Tag: Climate Change

  • Hey! Snow! Which Doesn’t Happen Anymore!

    Up where I live in Harlem, we got little over an inch of snow overnight and this morning. Besides the fact that snow is fun, the other big story with the snow is that this storm snapped the 701-day streak of New York City not receiving at least an inch of snow. Seriously, we have nearly gone two years without any real snow in New York. You know, because the climate is changing.

    It’s funny how in my twenty years in New York, I have witnessed the climate of this place turned on it’s head. Maybe not “funny,” but like “ironic-sad?” No, that’s not correct either. More like, “Depressing-Tears-of-a-Clown” kind’a funny. There we go; that’s accurate.

    When I moved up here, there was snow in November. That first winter, it sleeted on Valentine’s Day, and was so cold that the sleet froze and iced the City for five days. We’d get snow like rain showers, and added on top of that, at least two blizzards a season. And it would be cold enough that snow/ice wouldn’t melt for weeks. That feels like a million years ago, and fairy tale of Winters-Gone-By.

    It’s also true when it comes to Spring and Fall. May used to be an amazing month in the City. It would only get up to 70 at the warmest, nothing below the 50’s at night, and each day of the month it would incrementally get warmer. Everything would start blooming, grass came back to life, and the skies would be just the bluest. September was equally amazing; just like May but in reverse. A slow slide into Fall – You would start the month in shorts and end in a sweater. Now, May and September are bi-polar, raging between too hot and too cold. The gradualness of these months are gone.

    Sure, you could dismiss me as the old guy yelling at a cloud, but the weather facts back me up. It’s warmer and the inclement weather is more erratic. The world is changing, and I at least have enough faith that humanity will be able to adapt, but I’m not so sure on solving this problem. I fear we may never go back to the way it was.

    Ung…

    This went a little darker than I wanted.

    Look I wanted to end with the idea that most likely, I’m going to go sledding with the kid after school, because snow is still fun. Especially to kids and middle-aged men who grew up in Texas and never had any winter weather to play in.

  • ODDS and ENDS: The New Summer, NYC Summer Smell, and Hungry All the Time

    (Clever One-Liner!)

    It’s hot. And not only that, its steamy, too. Not the good, Faulkner Southern Gothic steamy, but the awful humidity life sucks steamy. I’m not a big fan of Summer, and I am even a smaller fan of heat, but when it comes to Summer heat – I hate it. I grew up in Texas, and about my junior year in high school, I had enough. I was going to live up north. I’d rather freeze in Winter than melt in Summer. I had no idea how hot and steamy NYC gets in Summer. Honestly, someone should be out there telling tourists and perspective residents how bad July and August can be in The City. Sure, if you have a half a brain, you’d notice that NYC sits on a bay and well… you know… humidity follows. The thing is that now, just about the whole country, if not the world, lives in this awful extreme heat and humidity now. And it’s not going away, or getting fixed for a very, very long time. Its rather depressing that this is the world that my kid, and yours, is about to inherit – weather that is unbearable to live in. I still hold out hope that we can fix this, but if we can’t… People are going to start moving north and Canada could start having immigration issues from all of these illegal Americans.

    Say, did you know that New York City’s Official Summer Smell used to be wet garbage on a sidewalk. Well, not anymore! NYC’s new Official Summer Smell is Pot Smoke! You can’t go ten feet in this town without being hit by the smell of weed this Summer. Hey, I’m for legalization, but holy crap! It’s like the entire City is getting high. Right Now!

    I don’t know what’s going on with me, but for the past three days, I have been hungry all the time. When I say that, I don’t mean that I feel the urge to have a snack. I mean that I feel like I have been working all day and that I am starving for lunch or dinner. And no matter how much I eat; I never feel satisfied. Back in college, me and my roommate used to call this phenomena “Ravenous Days.” I don’t know what causes it, and eating doesn’t seem to solve it.

