Editor:
The sky is falling, the sky is falling.
Remember the childhood story where Henny Penny is running around warning all in the farmyard that the sky was falling.
While there is considerable evidence of global warming, one cannot help but wonder if global warming is more a normal occurrence rather than something really unusual, that is, speaking in the overall general scheme of things.
Why I say this is because we are all complaining about a wet, cold spring that now is carrying on into summer.
Most of our perception of an ice age is that of ice flows extending south from the North Pole.
In actual fact, cold springs and extended cool summers can have the effect of snow accumulating on our mountains, thus creating over time glaciers.
Having spent a number of years on the Central Coast where, for a great many years, mountains stayed snow capped through the summer, where not that many years ago, I and family members were able to drive to the foot of a glacier and get ice to make ice cream.
Today those glaciers are gone. As a matter of fact, there are no glaciers on most mountains of Bella Coola Valley and, in fact, no snow on the mountains by late summer. These mountains are not stupendously high mountains, so what keeps the snow on the mountains?
The answer is wet, cold springs, summers, and fall. The snow accumulates on the mountains. The compacting of this accumulating snow creates, by the force of gravity, glaciers, so while not seeing a new Ice Age, wet, cold springs, summers and falls could lead to our seeing year-round snow-capped mountains.
Snow-capped Mount Baker, as observed from the Lower Mainland, is a treasured beauty.
Driving through the Rockies in June of this year, one could not help but stop the car and enjoy the natural beauty of the snow-capped mountains of our national parks.
Maybe instead of crying global warming, as Henny Penny does, we need to take a moment and enjoy nature renewing herself.
Doug Wilson
Williams Lake