Driving across the Imperial Valley in the extreme south of California yesterday on my way by motorcycle to San Diego I saw a storage tank beside the road with a large line painted about 15-20 feet above the ground and labeled, “Sea Level.” I suddenly remembered that this entire valley is below sea level.

The Valley’s rich agriculture is based on long hot summers and irrigation from the Colorado River since rainfall is less than 3 inches a year. And it is a major supplier of produce for the USA.

The “New River” flows north from Mexico through the Valley to empty into the Salton Sea, the huge lake formed 100 years ago by the Colorado River breaking its banks and flooding the area. The “New River” is reputedly the most polluted waterway in the USA dumping tons of sewerage, industrial waste, agriculture chemicals, and other bad materials into the Salton Sea.

To get to the Valley I passed through the Algodones Dunes which form a most impressive sight with dozens of off road vehicles criss-crossing the vast hills of sand.

All in all an environmentalist’s worse nightmare. Here man has definitely intruded on Mother Nature and God’s work. The whole economy is based on man-made agriculture. Pollution is at its worse. Pristine nature is being scarred by man. And man is living below the level of the rising seas.

But then man is building treatment plants to clean up the “New River.” Agriculture supports one of the few places in California where the economy is prospering and the poplulation is growing with room for new entrants in the job market. Rigorous rules are imposed on off road vehicles.

In essence the Imperial Valley is a minature version of the entire worldwide concern with our environment. The environment is definitely affected by man who has changed the very nature of the place. And man has left his debris and detritus. But rather than abandon the place and leave it for nature to reclaim, man will continue to expand his use of the land, while at the same time acting to correct his mistakes.

There has been no more elequent comment on the hot topic of climate change than the still falling snow on Washington DC and elsewhere. With the whole country in the “Deep Freeze of 2010″ it is hard to warn about the world becoming a hot, humid tropical paradise.

I am at Mardi Gras in New Orleans where the intense cold has had an impact on the festivities. The crowds lining the parade routes are fewer in number, in fact not all the routes are “lined.” I leave you to imagine how the cold lowers the propensity to engage in the traditional baring of flesh. But I did see the famous “Naked Cowboy” of Times Square fame standing in the Old Quarter wearing nothing but his guitar and his jockey shorts.

I come here to join the party put on by my cousin who owns a road house in Southern Maryland and his son who lives in New Orleans. All of the guests from the DC area and other places had travel mishaps caused by the snow, including my daughter who had her original flight from San Francisco canceled because of the snow. However, being a bright young lady she rearranged her trip and arrived only a few hours later than planned. Believe me, everyone in this group would applaud a warmer earth.

I would speculate that, given the other major problems facing the Obama Administration, not the least being Democrats bowing out of this year’s election, the “Deep Freeze” will allow placing climate change lower on the agenda.

There it is on live TV, my home town, Washington DC, under 2 feet of snow! I guess our Congressmen will not be able to get to their offices to work on the latest issue in the “energy and environment” saga, the so-called “Cap and Trade” bill aimed at reducing carbon emissions. Siimple question, with power lines dropping like iguanas falling from trees here in Florida because of the “Great Freeze of 2010,” do we really want to leave the earth as cold as it is?

Thank God the Superbowl will be played in sunny Miami.

I have refrained from writing on climate change for fear that too many readers north of the Georgia-Florida border would be unable to log in and read up because of widespread power line outages due to the winter storms making the American South look more and more each day like the American Midwest. Face it, hard to make a case for the ills of the earth getting warmer when you are in the hospital with a heart attack due to shoveling snow out of your driveway for days on end.

I am, however, heartened by the Obama Administration taking a subtle tack to a more viable course in the heavy seas of global warming and energy policy. The President has pointedly included more nuclear power and clean coal in our several efforts to find a less polluting, more domestic supply of energy. In doing so he moved the debate away from lessening our use of energy to prevent problems for our environment, to one of finding less polluting supplies. And recognizing the limited help we will get from new, alternative energies until a more distant future, he is turning to answers that offer more immediate assistance.

I applaud this more realistic approach. The reality is that the consumption of energy will continue to grow at a fast pace as the less fortunate lands take their rightful places among the more prosperous nations. Let us shape the energy used, not waste our efforts in trying to stem this growth.

I saw a poignant cartoon in yesterday’s paper. There was a woman standing in front of a fireplace in a room with snow piled up to the window ledges feeding the fire with books bearing titles such as Al Gore’s “An Inconvenient Truth” and “Global Warming.” The current cold wave that is breaking records throughout the Northern Hemisphere promises to put the climate change issue in the “deep freeze.”

I watched a fascinating TV interview with a “terrorsm” expert in London, England. I was not fascinated by the speaker, but by the scene forming the backdrop, a snow covered London! I have lived in London so am aware that the snowy scenes of “A Christmas Carol” are about as far removed in history as the story itself. Truth be known, it rarely snows in London, even though it is further north than Gander, New Foundland.