  • ODDS and ENDS: Elon’s Twitter Deal, Pickled Out, and Brett and Climate Change

    (I see dead tweets ahead…)

    Elon Musk bought Twitter, and we all can’t stop talking about it. Maybe he’ll reinvent it and it will become the town square where ideas are freely exchanged. I doubt it. Social platforms, and the internet as a whole, is a place for people to create their new fictive personas. In most cases, people want to stay anonymous, which leads people saying things they never would in real life. You cannot slay people’s id, especially when you have given it a platform to flourish like the weed it is. No, I feel like Elon wants a bit of attention from us, and he’s getting it. The way I see it, the tech wunderkinds are starting to over play their hands. Zuck and his Metaverse is a vanity project of epic proportions. Apple is just rolling out new models and hasn’t “innovated” anything in years. And little Elon just bought something, that he hopes goes up in value, and then he’ll unload it. At the end of the day, this is all about making money. They are just big corporations now, doing what big corporations do; new boss, same as the old boss.

    Give it a rest with all the Pickleball news stories, already. It’s the Amway of sports; Its cool that you’re into it, but I don’t want to hear about it.

    Hey! Brett Stephens has come around to understand climate change is real! But he’s still Brett Stephens and thinks the market will solve the problem, and we shouldn’t rush into making any changes too quickly. I love how conservatives continue to believe that the profit motive leads to good, altruistic, moral decisions that benefit all. (Does no one else find it odd that out of the Seven Deadly Sins, Greed is the only one that leads to salvation according to capitalists?) If the market has a choice of solving a problem or making money, it will always choose making money. (DuPont is my prime example of that.) I am glad that he has come around, and he is a conservative that is willing to come to the table to find solutions; that is a big step forward that I wish more people would make.

    (It’s the end of the week, and what better way to celebrate than by sharing a nice, well-earned like, comment, or even following this blog! Sure, the joke I was going for doesn’t really land, but in Old Milwaukee, it doesn’t get any better than this! And, if you share this blog, that would help too. Thanks.)

  • Thinking of Autumn and Climate Change

    I put pants on today. Since the last week in June until yesterday, I have been in shorts. It is Summer after all, so that should not come as a shock to anyone. But the fact that I put on a pair of khaki pants, and it is a little humid today so it might not have been the wisest decision, to me marks the start of Fall. That’s right, I am calling it: Today starts the slow and steady decent into the Autumn Season.

    Not too long ago, I made the declaration that I am over Summer. The heat, humidity, and the constant A/C being on, wore me down. I was, and still am, ready for the seasons to change. Today, I took an active step in acclimating myself to this coming Autumn.

    Yet, I don’t think any of us have been able to escape the constant and unrelenting news reports that this Summer was the hottest, and depending on where you lived, either the driest or wettest on record. Once in a 1,000-year droughts, or once in 1,000-year floods keep happening. The heat will only get worse. Meaning that Summers will get longer, making the other seasons shorter. Even talking to my father this weekend, and he isn’t the biggest believer of climate change, he has started to express worry and concern for the future.

    There are many things that I dislike about humanity, and sadly, I think most people are like my father. They didn’t believe climate change would happen, until it happened. I remember being in grade school, so that is the mid-80’s, and every school year we had an Earth Week, where we were taught about cleaning up and throwing away garbage, being respectful of nature, because if the planet started falling apart due to how we treated it, then we are all screwed. And I grew up in Texas, so I know I got the most conservative version of that message.

    Now at least, it seems like everyone is coming around to the truth. That at least makes me hopeful for the future, and for my daughter’s generation. I know two things to be true. One is that humans are great at adapting and overcoming life threating problems. We’ve been doing it for 100,000 years. The second goes back to what I said before, people only believe in something if they experience it first-hand. To me, that’s says that humanity is primed to solve this problem.

    I’m trying to stay optimistic, and keep the faith in all of us working together. I sure hope that’s not misplaced. In the meantime, I will start to think about taking the sweaters out of winter storage.

    (And on that happy note, If you like what you read, be a champ and give a like, or a share, or hell, even leave a comment. Does a body good!)