Let me say upfront that I am happy the Rotary Club raised $850,000 and the Spokane Park Board kicked in the rest for the $1.4 million fountain at Riverfront Park. The stainless steel structure is a striking addition to downtown. Great job all around … except for one thing: Too much water.

Don’t get me wrong; the fountain’s a marvel. Harold Balazs, its designer, said: “It is really a splendid thing to see. It is like watching waves crash on rocks at the beach.”

I agree. And that’s the problem. Who actually gets in the way of such waves?

I realize the high volume of water gushing upward better achieves the artistic goal of making the fountain look like a dome, but what goes up must come down. As a shivering 8-year-old who tested it last summer told The Spokesman-Review, “I ran through it and got pretty much cold.” That’s pretty much all you can do as the torrents pound down from about 30 feet.

I think it would be more fun and more enticing if the fountain sprayed rather than pummeled. As it is, there are two options: drench or dry. Would it compromise the art too much to provide a third option: refresh?

Roll on, Spokane! Or not. Don’t you just hate it when some corporate public relations firm dreams up a list and the media devour it.

Me, too. So I shouldn’t bother you with this. But I will.

I couldn’t help but notice that a list of the nation’s Sweatiest Cities put together by a deodorant maker has these three towns at the top of the list: Phoenix, Tucson and Las Vegas. Lucky me, I’ve lived in all three.

Folks in those frying pans are known to invade places like San Diego for relief. San Diego is 69th on the sweat list, just behind … Spokane! Perhaps the city should start a marketing campaign to lure sweaty Southwesterners for the summer: Near Nature. Near Perfect Weather.

Welcome to the hot seat. Bill Dameworth is probably a very busy man, what with his new job as Spokane County’s air quality control director. Between being chosen in private “by consensus” and then standing for a pesky vote in public view, he might not have had time to check the latest news on global warming.

Dameworth is skeptical on whether pollution contributes to global warming, which is an odd position for an environmental manager, unless he’s employed by an industry. Dameworth has worked for timber companies.

Anyway, the National Academy of Sciences reported to Congress on Thursday that the Earth is at its warmest point in 400 years. The panel of top climate scientists also noted that “human activities are responsible for much of the recent warming.”

While there isn’t unanimity among scientists, there is a consensus (that word again). And remember, the government didn’t wait for unanimity among scientists before branding tobacco as a cancer-causing agent.