Monday, May 30, 2011

The Glacial Retreat Watchers Consortium

The Glacial Retreat Watchers Consortium (GRWC) was founded decades ago to promote and encourage competitive glacial retreat observation. The members meet regularly to form observant teams and compete on observed global glacial retreat.

The scoring system is usually in reverse (less is more) as glaciers are retreating and not advancing at this time. Likewise for the competition.

Most in the GRWC were very good at glacial retreat watching which was a good thing, and they wanted to ensure many more benefited. So they spread the word about the fun they were having and got several new young members to join. They all showed up in glazed eyed enthusiasm. Many did.

The young newbies were amazed at the quality of observed retreating knowledge and wanted in on all of it. So they competed at these GRWC meets and lost spectacularly, but everyone has to start someplace and stay there forever, right?

They were very impressed with the Messis, the C.Ronaldos, the Rooneys, the Tevezes, the Kobes, the LeBrons.... and their Record setting exploits. They saw them teaming up and winning Regional Glacials, and the National Furtwängler and Siachen Cups,and some high end competition in between.

So they wondered if they too could join these teams, as the GRWC was meant to promote and encourage glacial observation in retreat. Surely they could be the third observer?

They made calls and sent emails to the Kobes and Messis, weeks ahead of the star contests. They got:
  1. No response over 5 weeks
  2. 'Nope, am observing with someone else'
  3. 'I always observe G-lent with ____'
  4. 'You're not very observant. Deals struck in the last mini ice age'
  5. ('I'm waiting to see if Berbatov is available')
Or 0.5 days before the Open Glacials, when already teamed, they'd get from a suddenly single and until recently evasive Kobe:

'Hey, are you teamed?'

All of this happened several times.

In the locker room/dugout/showers -
'I don't wanna observe glacial retreat with that newbie. S/he's such a moraine!'
'Can't win with these moraines in our team'
'S/he's weak on catching isostatic rebound'
'Bergshrund! What a wannabe observ'ho'
'Btw, WYGW next year?

Now at the regular GRWC open observation meets -
'Hey, how come only we the same teams again at the observation deck?'
'Hey hey, why only 11 people watching the watchers compete? There were 18 before'
'Btw, HMYW?'
'And WYGW?'

Optimistic and naive newbie tries again. Calls and emails to the C.Ronaldos and LeBrons, months ahead of the big contests.

Zip.
No encouraging signs, nor any promotional.

Now again at the regular and inclusive GRWC open observation meets -
'Hey hey hey how come only we the same same teams observing G-lent again?'
'Hey hey hey why only 3.5 people watching us the watchers compete? There were 11 last time'
'What's the glacial watch cutoff?'
'Anyways, who/what do we joke about?'

'And hey, where the heck are those moraines?'

Along with the glaciers, something else was retreating. At a faster pace than climate change.

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