Nice weather, global warming, and a cute little Szechuan bharal

By Michael J.W. Stickings

It was a beautiful, sunny, Spring-like day here in the Toronto area, and I spent much of it east of the city, past Oshawa, enjoying not being anywhere near the city, out in the lovely small towns along Lake Ontario.

(As an aside, albeit a relevant one, global warming deniers are quick to jump on freakish winter weather as proof, in their little minds, that there's no such thing as global warming, as they did during the recent massive snowstorms that slammed the northeastern U.S., but they tend to go silent when the reverse happens, namely, when the weather is uncommonly warm, as it was today. Indeed, it's been overall a relatively mild winter here in southern Ontario. Of course, weather is not climate, and global warming is actually consistent with freakish winter storms. I won't go so far as to suggest that the warmer weather is proof on its own that global warming is a reality -- we have more than enough evidence that it is, and that human activity is behind most of it -- but it is curious (is it not?) that generally warmer weather seems to parallel rising global temperatures. Arctic ice is melting, glaciers are receding, animal migratory patterns are shifting, and, on March 6, 2010, still winter, it's a lovely day, requiring only a sweater, in what is usually a rather chilly part of the world this time of the year. Make of that what you will.)

Well, I'm not in the mood to comment on anything political at the moment, that parenthetical aside aside, and so I will content myself now with posting a lovely photo of a 22-day old female Szechuan bharal, or Chinese blue sheep, at Kanazawa Zoo in Yokohama, Japan. I found it at The Globe and Mail, where it was one of the "Best from March 5" photos. Funny enough, as I later discovered, it was also featured in yesterday's "Day in pictures" at the BBC. And, from what I can tell, it's been making its way around the Web. It seems a lot of people like it. And understandably so. Here it is: