There's a trail near the house (Timberidge Lodge in Sylva, NC) that leads to a nearby stream. We made the hike on Sunday afternoon, and the boys were especially excited for the occasion.

Below are some excerpts from an article of the same title by Robert Lee Hotz of the LA Times. Note the last two paragraphs...20 sudden large climate changes in the last 110,000 years. Though I'd rather be safe than sorry, I think this illustrates why some folks aren't so sure that the climate changes that we are experiencing are man-made:

The Greenland ice sheet — two miles thick and broad enough to blanket an area the size of Mexico — shapes the world's weather, matched in influence by only Antarctica in the Southern Hemisphere.

It glows like milky mother-of-pearl. The sheen of ice blends with drifts of cloud as if snowbanks are taking flight.

In its heartland, snow that fell a quarter of a million years ago is still preserved. Temperatures dip as low as 86 degrees below zero. Ground winds can top 200 mph. Along the ice edge, meltwater rivers thread into fraying brown ropes of glacial outwash, where migrating herds of caribou and musk ox graze.

The ice is so massive that its weight presses the bedrock of Greenland below sea level, so all-concealing that not until recently did scientists discover that Greenland actually might be three islands.

Should all of the ice sheet ever thaw, the meltwater could raise sea level 21 feet and swamp the world's coastal cities, home to a billion people. It would cause higher tides, generate more powerful storm surges and, by altering ocean currents, drastically disrupt the global climate.

Climate experts have started to worry that the ice cap is disappearing in ways that computer models had not predicted.

By all accounts, the glaciers of Greenland are melting twice as fast as they were five years ago, even as the ice sheets of Antarctica — the world's largest reservoir of fresh water — also are shrinking, researchers at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory and the University of Kansas reported in February…

From cores of ancient Greenland ice extracted by the National Science Foundation, researchers have identified at least 20 sudden climate changes in the last 110,000 years, in which average temperatures fluctuated as much as 15 degrees in a single decade.

The increasingly erratic behavior of the Greenland ice has scientists wondering whether the climate, after thousands of years of relative stability, may again start oscillating.

Here are side-by-side photos of my dad from 23 years ago and me from last week. I added a little blur and noise to my photo. He was 9 years older than I am now. He sees a strong resemblance.

The Moore family summer vacation was in the mountains of North Carolina this summer. We rented a house near Sylva, NC. Grandma and Grandpa Moore and Kathryn came from Winston-Salem. The Sullivans came from Nashville. Alice and Bill came from Connecticut. We made the drive down from Michigan. Mannings, Tysons, Wynnes, and Bells also visited us during the week.

From an article titled "News - Some churches replace services with service" by Tamie Ross in The Christian Chronicle:

Across the nation, some congregations are replacing traditional Sunday night or Wednesday night services with projects designed to serve their communities, the Chronicle found.

Steve Sandifer, pastoral care minister at the Southwest Central church in Houston, refers to Sundays as class time.

Wednesdays, he says, are lab.

"It's a time to put into practice what some of us have been learning for 20, 30, even 50 years," Sandifer said of Café Grace, which is "open for your spiritual refreshment" from 6:30 to 9 p.m. each Wednesday.

Immigrants come to the church not only to sip fresh cups of coffee, tea and lemonade, but also to study English as a second language — part of the congregation's effort to reach out to its community.

"Café Grace started as an experiment, but now is our answer to a mid-week slump," Sandifer said.

Looking to stem attendance declines blamed on work-weary commuters, tired young families and those otherwise crunched for time, many congregations are looking for ways to make Sunday and Wednesday nights more relevant.

Some say the solution is replacing services with service.