Do Your Part: Stop Global Whining

During my morning drive to work this past week, I browsed through numerous radio stations whose morning talk show topics were centered on the epic storm passing through the majority of our nation. In other words, a Los Angeles commuter was listening to Chicagoans calling into LA radio stations and elaborating on the blizzard, trying to earn the sympathy of southern Californians before they hit the next preset button on their car radio in search of more interesting and personally relevant issues.

Raised in suburban Chicago, this listener could not help but feel a sudden wave of nostalgia, remembering all the cold mornings spent in front of the local news channel waiting for the name of his school to be announced on the list of official snow day closures. But as I later discovered from a multitude of reports, this was unlike any winter storm I had personally previously experienced. This massive system spanning regions of the country was touted as one of the worst in several decades. Cities used to mild winters were blanketed in snow and ice, making Dennis Quaid appear as though he were a real scientist playing an actor playing fake scientist.

This winter wonderland of grandiose proportions raises some eyebrows about the theories of global warming. Certainly this is just one instance, but an extreme one at that. If the world is slowly getting warmer as the years pass, how come the larger half of the continental United States currently looks like the inside of the seldom used icebox freezer sitting in my garage?

Global warming includes notions of how a gradual temperature increase will eventually melt the ice caps, interfering with the North Atlantic current and consequently plunging the planet into another ice age. However, that is not supposed to happen for a number of centuries, given mankind maintains its current development path. The Blizzard of '11 or the "Snowpocalypse" is hardly a sign of imminent things to come as a result of global warming.

Instead of worrying and possibly soiling our underpants about a global crisis that may or may not happen a thousand years down the road, the world's brightest minds would be put to better use advancing current technology. Specifically, figuring out procedures, methods, and designs to deal with these environmental disasters, because as Hurricane Katrina and the Boxing Day Tsunami have shown, the manner in which Mother Earth treats her inhabitants is like a proverbial box of chocolates.

After this disastrous winter storm, it's to the drawing board on how to redesign new buildings and refurbish old ones. But if the film The Day After Tomorrow is accurate in its most literal sense, then everyone must drop all other matters and work to expedite an alternative living plan.