Then we have El Ninos and La Ninas coming at us back-to-back.

News sources and the weather people seem to be downplaying all of this, but it is my opinion that the weather is acting very peculiar. I suggest that the odd weather is directly linked to global warming, which in turn, is a product of our own foolishness. Nature is so out of control I wonder if we will ever see an old-fashioned normal weather year again.

You can easily find the effects of environmental disorder on the world around us. There are deformed frogs in our ponds, turtles are dying from strange tumors, birds are blinded from cataracts and losing their way, various species of butterfly have all but disappeared, and whether you want to believe this or not, the sun is now parboiling us all alive. Anybody who spends more than a few moments a day in direct sunlight is in danger of developing skin cancer.

Here are some recent environmental news reports you may have missed:

--Scientists at the University of Florida in West Palm Beach are trying to find out what caused crusty brown tumors to appear on the bodies of hundreds of squirrels in eight Florida counties. The problem is considered an epidemic.

--A recent government report states that much of the nation's ground water (which we drink) and many of its streams are contaminated with pesticides and unhealthy levels of fertilizer chemicals. Even traces of DDT, which was banned in 1972, are still found in the water.

--A thick brown cloud of pollution the size of the United States has formed over the Indian Ocean. The cloud, a mixture of pollutants from vehicle and industrial emissions, is cutting the amount of sunlight reaching the water. Scientists fear it will affect the region's climate and marine life.

--A recent study of the air at Cheeka Peak Observatory in Washington state detected chemicals from factories in Asia. The study measured carbon monoxide, radon, aerosols, hydrocarbons and other chemicals drifting across the Pacific Ocean.

--Haifa's Ne'eman Institute of Israel recently issued a 150-page report in which it warned that the country's environment is "teetering on the edge of collapse," a Reuters News story said. The report said the country's aquifer systems suffer from almost irreversible salination, rampant construction is encroaching on open areas and air quality has become so bad that one in 10 Israeli children now suffers from asthma.

--A number of recent scientific studies of threatened disappearances of both land and sea animals, plus plants, have suggested that the entire world may be on the brink of mass extinction. People who study fossil records say there is evidence that at least five events have occurred in the past 500 million years that caused mass extinction of life. Each event was followed by rebirth.

Everywhere we look, the signs are clear. If we don't do something drastic and darned soon, this planet may become uninhabitable. In the future, if any of us are still alive, we could be living like mole people, deep underground.

What happened you ask? Here are some of the things we did to create this looming disaster:

We copulated ourselves into an overpopulated world and we are now starting to fight one another over the few remaining natural resources. We are cutting down our last standing forests to make room for more housing units and find land to grow more food. We have allowed big business interests to rape the Earth and spew industrial waste into our lakes, streams, air and ground.

We can't blame the other guy for this folly. We all drive gasoline-fueled cars and trucks that cough toxic emissions into an already brown sky. And when we turn on that toaster and coffee maker each morning, and then sit in air-conditioned homes in front of our televisions to watch the morning news, we are using electrical energy produced from a coal fired generating plant, which also is spitting out toxic waste.

You may not be conscious of this, but almost everything we do is harmful to the Mother Earth. We work for big business, which pays little heed to protecting the environment. Business today is in tight competition and strives to get the most profit from the least amount of cost. Conservation of the planet is costly, and consequently, is avoided whenever possible. Everything we buy with the money we earn is packaged in plastic, paper or cardboard, which, in turn, creates waste to be disposed of. We either burn it, thus sending more toxic fumes into the air, or take it to a landfill where it smolders, the gasses from the landfill rising through pipes in the ground.

Have you noticed how brown the air has become? Even in the unpopulated desert areas of the southwest, you can see the brown haze hanging low over the earth. When you drive out of the mountains and descend into cities like Phoenix, Los Angeles or Albuquerque, you can see the foul layers of polluted air rising around you. The noxious smell of it makes your eyes water, your nose smart, and it is not long before you begin coughing as it makes its way into your lungs. People living there become used to the stench, but their bodies react. Emphysema, a deadly disease of the lungs, is on the rise. So is asthma.

