It's official: I've joined the World is Warming Crowd. This is different from the DENIAL crowd. For them the world is not warming, the glaciers are not melting and the waters will not rise and inundate all of Florida and lowlands along the coasts of the other Atlantic and Pacific states.
The reason for this dramatic switch in my belief system is what my eyes tell me and I read the news from around the world real well. There is this piece of news this morning in the Miami Herald that tells about the Keys being vulnerable and that they have done nothing about the advancing waters. I don't know what they can do nor do I know what the Miami/Dade coast line can do to prevent flooding from being a crack-pot idea to actually happening.
One very sobering note is that the folks who are looking deep in the waters off Florida for treasure have found evidence of an old shoreline 45 feet underwater and the remains of a pine forest that once grew out of dry land. So, I've changed from an unofficial opposition to the deniers that we are facing rising waters. The deniers are quite sure that these waters will not interfere with our terrestrial life choices - at least in their life-times. There is the rub. They think only of themselves while I and others like me think of our posterity and life as we know it sinking below the sea level which is certainly rising.
Do you remember the now old movie;"Some Like it Hot", with Tony Curtis, Jack Lemon and Marilyn Monroe? The men dress in drag and Joe E. Brown, a rich eccentric millionaire falls in love with the character played by Tony Curtis. The reason for injecting this little bit of memorabilia here is that Joe E. Brown just goes right along with plans to marry Curtis despite his revelation that he is a man. Despite the evidence, Brown is in denial and in love and says, "I don't care" which is the end of the movie. If this were real life, the deniers, who say they don't care, will be wiped off the earth like the rest of us who do care.
The glacier that Carol and I walked on in Montana about fifteen years ago has shrunken and has almost disappeared. We have visited islands in the Pacific that are sure to be gone by the end of this century. There is nothing immediately effective that can be done to reverse global warming, but I would suggest that the deniers be unmasked and join the: "Let's do something about it now!" crowd. It wouldn't hurt to be concerned and tell the deniers to wake up and see the sea rise. There certainly is GLOBAL WARMING. There certainly is pollution filling our atmosphere. The sky is not falling. But, please listen and tell the deniers it is time to look around and see the evidence which is plain to the rest of us concerned citizens.