As goes GM so goes...the opossums?

I was quite disturbed and saddened yesterday to read that because of their probable bankruptcy, GM was considering moving out of Detroit, Michigan.

After all the money that I, my children, my grandchildren, my great grandchildren, my.. well you know what I mean. After all the money that taxpayers have invested in GM over the past few months I thought the least they could do is stay put.

But another article I came across shortly after has led me to believe that perhaps GM's departure has little to do with money at all. It is in fact about...you guessed it climate change.

Yes global warming may in fact be the culprit and I do not mean government CAFE standards either, actual Global Warming. As you can see from this article from the science blog site, GM will probably be relocating to Saskatton or points north.

Climate change driving Michigan mammals north

It is quite an article actually just chock full of details you would not suspect, a true nail biter of how intrepid researchers have determined that despite growing human population and most amazing of all increasing forest land. Yes I said that increasing forests -

"Clearly there's a lot more forest now than in the late 1800s and early 1900s, when logging and fires almost completely destroyed the forests of the northern Great Lakes region," Myers said. "But that doesn't work as an explanation for the patterns we see, because the species that are moving in and becoming more common are actually ones that do very well when forests are cut over."

No as you can clearly see other factors such as forest growth could not be responsible for rodent migration northwards,it must be climate change, GLOBAL WARMING. And here is how our well funded researchers determined this.

That leaves warming climate as the likely cause. But has such warming actually occurred in Michigan? To investigate, the researchers downloaded maximum and minimum daily temperatures from the National Climate Data Center for 16 weather stations in the Upper Peninsula, where changes in the small forest rodent community have been especially pronounced. They then calculated monthly averages for minimum and maximum daily temperatures for each year between 1970 and 2007 for each station and for the region as a whole.


Across all 16 sites, average annual minimum daily temperatures increased significantly over the 37-year period. Average annual maximum daily temperatures also rose, although not as dramatically.

I thought MY GOD Michigan must be cooking to drive both a once giant automaker and opossums from its lands. So I went to Google the source of all things good and holy and here is what I found




source The Midwestern Regional Climate Center (MRCC)

An amazing source for all kinds of details on climate in the Mid West. There are several items that jumped out at me when I looked at this map.

Why does it take so long for NOAA to adjust .... I mean update their records? Boy I can't wait until the Federal Government has all our medical records in their data banks-how about you?

Why given so many years of record keeping, the best in the world we are told, are the trends in so many adjoining states so different? I mean we are talking about trends here not actual temperatures. One would suspect that if the entire globe responds to carbon dioxide induced GLOBAL WARMING the same way, then adjoining states in the old US would at least have similar trends, as small as they appear to be.

How is it that climate change can be blamed for northern migration of mammals in a state that has cooled in the past century plus? Based on this Official Map, if you are worried about GLOBAL WARMING, you and the opossums ought to be moving to Michigan instead of away from it.

Why are the executives at GM making corporate policy based upon the migratory patterns of "possums" instead of building cars Americans want like SUVs uh I mean hydrogen, uh I mean electric cars.

Just goes to show what (funding) cherry picking uh analyzing data out of 16 weather stations out of hundreds in a state can get you.
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