Psyched Out

So apparently it's been almost three months of silence here. I have been binging on other people's blogs and ignoring my own. Maybe I should feel guilty, but I've lived with myself for a long time and have come to accept certain character flaws. :)

We've been having a lot of snow days here, and I'm hoping to have ANY vacation time left come April. There was a sixty car pile up in my state today, and the roads are packed snow frozen over with a layer of ice. It's very dangerous driving.

I watched most of a program on the Little Ice Age from the 14th to 19th centuries, and going over what happens with just a bit of a temperature drop (4 degrees F) makes me aware of the devastation a similar temperature rise could do. Massive drought for years on end, increased storms, killing off of staple crops. In the first part of the little ice age it rained virtually every day for five years straight in England. Many thousands of people died from starvation because it killed the grain crops they depended on.

That's one reason that I'm opposed to eating local. I don't care if sometimes people choose to do it, but I am concerned that Congress is considering making it a requirement for public schools. Being able to eat tomatoes in February is one of the marvels of modern living. If I were eating local, there basically wouldn't be vegetables after October and before June. How that's healthier is beyond me.

We need to join the rest of the world in the global effort to minimize damage to the ozone layer and prepare for global warming. I was neutral for some time but I'm convinced at this point that it is happening, though I'm not entirely convinced that we are causing it. The little ice age happened without human input. This is clearly a version of Pascal's wager, though. Even if we don't believe in global warming, the prudent course is to believe in it and behave as if it does exist.