Just a few years ago (2008)I did an article for the January issue of Georgia Outdoor News on Lanier. For information I went with Ryan Coleman in early December and the lake was 20 feet low. There were only two boat ramps open on the whole lake and people were saying it would never fill back up.

This year the lake is above full pool and there was some concern about dam safety there is so much water in the lake. My back yard looks like a rice paddy, and I live on a hill! A water tower sits about 100 yards behind my property so this is the highest spot in this area.

December was unusually warm, much like one December in the 1980s when I fished at Clarks Hill during Christmas holidays barefooted and shirtless. I have also fished there during the holidays when it was sleeting and I needed my snowmobile suit to stay comfortable. Weather changes.

I saw a big article on the net about Glacier Bay in Alaska comparing how it looked 100 years ago and today. The glacier there has retreated 100 miles in 100 years. When I was there a few years ago we cruised up the bay to the glacier and the guide told us how it had retreated about a mile a year for 100 year. She also said the fastest retreat was in the ten year period from 1860 to 1870. I guess those Civil War SUVs were to blame.

The global warming evangelists say this retreat proves global climate change. It sure does. Climate has always changed and always will, no matter how much of your money the government confiscates and spends on its programs and no matter how high your electricity prices are driven by the government’s policies.

Its somewhat ironic that the global warming fanatics put out guidelines a month or so ago when we had unusually cold weather for the time of year. The guidelines preached on how to argue with folks saying the unusually cold weather proved there was no global warming. Unusual weather did not mean anything.

But now those same folks are saying the unusually warm weather in December is proof of global climate change. Rational people don’t try to have it both ways.

The change alarmists say if they don’t spend trillions of your money and make your gas and electricity too expensive to afford the average global temperature may rise as much as three degrees in the next 100 years. That is supposed to decimate animal and plant populations and change everything.

New Year’s Day this year it was 36 degrees at my house at daylight. By 5:00 that afternoon it was 54 degrees – a change of 18 degrees in ten hours. That is not unusual for any day of the year. Animals and plants seem to do just fine with temperatures changing more than 20 degrees in a few hours every day, but a three degree average change over a 100 year period will decimate them? Sure thing.

Hundreds of climate change true believers flew to Paris last month and spent a week dining on the finest foods and staying in nice hotels in rooms with temperature controls to make them comfortable. They came up with an agreement, that our government is part of, to spend biillions and reduce US use of coal and oil drastically.

The jets those folks used to get to Paris put more carbon in the air than a normal person like you or I will emit in more than a year. They convoys of SUVs moving around Paris used more gas than you or I will burn in many years. Yet they tell us how we are supposed to sacrifice to save the planet while they live it up at our expense.

I think bass and deer will do just fine even if the temperature goes up a little over the next 100 years. But I’m not sure you and I will do very good if we are made to follow their silly rules. We probably won’t be able to afford gas for our vehicles, even if any is available, to go hunting and fishing.

When I see the leaders of the movement to restrict my carbon output, like President Obama, reduce theirs lower than my current use, I will pay attention to them. Until then I will oppose everything they try to do.