Ernest Hemingway’s short story, “The End of Something,” is among his lesser works, and serves mainly as a reflection of the stories he told himself. Those stories were an effort to convince himself that he was a man’s man. He never had a broken heart. He was the one who broke other people’s hearts, people like Marjorie, the victim in “The End of Something.”
The story was set in the town of Horton Bay, part of Hemingway’s youthful stomping grounds in Northern Michigan. Horton Bay is located on the shore of Lake Charlevoix, not far from Lake Michigan. When Hemingway wrote the story, Lake Michigan’s water level was far below its historic average. This was nothing unusual as water levels on the Great Lakes consistently fluctuate between high and low points. According to Craig Stow, a scientist with National Oceanic and Atmosphere Administration’s (NOAA) Great Lakes Environmental Research Laboratory in Ann Arbor, MI, “Records extending to the mid-1800's document a series of larger rises and dips at roughly 30-year intervals.”
When lake levels fall, it has a negative impact on shipping and recreational boating. When they rise, it can cause property damage and shore erosion. Until recently, lake level fluctuations didn’t herald environmental cataclysm. Lake levels rose and fell due to factors like rainfall, snowfall, and temperature variations. Only the last dip was seen as proof that global warming was out of control.
Global warming evangelists do their religion a grave disservice by ascribing climate change as the cause of every naturally occurring variation, because rational observers then suggest that logically, when that variation ends, it must mean global warming has also come to an end. You may recall that some claimed global warming caused Katrina, and self-proclaimed experts such as Robert Kennedy Jr. predicted an unending string of disastrous hurricanes. The following year, there were virtually no hurricanes of any magnitude. Capitalizing on Katrina’s destructive force was self-defeating. It served only to make a mockery of people like Kennedy’s self-aggrandizement.
So too is the case with Great Lakes levels. NOAA announced last weekend that Great Lakes water levels were rising. Lakes St. Clair, Erie and Ontario are already above their historic averages. So what does this mean? Has global warming ended? Are we entering a period of global cooling? Are we facing a new Ice Age? If so, it will be the first time since the late 1980's that the world has faced this menace.
That global warming exists is indisputable. Twenty thousand years ago glaciers extended as far south as the Ohio River Valley. They have been retreating ever since. By definition then, the planet has been warming for 20,000 years. No doubt it will continue to warm until it finally starts to cool again. Conservative environmentalists (yes, they do exist) have much more respect for the planet and its systems than do liberal environmentalists. Conservative environmentalists concede that man can and does have a negative impact on the planet, and advocate practices and behaviors which minimize that impact.
On the other hand, leftist environmentalists have no respect for the planet whatsoever. They have a vast and arrogantly inflated conception of their own power. To them humans are a terrible menace, and the planet is as weak, timorous, and pitiable as, oh, American soldiers. It’s surprising that leftist environmentalists haven’t yet plastered their Priuses with bumper stickers crying “Support our Environment. Bring it Home.”