A Winter to Remember

As a child, I remember the few snow storms big enough to allow a wonderland: a playground of perfect caves, igloos, sledding, and snow fights complemented nicely by hot chocolate and warm fires.  None of those winters compares to this one.

Every few days another storm barges through the region piling onto the record total snowfall and reminding everyone that global warming makes the world colder, and wetter.  Luckily, the EPA and the Global Summit on Climate Change haven’t been successful in banning that hot fire, so I can still warm my hands and feet after I finish shoveling, but I remain apprehensive with the knowledge that my fire is making the world warmer and thus colder: a deadly paradox that leads to more fires, more heat, more warming, and of course more cold winter nights.

I will persist in naming the latest exercise in fear mongering to steal our freedom global warming: climate change just doesn’t exude the same level of stupidity and exists as part of a gradual tactical transition to brainwash the public into believing that any change is bad change.  Our world is defined by change.  At times in our past the Earth has been tens to hundreds of degrees warmer than now, even our precious ice caps and the Arctic Ocean used to be alive with green flora and fauna.  At other times our world has been locked in ice, terraforming entire continents.

But as you struggle to keep warm this winter and to heat your house without emptying your wallet for your energy bill, at least let your mind be eased by this: if you use a wood pellet stove, you are saving the world from global warming.  You heard me right.

It’s no small surprise that burning wood pellets constitutes green heat, or that congress gave a $1500 tax credit on new wood pellet stoves, but the argument is that burning wood pellets is more energy efficient and releases less carbon dioxide than simply letting old forests die and rot, or in many cases become fuel for massive forest fires.  What co2 is released is also offset by new forest growth, which unlike old forests sucks in far more co2 than it lets off.

Wait, old forests are bad for the environment?  So bad its better to grind them up and burn them to heat our homes?  That would imply that the national park service is one dirty polluter, anything but environmentally friendly, and a large contributing cause to global warming: just saying.

Honestly, this has been more than just a winter to remember. Over the past year precipitation rates have consistently set huge monthly and seasonal records here in the D.C. area.  The past year alone has wiped out the effects of decades of drought: our water table was replenished by mid summer, and we’ve been soaking in the extra ever since.  If this is the result of global warming, everyone should be thankful it’s happening.  But please, stop and think: colder winters, cooler summers, greater snowfall, greater rainfall, global warming.  It just doesn’t all add up, does it?

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