Of course London did not look as bad as the scenes we have had this week from the “New American MidWest” - Tennessee, Kentucky, Georgia, Alabama. Needless to add the folks further “up north” are suffering from more brutal conditions. Even here in Florida we are being hard hit by freezing temeperatures, at least in the northern part of the state, and investors are buying orange juice futures as fast as they can. I have a reliable report that a gator in a nearby everglades lake was seen wearing a scarf.

Am I surprised? Well, no. As I have been saying repeatedly the earth is bascially a cold place and I welcome global warming with open arms. In my book it can’t come fast enough. Of course that will probably guarantee that scenes of a snow covered London will be even more rare, if ever seen again.

President Obama had to leave the UN conference on global warming early because a major snowfall threatened to close airports on the US east coast. As it turned out he was not able to use his customary helicopter to fly from Andrews Air Field to the White House, but did the trip by car. Is there any wonder that there remains a healthy skepticism about the dangers of “global warming?” Of course the global warming warriors will no doubt attribute the major snow storm to rising temperatures. But then we now know that they are given to reworking the data to achieve the resutls they need.

A comment made the other day by someone speaking about global warming was for me an epiphany. The comment, “we humans are essentially carbon compositions.” How enlightening, here we are locked in battle to reduce carbon emissions, specifically carbon dioxide emissions, and the human body is 18% carbon with most of the rest being water. Even more revealing, we exhale carbon dioxide, so by the mere act of breathing we contribute to “green house gas” emissions. When one considers how basic carbon is to life on this planet, one begins to wonder why the furor about simply adding to the pool.

And what is the evil unleashed by adding more of this most natural element to the world, warmth. Yes we are worried about getting too warm. Funny, much of the last 10,000 years of human history was spent trying to get warm - we invented fire, buildings, clothes and other such means to keep ourselves from freezing to death.

And why is warmth an evil, because it is causing changes in our environment. So the actual evil is not warmth, but change. But the only constant in this world is change, so we are fighting against the very nature of life. And we will not prevail, change is inevitable. Even the most ardent global warming warrior says the best we can expect to accomplish with reducing green house gases is to slow down global warming, not stop it.

I for one welcome global warming. As I have always said, the earth is bascially a cold place. Far more people die of cold than die of heat. It is the reason people flock to Florida where I live. It is also the reason they flock to Mallorca for sun where I have another home.

I smile when I hear the doomsday scenarios drawn by the global warming crowd. Living at 18 inches above high tide on an island surrounded by the sea I should be one of the most concerned, but I know that it will take at least a century or two at the present break neck pace of global warming to bring the waves to my door. Another fearsome prospect directly aimed at me is more hurricaines. Well, after having lost parts of two houses and a car to hurricaines, I have learned how to adapt to their threat.

Which brings me to my constant comment about global warming, instead of wasting time trying to stop the inevitable, i.e. the earth is getting warmer, let us spend our energies figuring out how to adapt to the new conditions. Mankind has learned how to adapt to a host of changing situations. Increased warmth should not be too much of a problem.

In the meantime, I guess I better go out and check the depth of the sea in front of the house.

The front page of the local rag told the whole story of Florida in one small post. It showed yesterday’s temperatures and snowfall for several midwest cities - Des Moines, minus 7 degrees and 16 inches of snow, Madison, 2 degrees and 19 inches, Minneapolis, minus 10 and 6 inches, Chicago, 9 degrees and 2 inches. The paper compared this to the 80 degrees and bright sunshine in Ft Myers yesterday.

Most of those reading this page under the glorious sun here are from those places covered by snow and suffering from bone-chilling cold. They come here to escape the misery. Now do you understand why I welcome global warming? I am tired of the “snow birds” clogging the highways and byways and making it hard to get a dinner reservation. Take the sun to them and let them stay in the comfort of their northern home.

I sent a letter to a local newspaper on a local topic, allowing drilling for oil and gas in offshore Florida. However, it also speaks to the general situation so here it is.

Dear Editor

The present debate about drilling for oil and gas off the Florida shore urges me to add my voice to the debate. In the wake of the energy crisis of the early 1970s caused by oil exporting countries cutting back sharply on supply, then President Carter launched a plethora of programs to stimulate development of alternative energy. There was plenty of Fed funds for the followers of the Gods Helios and Aeolis. And we saw a host of new ideas.

Today only one of the new energies developed then is still in wide scale use, harnessing methane gas on pig farms to provide energy for the farm. I fear that the same will occur in today’s situation, tons of money for alternative energy to wind up as a pile of “animal waste”

The underlying problem facing development of alternative energy is the fact that, while a barrel of oil from Saudi Arabia costs about $75, the actual cost of producing it is about $2. No matter how cheaply you make alternative energy it must always face the fact that it may have to compete with oil at a price of $2 a barrel.