Broken Sensor

Aloha: The title of today's posting, "Broken Sensor", refers to yesterday's volcano update. It seems that the SO2 sensor is broken, hence the high reading of 2,200 tonnes. I guess this would be as good a place as any to give today's volcano update. Here it is, are you ready, SOS.

I have been talking about the temperature up in Volcano. So far the coldest this year has been, I think, 39. The first year I lived up there it got down to 28 three mornings in a row. Ice all over the place. When you walked all you heard was crunch, crunch, crunch. That would have been in the late 1970's. I bring this up because Maliana of Hawi wrote me about global warming. After I got out of the Navy I went to the UH at Hilo. I remember holding a sign on "Earth Day", in the early 70's, that said "The Next Ice Age Is Coming". I was really into that kind of stuff in those days, along with Democratic Party politics.

When this "global warming" thing started I was still waiting for the next ice age. I kind of joked with my mother about it and she told me that when she was in school it was also "global warming". Further research revealed that it was "global cooling" in the 1880's. I think that at this point two facts should be considered. 1: There are fossil palm trees in Canada. Hence, the earth has been a lot hotter in the past. 2: There are glacial moraines on Mauna Kea in Hawaii. Hence, the earth has been a lot colder in the past. Ladies and gentlemen, the earth is in, what is called, an inter-glacial period. Ice cores from the Arctic and Antarctic, sample cores from the worlds reefs and ocean bottoms all show that the last few thousand this planet has had a very unusually stable climate.

Sorry folks, the burning of fossil fuels in the 1880's did not cause global cooling, The burning of fossil fuels in the 1920's did not cause global warming. The burning of fossil fuels in the 1970's did not cause global cooling, and the burning of fossil fuels now is not the cause of global warming. It is the natural cycle of weather that this planet has gone through ever since it formed from cosmic dust eons ago. Sorry, but the human species just is not that powerful and great.

Sorry for the rant. May God bless and keep us all safe and sound.