than it once was.  This of course is leading to the melting of polar ice caps and rising sea levels.  Further, these pollutants in our atmosphere disrupt our weather patterns.  Many climatologists and others in the scientific community assert that this is true.

On the other hand there is some thought that this is flawed information.  Some have gone so far as to call "climate change" a hoax.  Some feel that "climate change" is merely a tool for those who have a different political and economic agenda.

It is all a bit confusing to be perfectly honest.  By my unscientific observations I tend to think something is taking place.  It seems to me that summer tends to hang around a little longer and winters tend to be a little shorter and  spring in recent years only seems to last a couple of weeks.  Friends of mine who live on the coast tell me that high tide seems to be getting a little higher. Then again there is nothing scientific about these observations. 

On the other I also know the meteorological records haven't been kept for most of the history that the earth has been in existence.  We don't know what the weather was like in Athens, Georgia in 40,000 B.C.E.  In fact, the era in which we live is just a dot in the geological history of the earth.  So it is really difficult to say if this is a long term change or a momentary blip in the weather pattern.  

Further, if some type of change is taking place are human beings the cause or is it some other phenomena within the ecosystem of the earth that is causing the change? The truth is there is so much about our climate that I and I believe most of us just don't know.

That said, it is perfectly logical to examine what we do know.  It is also perfectly acceptable to ask questions about what human beings are contributing to climate change if it is indeed a reality.  I also know this, God placed human kind in creation to care for it; therefore, caring for our world is a moral imperative.  

While  "Everybody talks about the weather, but nobody does anything about it," seems to be true we do have to ask "Is there a need to do something about it?"  If there is something taking place that is detrimental to our planet and there is something that we can do to correct it surely we know that we need to do all we can.   

Meanwhile, I will just start collecting wood and look at some You Tube videos on ark building.