Opinion: Tomorrow’s forecast scarier than today’s weather
By Joe Mathews, Zocalo Public Square
One of the little joys of being Californian is the opportunity to taunt folks back East about their terrible winter weather. Hey, Boston, how does it feel to have been colonized by Eskimos?
But this winter, we seem to be overdoing it, sending out a blizzard of social media postings of palm trees and blue skies. It’s enough to make you wonder if all our taunting merely masks our fears about our own weather.
Horror film directors will tell you that nothing is more frightening than what you can’t see. By that logic, California has never had a scarier winter than this one. Where is all the snow that should be in the mountains? How could San Francisco possibly go all of January without any rainfall? And what happened to the February frosts on cars, lawns, and rooftops that gave Angelenos something to talk about over their morning lattes?
The paradox of the California climate is that, precisely because we seem to have so little weather, the weather is more important here than just about anywhere else. According to a new poll, 69 percent of us say the climate is their favorite thing about living in California (and we love the weather more than we love our families). Our regional economies, our lifestyles, and our culture all rely on predictably pleasant weather. And so we are profoundly sensitive to slight changes in the weather. We talk ceaselessly about the variations in microclimates within our regions, and many of us can offer instant analysis on what we consider to be the vast differences between 77, 80, and 83 degrees.
This hypersensitivity is one big reason why Californians have taken climate change more seriously than people in other states. The threat is not merely to our coastline (sea levels could rise nearly 2 feet by 2100) or our water supplies but to our very sense of ourselves. It is unsettling to see one of our shared home’s most fundamental and enduring advantages in flux.
Why is there an end of times doomsday article about the climate and the evil existance of humans on this website every other day now? Seems to me like propaganda and the old idea that if you tell a lie enough times people will start accepting it as truth.
why no articles about our out of control govt illegally collecting data on all of us, the alienation of our allies, the growing threat of russia and islam (trust me, they really dont like what the left stands for), banks bundling funds in risky investments..again, the growing overreach of the police state, the ridiculously large prison population of non violent offenders, our open borders, our slow demise as number one in the world (u dont want russia or china running things), the unwinnable wars on terror and drugs, polical bribes/donations/lobbying that have stolen the voices of the american people…i mean, COME ON!!
Jeez BO, I agree a lot with what you just wrote….though I would say climate and human impact IS a major issue, and I’m more concerned about corporate misuse of collected data than I am about the government’s, and the ULTRA right evangelical branch of politics. Other than that, good points.
Always pushing the Global Warming narrative.
A.B. –
It doesn’t matter what you call it, there is something out there changing things in the climate.
Has it happened before?…OF COURSE but likely not significant to the global context because the events were outside the range of what we would call recorded human history.
Is it going to upset many factors of how we live? