The storms of the past 10 days or so must be the single worst stretch of bad weather I've experienced in all my years in Nebraska. And I was lucky enough to have missed most of the worst of it. [My heart aches for the families of the Boy Scouts who were killed or injured at their camp in Little Sioux, Iowa.--Ed.] Still, it was bad enough.
My house has the good (or bad, take your pick) fortune to be located in the eastern part of Bellevue, equidistant from Offutt Air Force Base and City Hall. I thus get double weather warnings, as the base and the city do not coordinate their tornado sirens. The base's sirens sound when there's an immediate risk to the base; the city's, when there is an immediate risk to the city. Usually, they do not sound at the same time. I have learned from experience that when the base's sirens sound, the threat tends to be far enough south and west of my house that I can disregard the sirens. Likewise, when the city's sirens sound, the threat is to the north and west of my house, and again, I can disregard the sirens. However, when both the base's and city's sirens sound at the same time, the threat is headed right at me, and my moving immediately to the safest part of the basement is in order.
I spent a lot of time in the basement over the past 10 days. Usually late at night. With the power out. I couldn't even watch the Weather Channel for updates. Nor were the cats around--they disappeared into some secret nether region as soon as the first thunderclap sounded, and they didn't come out till well after the storms had passed. On the other hand, once they did come out, they attached themselves to my ankles and shadowed me even when they normally would be napping or otherwise ignoring me.
This has been traumatic for all of us. Every time I hear of a beloved pet that gets lost or killed in a storm, I want to cry. I don't know what I'd do without my "kids." I know they couldn't survive long without me, either, should we get hit by a tornado and separated.
Nor do I want to sound like a "Nervous Nellie." Nor do I want to make the mistake of confusing "weather" with "climate." But I have to wonder, when this many storms come this fast and this early, and daily high temperatures that we don't typically experience till August are occurring in early June, what the heck is going on?
I should not be as astonished as I am that people deny the human impact on climate change. After all, the oil companies and their ilk have a vested interest in denying it; the scientific "experts" [read that "quacks"--Ed.] who deny it are well paid by those who have that vested interest in denying it; and the individuals who deny it seem to engage in other activities that preclude thinking, like getting their "facts" from Fox News.
As a simple matter of logic, however, it is irrefutable: humans are having a massive impact on global climate. The worldwide population of over 6 billion [yes, that's "billion" with a "B."--Ed.] has been on this earth for only a little more than two hundred and fifty years . . . coinciding with the start of the Industrial Revolution. Coincidentally enough, the Industrial Revolution is also the beginning of drastic changes to what humans use for transportation, fuel, manufacturing, and just about every other activity in which we as a species engage.
The volume alone--the population is over 6 times bigger than it's been in all previous history--makes a huge difference. For a visual representation, put red food coloring in an ounce of water. One or two drops hardly shows. Several more make light pink. The whole bottle makes it blood red. You don't have to be a rocket scientist to see that the higher the quantity, the more extreme the result. You cannot compare the climate of the past few centuries with all the previous geological records and conclude what we are experiencing now is just a "normal swing in the climate cycle." Our mere presence in record-shattering numbers has introduced a variable into the calculation that has to be analyzed on its own terms.
And we know by looking at air quality statistics in, for example, Los Angeles over the past 40-50 years that humans can make things much, much worse or much, much better depending on what they decide to do and how they do it.
If I were to be granted one wish, I'd have to wish that people would think things through before just reacting along what they perceive as their favored political lines. Not everything in this world is political. Nor should it be. But I guess it's easier for many to cling to what they "know," the facts and logic be damned. What a shame! Our collective unwillingness to think or to challenge our presuppositions is going to destroy this planet and everyone and everything on it.
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