Initial thoughts

I am writing this at the end of a February in Ontario with unusually little snow, following two winters with more snow than usual, following a winter with unusually little snow. And so on.

The soil is frozen and exposed to the drying winter winds. That's not good for the soil, and not good for the seeds that are waiting for Spring. There will be too little snow melt then to replenish the moisture ripped away by the winter winds.

Christmas Eve of 2006, at midnight, I was swatting mosquitos hovering by a friend's hedge. And so on.

Do you read the news? Do you see signs of climate change?

As long as I've been reading up on climate change, over twenty years now, the main prediction has been an extended period of increasingly erratic weather. Dry where it was wet, or perhaps just as wet overall but in sudden deluges. And the reverse. Longer hot spells. Less ice.

They say climate is what you expect and weather is what you get. Well, I want my climate back! I want deep snow, far sub-zero cold for days on end, and that brilliant sunshine we only seem to get in February days when it's actually cold and clear and dry.

I say the warm weather in winter is bad, just the way cold weather is bad in summer. I hate it when the weather "reporters" on the radio - you listening 99.1? - get all happy over extra-warm winter days.

So why should you read this site?

I'm not a scientist - I have a degree in Physics and Math from U of T, and I'm a high school Computer Studies teacher. I'm also an artist (see http://pixsilver.com/), a member of Sierra Club of Canada, and a union activist with OSSTF. So I get climate change on many levels. I understand the science, and I know that people respond to stories and images and passion much more than we do to numbers and charts. And I get the social aspects, too; I know that people often respond to change with fear, and I know the power of hope offered with an extended hand.

I also have a way with words. Maybe that will be the main thing I have to offer. I can clarify the science behind climate change, and I will offer resources, including letters that I have had published in various newspapers, so that you can use them as a basis for your own letters-to-the-editor.

So let's go - questions anyone?