The Witness Chronicles, March 5, 2024

Climate stuff

Photo by second sight on Unsplash

Is Anyone Paying Attention to How Weird the Weather Is?

Seriously folks, in Western NY we have broken 14 high temp records this winter

Right now it is eleven o’clock at night on March 4th, 2024 and it is 64 degrees out. That’s about forty degrees above average. If this was one night, it would be an anomaly, but it has been going on for months. We hit 73 today and sunny, breaking a record by 4 degrees.

To be honest, no one around here, except ski people, is complaining. Short and t-shirt weather in early March is a gift if you live in upstate NY. But it is far from normal and somehow this isn’t even news. In fact, politicians won’t touch the topic with a ten foot pole.

In DC it is toxic to tell the truth about climate, or to even acknowledge the issue. Are you aware that the ocean temps in the southern Atlantic are so warm right now that hurricane season might start two months early? Or that there is less cold air mass over the arctic than has ever been measured?

I didn’t think so. Why would you? It isn’t a crisis, right? Trump’s inability to pronounce Venezuela is bigger news than it being 73 degrees in Rochester, NY. Actually, it is bigger news that the leading candidate for President is showing alarming signs of early onset dementia, and I am not talking about Joe Biden.

But that’s politics. Weather is a whole different ballgame when it comes to directly affecting you and me. Ask anyone in the Texas panhandle or the Sierra Nevada mountains right now. Ranchers in Texas are losing thousands of cattle to fires. And you can’t buy home insurance that means anything in half the southern states, including Florida.

Ever try to buy a house without home insurance? You can’t unless you pay cash. Meanwhile, here in Rochester, where it is warm, a house that sold for $150,000 three years ago is going for $400k, with dozens of offers the first day on the market, if you can even find one.

Yes, Trump Is a huge problem, a threat to democracy itself, and possibly half bonkers. And if we elect him, you can plan on the weather being the last thing we will be worrying about, except that it will be the biggest thing we are actually dealing with.

He won’t care a bit about that because he will be trying to eliminate everyone who ever laughed at his idiocy. Meanwhile we will be burning, or blown away, or trying to swim away from our cars.

The news covers the weather, but not as an existential emergency. It’s more of a novelty unless you happen to be there when it’s bad. Lost your home to a tornado? Sad story. Except if it happens to someone you love.

This stuff is devastating in real life.

This is where I go off on a mad rant about the oil companies and the money they flood Congress with to pretend this stuff isn’t going on. Except that the time for that ranting is over. 

There are doomsayers who will tell you it’s all too late, and they might be right if you live in one of the many wrong places. Apparently I don’t because it is now 11:16 pm and it is still 64 degrees out in a place that normally gets 100” of snow.

We are about 70” short of that right now. And we, to be honest, are ecstatic about that. But there is a little problem with our glee. This is a closed system we live in, a literal snow globe, and our good fortune is someone else’s loss.

I might get to walk around in shorts in what used to be winter, but someone else might be starving because their crops have failed for years in a row. That’s a hell of a guilt trip if you think about it, so we don’t.

I have a friend who was returning to her home in Manhattan today from central Florida. She was there for four days and the sun was not out until her last day. Instead there were tornado warnings and a few torrential downpours. Not a lot of pool time.

There’s a new lake in Death Valley, one of the driest places in our country and people are kayaking on it. 

It’s all pretty surrealistic if you are old enough to remember when this kind of thing was not normal. I am and I have to admit it is fascinating, but my home has not burned down, been flooded, slid off the side of a hill, or been blown to bits by a hurricane or tornado.

It turns out there is a way to turn this thing around that does not require us completely ending reliance on fossil fuels. Not yet anyway. It is a change in the way we grow food from tilling and pesticides to regenerative farming that actually removes carbon from the atmosphere*. It could turn climate change around by 2050, but we would have to have a massive global program to make it happen.

We are good at certain kinds of global stuff, like world wars, but not something that might actually save the planet. That is an unfortunate truth. There are a lot of people, like Mr Trump, whose desire for power and greed blind them to helping humanity. And they are drawn to power and power is in politics, not the common good.

So, I am reduced to being an observer, enjoying my fortune in having some mild days in winter, and writing angry diatribes about politics and climate. I guess I’m wearing shorts tomorrow. Can’t complain.

*Kiss the Ground is a remarkable documentary on soil regeneration and how it can rebalance carbon in our atmosphere while eliminating the overuse of dangerous pesticides and fertilizers. You can see it on Netflix or visit their site to learn more about using it as an educational tool. 

This film may change your attitude towards human potential to reverse climate change in our lifetimes. It changed mine.

~ I write The Grasshopper, a letter for creatives, The Witness Chronicles, a place for my articles on politics and climate, and The Remarkable, a recovery letter, about my addiction and reentry experience. All are weekly and free, however this is how I live and I strongly believe all writers and creatives should get paid, if we provide value. Your upgrade to a paid subscription helps make that happen. 

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Believe me, it makes my day. M