Global Warming Does It Again!!!

You're sitting in your chair, reading the news, minding your own business, not thinking about hockey sticks or houseboats or Al Gore when, wham! -- global warming hits you between the eyes and stings like a bee.

I was reading an article about Asian hornets terrorizing the French. I had mis-read the title, thought it said Asian tourists terrorizing the French, and had this funny image of Japanese tourists in sun hats whacking the French with their Burberry umbrellas.

OK, so it wasn't Japanese tourists, it was Asian Hornets, and, no, Asian Hornets is not the name of a Japanese basketball team.

Anyway, once I got into the meat of the argument I expected the usual came-over-in-a-shipment-of-Asian-pears kind of story-line, no-natural-predators, etc. and, sure enough: "thought to have arrived in France from the Far East in a consignment of Chinese pottery... rapid growth due to "lack of indigenous predators".

My guard was down. Hadn't even had my first coffee of the morning, then this:

"They first settled in the forests of Aquitaine, but quickly fanned out to surrounding areas, thriving on rising temperatures linked to global warming..."

Whack. Global warming strikes again. Like darwinism, it is becoming UE4E -- the ubiquitous explanation for everything inserted into every storyline.

But, in this case there may be something to it. Prior to global warming, the forests of Aquitaine were a sub-Arctic wasteland and the summer frosts would have quickly killed off these sun-loving predators. But, no longer. Now, in the steamy sub-tropical country formerly-know-as-France, menacing Asian hornets thrive.

Sheep are shrinking, Asian hornets are menacing. The only thing that remains pretty much the same are honking big houseboats.

Oh, and one more thing before I go and do something useful -- the article also had this: "Beekeepers suspect that the creatures are also massacring other indigenous insect species."

First it was global warming and the "mortality rates" of trees. Now it's insects massacring other insects. It appears the humanization of nature has begun.

Can accusations of insect genocide be far behind? International World Governance Insect Tribunals, maybe?

And that's the way the stings-like-a-bee Ball bounces.