When my parents were married in the nineteen forties the Mississippi river would freeze over in winter. The ice companies would send out workers to cut down through ice and that ice was stored in caves until summer when the company would load up trucks with 25 pound blocks of that ice and then the trucks would go through neighborhoods in the city and county delivering ice to every home in the area. Those blocks of ice were placed in the original ice boxes that had no actual refrigeration components that we have today. The boxes merely kept milk and groceries cool enough to prevent spoiling. Speaking of milk, milkmen used to deliver milk to the front doorstep in pre-dawn hours. By the time people were awake and moving, that milk was frozen. One benefit was the glass bottles the milk was in had just a paper tab sealing the tops. The milk freezing would push that tab to open and what lifted out of the milk was cream which was scraped away and used with their coffee. I remember when I was a child we kids in the neighborhood would follow the trucks on our street and when the ice man would take a block of ice to a doorstep we wound jump in the truck to pick up shards of ice on the truck floor. I know that was not sanitary, but we survived and had a good time doing it. The ice man never chastised us for doing that.
Joyce's grandpa used to go hunting in the late fall rabbit season. He would bag a slew of rabbits. He brought them home and cleaned them and hung the carcasses on the back porch and those meats would stay frozen all winter long.
We hear these days about the myth of clean coal. I remember in the late nineties going to Shaw's garden in Saint Louis (a beautiful park of perhaps 40 acres there with all its beautiful flowers and trees. One afternoon I was observing a stand of pine trees. There was a plaque there stating that when the city's winter heating was all coal, all of the conifers died from the carbon pollution. The park had to buy ground 30 miles outside the city to repopulate the pines that were placed there in the garden after the trees grew enough to replace those that died in the park. Once coal was prohibited other pines could again thrive in the city again.
I care little about climate change for myself, but I do care for my granddaughter and her children. I understand that there have been ice ages before and that there have been tropical ages that have occurred naturally in the past. Those changes have happened, but they took eons to make those evolutions. Now the climate is changing by the decade.
I believe America is missing a huge opportunity here. The solar energy industry is and will be growing by leaps and bounds across the globe. We could be the leader in this new industry but we are not investing in it nearly enough. Wind farms are also growing around the world and we here are fighting against that. These 2 industries would provide jobs in manufacturing and as a bonus could help to turn this rapid climate change that is resulting in horrific storms, hurricanes, rising sea levels
Copyright Bill Weber 2006-2019 and beyond.
Joyce's grandpa used to go hunting in the late fall rabbit season. He would bag a slew of rabbits. He brought them home and cleaned them and hung the carcasses on the back porch and those meats would stay frozen all winter long.
We hear these days about the myth of clean coal. I remember in the late nineties going to Shaw's garden in Saint Louis (a beautiful park of perhaps 40 acres there with all its beautiful flowers and trees. One afternoon I was observing a stand of pine trees. There was a plaque there stating that when the city's winter heating was all coal, all of the conifers died from the carbon pollution. The park had to buy ground 30 miles outside the city to repopulate the pines that were placed there in the garden after the trees grew enough to replace those that died in the park. Once coal was prohibited other pines could again thrive in the city again.
I care little about climate change for myself, but I do care for my granddaughter and her children. I understand that there have been ice ages before and that there have been tropical ages that have occurred naturally in the past. Those changes have happened, but they took eons to make those evolutions. Now the climate is changing by the decade.
I believe America is missing a huge opportunity here. The solar energy industry is and will be growing by leaps and bounds across the globe. We could be the leader in this new industry but we are not investing in it nearly enough. Wind farms are also growing around the world and we here are fighting against that. These 2 industries would provide jobs in manufacturing and as a bonus could help to turn this rapid climate change that is resulting in horrific storms, hurricanes, rising sea levels
Copyright Bill Weber 2006-2019 and beyond.
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