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A Further Perspective
From Florida -- Cold Oranges, Hot Commies
PALM BEACH, Florida -- The column headline here in this morning's newspaper: "So where's my global warming, dude?"
"Dude" could be Al Gore, the doomster Dracula figure of global warming hysteria. Or it might be Hillary or Obama, running off to Copenhagen with the promise that the United States, with nothing but red ink in the government's coffers, will gladly pick up the tab for the lion's share of the $100 billion per year in guilt money that the world's richest countries are supposed to fork over to Third World dictators for allegedly causing their coastal villages to be threatened by rising oceans.
We're at The Breakers Hotel, built by Florida pioneer and railroader Henry Flagler as a wooden structure in 1895, destroyed by fire in 1903, rebuilt in 1904 (rooms were $4 a night at that time, three daily meals included; now a cheese steak is $25 and a piece of apple pie is $13.75), destroyed by fire again in 1925, and grandly reopened as a non-wood structure in 1926 in its current form, an opulent and world-acclaimed hotel in an Italian Renaissance style.
I heard a man from Europe say to the cashier in the hotel's fancy gift shop this morning, "Why all this when people are so poor?" The cashier nicely explained that the hotel is one of the largest employers in the local economy, thereby helping people to be not poor. When it was my turn to pay, I told her that she gave him a good answer -- good economics. He was probably a French communist, living off the people in some government bureaucracy.
In any case, it's 20 degrees below normal here in the Sunshine State as I write, but still sunny and in the mid-60s in the afternoon, like Pittsburgh in the Spring, plenty nice enough to pull up a chaise lounge by the pool and read a few chapters of Freakonomics and get pink.
The locals, however, are acting like the weather is the worst thing they've even seen. A hotel employee passing out towels by the pool today was wearing gloves. The valet guys waiting for cars by the front portico are all huddled around patio heaters.
"I'm from Jamaica and I've never seen anything this cold," one of them said to me this morning. "But we have hurricanes in Jamaica. I went through three by the time I was a teenager. Whole houses near the beach were flying through the air. After it was over, there were fish all over our yard."
An overly chipper and cheery woman by the pool this morning called out to her friend, "It's not bad in the sun." Replied a woman nearby to me to no one in particular, a less chipper type in a heavy jacket, "She must be from Antarctica."
What's most worrisome here is the impact of cold nights on the state's $100 billion a year agricultural crop, Florida's second largest industry after tourism.
The orange crop can be ruined if temperatures fall below 28 degrees for more than four hours. Last night it got down to 27 degrees, but only for an hour right before sun up.
More sensitive to cold temperatures than the citrus crop are the state's strawberry fields and the millions of tropical fish in ponds around Tampa.
Strawberry growers last night turned on sprinklers to form a protective layer of ice over the strawberries, creating what's referred to as the heat of fusion.
With the tropical fish -- angel fish, mollies, etc. -- farmers are saying they'll see massive fish kills if the ponds' temperatures fall into the mid-50s. Last night, news reports showed water temperatures in the ponds falling to 58 degrees.
A few days ago, temperatures in Miami hit their lowest levels since 1919, the state lifted the weight limit on trucks hauling produce in order to get things out of the freeze, and the local zoo announced that the monkeys were getting portable heaters.
And from Hillary, Obama and Gore, nothing yet about canceling the guilt money to Robert Mugabe and the other tinpot dictators.
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Appleby| 1.13.10 @ 7:24AM
The only place in Canada that is not experiencing a mini Ice Age is Vancouver, where the Winter Olympics are about to take place.
My sister lives in North Florida (she is retired) and knows what cold weather is like, but she is not amused by this reminder. The 24 Hours of Daytona begins January 30 and the race car drivers are wondering if anyone will come to see it, and building snowmen along the perimeter of the track.
Oh, and by the way, the World Wildlife Federation has congratulated the Province of Ontario for cutting down its use of electricity, skipping lightly over the cause, which is in fact the massive collapse of the auto industry, our main employer, and of the pulp and paper industry, our second main employer. Yes, our electricity use is down -- because the Province has essentially been turned in to a third world outlier. But then that was the WWF goal.
brutus6| 1.13.10 @ 9:14AM
I joined the World Wildlife Federation once, just for fun. And every time they mailed me a solicitation asking me to send a donation for this crisis or that, I'd send them nearly a pound worth of junk mail scraps stuffed into their postage-paid return envelope. Just for fun.
Grant| 1.13.10 @ 7:25AM
In Minnesota, where I live, nearly all our natural, large-scale landscape features are the direct result of continental glaciation. Our soils, for example, formed in material moved and, in many cases, sorted, by the action of ice on a nearly unimaginable scale. Now, in 2010 A.D., the Gnostic Adepts claiming Sacred Initiation in The Climate Mystery want us to ignore all that. They make the Wizard of Oz seem like small potatoes.
Can you say "Glacial Lake Agassiz"? I think you can.
TomB| 1.13.10 @ 4:38PM
I recall an interview or some such with the Al Gore in which he was given the opportunity to muse about his first SOTU address had he not had the election stolen from him. He waxed philosophical about the glaciers returning to northern tier as if it would be a good thing.
