Yesterday, March 7, was quite warm for this time of year in Indiana. I wore a t-shirt outside part of the afternoon. The wind was brisk, but the sky was clear.

   The weather of one day, taken alone, is not indicative of world climate change. The weather of one year, taken by itself, is not indicative of world climate change.

   "Climate change" is short-hand, today, for the discussion about whether humans have caused, principally through their of fossil fuels, significant changes in the environment such that world-wide our climate has changed. Fossil fuels—petroleum products, natural gas, coal—are called "fossil" because they are derived from the decayed remains of animals (a lot of dinosaurs) that walked the Earth a long time ago. One element necessary for life is carbon. Carbon is released into the environment when fossil fuels are used.

   A basic tenet of climate change theory is that the release of carbon into the environment creates a situation whereby carbon traps heat in our atmosphere.

   Since the early 1970s, a major policy push has been to (1) reduce pollution and (2) reduce reliance on foreign oil. Petroleum is used, not only as fuel for our system of transportation, but also to manufacture a wide range of products, such as plastics. OPEC’s reduction in supply of oil to the world in the early 1970s made a lot of Americans aware of how vulnerable we can be when so much of what we do relies upon oil.

   Even if one does not agree with global climate change as a theory—"theory" as used in the context of science: "a coherent group of general propositions used as principles of explanation for a class of phenomena" American College Dictionary, 1962 ed.—trying to reduce our use of fossil fuels should be favored. First, oil, coal, and natural gas are finite. One day there will be no more. Second, exploration, drilling and mining for, and use of, fossil fuels cause pollution; think of the BP disaster in the Gulf of Mexico and the Exxon Valdez a few years before that.

   One alternative to fossil fuels is wind. If you have driven up I-65 to Chicago (my vote for top-ten most boring sceneries in the United States) you have driven several miles past wind farms. One would think those farms supply cheap power to the area in which they are located, but—no. That energy is sold on the market to other power companies.

   If energy is harnessed here, why should it be sold to people in another state? The owners of the windmills own licenses to do that. Their marketing of the energy is legal. A lot of Indiana electricity still comes from the burning of coal, though. Even low-sulfur coal causes air pollution.

   And realize that in the next few years, electric cars probably will be much cheaper to purchase. If electricity is cheap and clean from windmills, people could juice up their cars overnight. Demand for one fossil fuel—oil—would be significantly reduced.

   Join us on Saturday, March 10, at 11 a.m. at Big Hat Books, 6510 Cornell Avenue, in Broad Ripple. Paul Ogden and I are co-hosts. Our guests will be Jeff Cox and a person whom I am trying to locate. We will discuss human-made climate change.