Over the Hedge by T Lewis and Michael Fry for November 26, 2012

Many people have the wrong idea about “global warming”. The theory (and I’m neither endorsing or discounting it) is that more heat (energy) in the system makes subsystems more active, causing instability. This chaos can cause extremes of every kind of weather, including colder temperatures, in any given area.

Looks like Santa’s section is about to crack ….

That’s the night Santa went crazy, that’s the night St. Nick went insane. Realized he was getting a raw deal…

Serves him right for living in one of the least hospitable places on Earth.

Please observe the distinction between climate and weather. Weather is the temperature, barometric pressure, wind velocity and direction, precipitation, etc. at a given instant. Climate is the long-term condition vis a vis the past. Climate had its ups and downs over eons, but now there is a human input (which includes deforestation, urbanization, and such as well as carbon release into the atmosphere) which is trending in one direction overwhelmingly – upward temperatures. Just as one cannot witness tectonic plate movement until there is an earthquake, so this climate temperature change is too slow to notice in weather, but dendrochronology and ice core records go back millennia.

Santa should obviously set up shop at the North Magnetic Pole. That’s on Ellesmere Island in the Canadian North.

Well, like I said, I don’t claim the theory is true. But it is a sound theory.There is some evidence that it may be right, but nothing that totally convinces me. I’m keeping an open mind about it.

And, even if it is correct, whether mankind has anything to do with it is another argument altogether.

The story of Elizabeth meeting Mary tells us how far along they were in their pregnancies. We know about when Elizabeth became pregnant. We know that her husband (Zechariah) was a priest “…of the course of Abia”. This tells us the general time that Elizabeth became pregnant. Do the math and it takes you to late September. That makes perfect sense when you look at other factors. Herod would have expected the people to pay their taxes after the harvests, while they had the means to pay and the time off from working the fields to make the trip, and before the cold weather set in.

Pardon me, my slip is showing. That should be “Elisabeth”.

bhinckle: Any religion (other than your own) would you want crammed down your throat and/or indoctrinated on your kids at your tax expense? Check the mirror to see who is the sanctimonious hypocrite in this. Not so incidentally, I have real ordination – from a bishop and major denomination, not mail order. I don’t like your religion being crammed down my throat, and was one of the founders of the Dallas Civil Liberties Union for that reason..thewbird55: Good points, but you didn’t necessarily slip; the name is transliterated from the Greek anyway. You slipped more in that it was Augustus who ordered the taxes, although Herod had to collect them.

Hottest summer on record, will it be the coldest winter on record, then THE END OF THE WORLD?! coming soon, DEC 21

Re: hurricanes, o/c the hurricanes at the turn of last centrury were more deadly, there was less warning they were coming and thus less time to get people to safety. But that does NOT make them stronger. When Katrina struck several years ago it was still a full-fledged hurricane nearly 200 miles inland. And that’s not counting the barrier islands it hit. .Humans have been having an effect on our enviroment for thousands of years, it’s part of our ability to survive (think irrigation.) Sadly, climate change regularly kills off large popuations, and I can’t help but think that aggrivating the situation isn’t helping.