Glaciers Must be Watched

I was reading a news article today about how much the glaciers around the world have melted in the past year. The report was gathered by the World Glacier Monitoring Service (WGMS). This is a real organization; I’m not making it up.

Right under our noses, WGMS has been gathering and disseminating glacier news for almost 100 years. Where have we been for a century? What have we been doing while some guy named Brett has been staring at glaciers all day, writing down pertinent numbers and such? I don’t know for sure, I’m only guessing, but I see Brett having a thick, wiry beard and married to a lovely woman named Debbie.

But wait, there’s more.

The WGMS works closely with The United States National Snow and Ice Data Center and the Global Land Ice Measurements from Space initiative.

These are real things people!

Monty Python had the Ministry of Silly Walks and the Society of Putting Things on Top of Other Things, but they were products of fertile imaginations, and again I’m only guessing, mounds of colorful, dried opiates.

The organizations I read about actually exist. Grown men and women work for and draw paychecks from them. They have health insurance and company picnics. Brett and Debbie bring her world famous organic deviled eggs with pimento and avoid Darryl from level 3 who collects ceramic birch tree figurines.

It begs the question, “How many more of these clandestine, arcane organizations are there?” Are people being paid to watch formations of sedimentary rock to measure how many micrometers it moves in a year? Do we keep track of the domestic take of all Tom Hanks movies to compare it to the overseas numbers for Morgan Freeman, looking for a correlation that would explain the continued popularity of Alec Baldwin? Is someone watching the growth rate of the mold in my shower? Because I’m sure as hell not.

Watch yourself my loyal readers (Cathy, Steve, Woody, Sylvia, Bernard, Larry). I’m not positive, I’m only guessing, but I think Brett has friends in middle-of-the-road places and they’re watching. And recording. And collaborating. And disseminating.