Blue Olives

My in-box is flooded these days, just flooded, with bloody articles on global warming. There's nothing but a sea of pending catastrophe washing into my brain. There's never much data, just good choice quotes by scientists saying "...the data suggests..." Occasionally, I am privvy to the data. It's not a pretty sight. The data is so complex and so heavily massaged and tweaked that it's enough to make you think folks are making up their own numbers--or at least that they could if they wanted to. On one scale scientists are operating on the grandest level anyone could ask for on this planet. Thinking and theorizing about the weather is on the edge of magic. But the actual measurements, the search for millimeter differences in water levels, temperature, wind patterns, etc. is on the level of minutae as to be virtually insignificant. I'm not complaining about any of this. It's just getting rather tiresome. The point I try to make to folks is that there are