From Mike Pickett:

Re: “Extreme” rain follows global warming (Aug. 7): I would suggest that these “scientists” brush up on Dynamical Systems and “strange attractors or repellors” before they pop off about global warming (which isn’t). Consider that the creation of that massive dam in China just may have changed the whole dynamics of the S. E. Asian jet streams.

It is obvious that these guys are “proof texting” (Bible scholar term for people who use selected texts for exegesis). I use BIBLE scholar terms because “Global Warming” is one branch of the new, virulent faith entitled “Environmentalism” (for a clear discussion of this new faith, see Freeman Dyson’s essay “The Question of Global Warming” here. The planet had “reasonably” settled into a jet stream pattern that accommodated the Aswan Dam, Hoover Dam, and many other anomalies (irrigation changes, &c.) when along came a totally new attractor. Now the jet streams are in violent oscillation as they respond to this new “node” in the planetary system. Ergo: “Extreme rain,” and other Hegelian blather, Meanwhile, though, the planetary temperatures continue to drop, as does the crop line in North America here (thank you very much David Archibald).

Mike Pickett
Math Department
Institute for Extended Learning
Colville, WA