Is it me or is it getting hot in here? - Marin Independent Journal

Frankie Frost/Marin Independent Journal

Barry Tompkins

I’ve been trying to figure out this whole global warming thing. I’m failing horribly.

My son has been all over me to go skiing, and other than the fact that I don’t ski, I’ve been very amenable to the proposition. I was contemplating a family trip to the snow when I came to the realization that I was deciding when to make the big ski junket while driving my car with the top down on a balmy 75-degree February day in Marin County.

I grew up in San Francisco’s Outer Richmond District and a 75-degree day in July happened with the regularity of a total eclipse. If a 75-degree day occurred in February, my mother would be convinced that a direct plunge into a fiery inferno would immediately follow.

It seems that all around the world (with the exception of almost any place I’ve had to travel this winter), we are experiencing conditions that lend some pretty convincing credence to the prospect that we soon will be able to dangle our feet in the water while sitting on the Golden Gate Bridge.

It all drove me to a National Geographic study that would lead a peanut mind like my own to think that it would be a judicious thing to do to get out there and practice treading water. For me, this is even more of a burden, because I’ve never learned to swim. (For an explanation, see the Jewish Mother’s Guide to Childhood Sinus Infections).

The study describes, in a type style that almost literally screams at you, that glaciers are melting, sea levels are rising, cloud forests are dying and wildlife is scrambling. It adds that sea levels will rise between a foot and 2½ feet by 2050.

Now, if you happen to be a Bedouin, this probably is in no way alarming to you. I live on the water, and a 2½-foot rise in tide levels would basically mean that I could have a swim-up bar in my kitchen. A nice idea for serving pina coladas to my dinner guests, but a pretty lousy idea for lounging in the living room and watching “Project Runway.”

Rising sea levels, it tells us, also would result in more intense major storms and more rain, followed by longer and drier droughts. Our little county here has just experienced its driest February since 1864. I don’t know whether to build an ark or  buy a dune buggy.

And then there’s those pesky greenhouse gasses. Their level is higher now than anytime in the last 800,000 years. I know, I was a kid when they took that measurement. My mother blamed me.

And, how about wildlife scrambling? I saw a photo just the other day of a bear swimming in a river looking for fish, thinking it’s summer and its hibernation time is over. Any day now, I expect a tired grizzly to show up at my door asking to borrow a cup of lox.

I have some friends who sent me photos of their vacation in Antarctica. The penguins were wearing shorts. These are little-known facts that I feel, as a public servant, I should let you in on.

The “Farmer’s Almanac” used to have a list of items that foretold of a long winter. Just a few of them were:

• Thicker than normal corn husks

• Woodpeckers sharing a tree

• Thick hair on the nape of a cow’s neck

• Ants marching in line

I’m not trying to be an alarmist here, but the husks of the corn I bought yesterday were pretty darn skinny. I saw no woodpeckers with roommates. Every cow in my neighborhood was neatly shaved around the neck. And the ants were all over the place.

Think about it. In the meantime, enjoy the hot winter.

Barry Tompkins is a longtime sports broadcaster who lives in Marin. Contact him at barrytompkins1@gmail.com.

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