35 Robins

There’s an old saying, “One swallow doesn’t make a spring.”
But 35 robins! Thirty-five robins bring a big message, especially when they land on your front lawn the first week in February. No member of our family had seen these harbingers of spring arrive this early.
And to think it happened just a few days after Punxsutawney Phil, a scruffy groundhog in Pennsylvania, had seen his shadow and darted back in his hole, predicting six more weeks of winter. Apparently Phil was unaware of one of the hottest issues in America today, global warming.
Perhaps the robins are better educated. They had been following the 36-degree isotherm north for centuries. The 36-degree isotherm was moving out of the Carolinas, their wintering haven, earlier each decade.
John James Audubon observed in 1831 that the robins remained in their southern habitat “until they return in March.” The robins were earlier this year by nearly a month.
The robins were responding to a natural phenomenon. That phenomenon is part of a climate cycle. Reliable scientific studies have shown that the earth goes through a cooling cycle followed by a warming cycle periodically over tens of thousands of years. These climate cycles have been repeated for a billion years or more.
The earth is well into the warming cycle that started some 10,000 years ago. At that time, the northern part of North America was covered with massive glaciers. The glaciers in some areas were several miles thick. Some extended as far south as Allentown, Pa.,
Are the glaciers still there? No. They melted.
What causes melting? It is temperature increases above 32 degrees Fahrenheit. And the increases in temperature were most certainly not due to increases in carbon dioxide. Fred Flintstone’s stone mobile didn’t use fossil fuels and there were no SUVs.
It came to pass that global warming melted all the glaciers with the exception of some scattered ones in Alaska, Siberia and a real big one in Greenland.
Global warming will continue until isotherms above 32 degrees Fahrenheit will move to the Arctic Circle. Palm trees will grow in northern Maine. The moisture laden atmosphere from the tropics will arrive at the North Pole. The temperatures will then be in the snow-producing range, and snow will fall at the North Pole for possibly a thousand years, heralding the beginning of a new ice age.
One of the most controversial issues today in the global warming controversy is the claim by the activist wackos that the great polar ice cap will melt, thereby causing a rise in the level of the oceans of the world by a measure of 8 to 15 feet. Claims are that coastal areas will be flooded. Seaports will be submerged and one-third of Florida will disappear.
I became personally involved in the great polar ice cap debate some years ago when I became acquainted with Dr. James McCarthy, professor of Comparative Zoology at Harvard University. He is a global warming activist.
Dr. McCarthy and I met on a trip through the Northwest Passage on a Russian ice breaker in 1995. By the end of the cruise, our positions were well defined.
In the year 2000, Dr. McCarthy cruised to the North Pole on the atomic-powered Russian ice breaker “I/B Yamal.”
Dr. McCarthy discovered there was no ice cap at the North Pole. He saw only open water.
Immediately after returning from the North Pole trip, Dr. McCarthy contacted TIME magazine. With the help of several other global warmers, TIME published a cover story, “Arctic Meltdown.”
Based on the information given by the global warmers, the TIME magazine cover showed a polar bear standing on a block of ice in open water. The story reported that for the first time in “50 million years” there was open water at the North Pole. TIME failed to mention polar bears would rarely be seen north of the 80th Parallel and never at the North Pole — 90 degrees north.
As a dedicated reporter, I decided to go to the North Pole myself.
The next year, on July 12th, 2001, I stood at 90 degrees north, the North Pole.
There was no polar ice cap and no polar bears. Under my feet was a 15-foot thick sheet of ice on the Arctic Ocean with a cover of light snow, up to one foot deep in some areas, much lighter in other areas.
In an interview, the captain of the ice breaker I/B Yamal explained that every few years there is open water at the North Pole. He pointed out that the entire ice sheet on the Arctic Ocean is moving in a counter clockwise direction. He said it would be impossible for an ice sheet covering thousands of square miles to remain intact. Many fractures would occur and in some instances, fissures would expand into very large areas of open water. Therefore, it would not be unusual to see open water at the North Pole.
I asked the captain how many feet the water level of the oceans would rise if all 15 feet of the Arctic Ocean ice cover should melt.
He replied, “None.”
As a child I discovered that ice on a pond freezes in a direction from the surface toward the bottom; sometimes to a depth of a foot or more. When the ice melted in the spring, there was not another foot of water. The same is true of a glass filled with ice. When the ice melts, the glass does not overflow.
One of the leading global warmers, Dr. McCarthy, in the year 2000 exploded the theory of a great polar ice cap at the North Pole. And yet in December 2004, the UN Climate Change Conference was still predicting an Arctic meltdown that will bring the ocean level up by 8 to 15 feet.
What’s going on here? Whom are we going to believe? I believe the robins.