Another Modest Proposal

I see a fair number of these lumps of dirty ice and snow scattered among the parking lots of our fair city's shopping centers. We've not had any snow for awhile, and the temperatures have generally been above freezing. This observation sets off some reverberations in my temporal lobes giving rise to childhood memories of old men with noses dripping in the winter cutting ice on Lake Sinnissippi. They stored this ice in dark places with sawdust covered by canvas for delivery in the summertime to the few old and poor folks who still had iceboxes rather than the new-fangled refrigerators. I remember asking my grandfather how this could be done because southern Wisconsin summers were fairly warm.

I don't remember his explanation but those thoughts quickly lead to a modest proposal directed toward our environmental whacko friends: if you are worried about polar bears drowning because of ice melting why not encourage dirtying up of the surfaces, say from drilling for oil or some other industrial activity? Would the polar bears object? They would probably adapt as quickly as they are adapting to the ice melting.