Another ice age is both inevitable and almost unthinkably horrible to civilization and possibly life on Earth. As amateur scientists we should conclude that increasing CO2 levels will not help stave it off, so we need to continue research and figure out what will.
ACunic| 1.13.10 @ 10:44AM
Only a total moron cannot see that the very cold weather in Florida is due to AGW.
You see - all you morons - that AGW is responsible for real cold weather, hot weather, wet weather, dry weather, growing ice caps, shrinking ice caps, rising stock markets, crashing housing prices, excess corn and soybeans, starvation; just to cite a few consequences of AGW.
Oh, I forgot, there is an ample supply of hockey sticks for all you Penn State fans.
JohnD| 1.13.10 @ 12:19PM
Really? Then how do you explain the ice ages, hurricanes, droughts, floods, etc. that indisputably occurred before the burning of fossil fuels, before the industrial revolution, before the internal combustion engine, and even before the Dawn of Man?
No one disputes that the climate can change, and has changed, many times over the course of earth's geological history. But claiming it is caused by man, or his burning of fossil fuels that emit CO2, or due to capitalism (the real enemy of the global warming hucksters) is to ignore the climate changes that occurred before the last 200 years.
JohnD| 1.13.10 @ 12:20PM
Oops, ACUNIC, I realize now you were being sarcastic. Please accept my apologies. I still stand by my thesis, however.
Christopher Holland| 1.13.10 @ 9:30PM
I reckon AGW also caused 2 world wars, Korea, Viet Nam, the Kennedy and MLK assassinations, every Wall Street boom and bust and kept the Chicago White Sox out of the World Series all these years. All these things happened when CO2 emissions were going up. Is this a coicidence - not on your life! Just connect the dots, people.
Jon B| 3.8.10 @ 11:05AM
I think the real concern here is that the Earth's temperature has never risen this fast, and that it coincides with the Industrial Age. Regardless, Excessive CO2 is really bad. I wonder why, in your narrow politicized world, you never take that into account? You drop all reason to prove something on a political level.
http://www.miamiherald.com/201.....ceans.html
L. Ross| 1.13.10 @ 1:17PM
Hear, hear!
After all, didn't we all see "The Day After Tomorrow"? The movie where Global Warming brought a new ice age? In less than a week?
GeorgieGirl| 1.13.10 @ 11:09AM
Not being in tune with all the Alphabet soup labels I can only assume that AGW means Al Gore Warnings??!!!
TomB| 1.13.10 @ 4:29PM
Anthropogenic Global Warming
Louis Jenkins| 1.13.10 @ 11:37AM
The latest God, Al Gore, is raking in warm hard cash from his appearances, and speaks with sweeping gestures that our malignant ways have caused a global weather catastrophy. The Hollyweed celebutards sing to abate global warming. (Q: What can we do? [Wringing hands.] A: I know, we can make a musical video to save the world!) Meanwhile, the real God, or mother nature for the non-deity believers, reaches down and attempts to slap these people's chops back into reality. Even through bloody, swollen lips, and broken teeth, those CO2 hating warmies refuse to recant their errant ways. I guess they're addicted like a drug user, and can't go cold turkey (no pun intended). The Anti-CO2- Knee Cap and Trade foundation continues on like an Abrams through a field of high grass. The plain and simple question: If the globe is warming why are my feet frozen, the heat runs all night, and people are dying from hypothermia? They're not wrong, are they?
IHiJump| 1.13.10 @ 4:18PM
Look at when this cold started... when the Copenhagen talks began!! They got about three feet of snow the first day and the entire northern hemisphere has been cold since.
Do people really think this is a coincidence? I think God really does have a great sense of humor!!
Lullaby's, Legends and Lies| 1.13.10 @ 5:22PM
God does have a sense of humor, but the AGW promoting crowd doesn't. Without AGW, they won't have a good reason to fly on private jets to Copenhagen, or drive around in limousine's, on the Taxpayer's dime, trying to save the World from a lie. They're all lying, scamming, cheating, frauds, who are wasting our time, money, and resource's, that could be going to fix other "real" problems. Al Gore is laughing all the way to the bank, but payback is a bitch!!
Jackgn| 1.13.10 @ 5:49PM
The Algores of the world will get their's.
The folks can take only so much bull***t.
Mike| 1.13.10 @ 9:58PM
We get a cold snap in Florida and brain farts from all of the idiots who have no idea what the difference is between weather and climate. This is very entertaining. Were the consequences not so real it would also be funny.
LiveFreeOrDie| 1.13.10 @ 11:54PM
I'm certain it would take a severe cold-spell that lasted several years if not another ice age before these idiots would even begin to consider the THEORY of global warming just might be full of holes. Perfect example above...
The 'real' consequences seem to be politicians ignoring 'real' threats to the environment because it's too challenging to tackle 'real' problems. Much easier to champion AGW since it doesn't actually exist and there will never be a way to measure success.
Ace| 1.14.10 @ 12:18AM
"The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed -- and hence clamorous to be led to safety -- by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary." H. L. Mencken
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