I have seen television news reports about air pollution problems that are so bad in places like Hong Kong and Singapore that people drive with their headlights on in the daytime. The report also said people sometimes wear medical masks when out of doors in an effort to filter the toxic waste particles.

The Earth changes are so dramatic that the polar ice caps are melting, sea levels are rising, and big cities like New York, Miami and San Francisco are in danger of being permanently flooded.

The summer heat waves are not just hitting the United States. People all around the globe are suffering from it. Forest fires, created by draught conditions, are raging across Russia. Former Russian Premier Boris Yeltsin was forced to flee his country home and retreat to Moscow because of smoke from a nearby forest fire.

It is a serious, life-threatening situation, yet our nightly television news anchormen and women rarely pay much heed. Oh, Dan Rather has his nightly weather watch, but he rarely spends more than three minutes telling us about some new phenomenon going on in the world. And neither Rather, nor anyone else ever tries to explain why it is happening.

What is even more serious is that we also are getting "feel good" stories like the success we had in our efforts to save the bald eagle from extinction. I thought it appropriate when former President Clinton posed alongside an eagle to make this announcement, that the eagle bit him in the arm. They didn't show that on the U. S. news shows. The foreign correspondents, however, gave it lots of play.

I have been confounded by the ongoing debate among the so-called "experts" over whether there really is a serious air pollution problem and whether it is really causing global warming. How can anybody with any brains think otherwise? Just look at the sky and ask yourself if it is really supposed to be brown. When I was a kid, the sky was always blue.

Former Vice President Al Gore seemed to be among the few high government officials taking all of this seriously. At about the time of the great debate over global warming in Japan in 1997, Gore was quoted as asking: "what is it going to take?" He was referring to an event so catastrophic that everybody understands that this planet is turning ugly.

The weather events of 1999 and 2000 should have caused a few people sit up and take notice. Can anybody remember a tornado the size of the monster that ripped its way through Oklahoma City? How about the straight line wind storm that flattened an entire forest in northern Minnesota during the July 4 holiday weekend in 1999? They said the winds were clocked at about 100 miles an hour, but I wager they had to be stronger than that to knock down an entire forest.

Here is another ominous note. The heating of the Earth has been blamed on a buildup of "greenhouse gasses" from the burning of carbon fuels and other chemical emissions. But that may be only a part of the problem.

We also are entering something called Solar Cycle 23, a period when the sun is more active than usual. The sun is literally exploding and sending out dangerous rays of harmful radiation, while at the same time, burning hotter. This, coupled with a shift in solar wind patterns, has been shown to have a direct effect on changes in the Earth's weather patterns. That we have carelessly punched holes in our protective ozone layer means that all creatures living on this planet have little or no protection from the X-ray flares battering us each day.

Quite recently, some intense solar explosions sent heat flares to the Earth that were strong enough to damage crops and singe the tips of trees. No report yet on what effect the flares had on humans who were caught out of doors. These flares struck Russia, while this side of the world was turned away from the sun, so we escaped the damage. At least this time.

It is going to be inevitable that the Earth is going to be a much hotter environment for the next few years. The changes may even be permanent.

Heed this warning. More flares are coming. And they probably will be worse than what we have already experienced. A recent Associated Press story noted that astronomers claim the sun "will enter the most violent and disruptive phase of its 11-year cycle" in January, at about the same time the Y2K bug is expected to hit.

Consequently, there are grave concerns over what these massive bursts of energy from the sun will do to the complex electrical systems that control our factories, satellites, cellular telephones, home and office computers.

During the months ahead, the solar flares and x-ray transmissions may trigger power blackouts, interrupt radio and television communications, and even create phantom commands capable of sending satellites spinning out of their proper orbits, the scientists warn.

If officialdom is telling us this much, what are they not telling us?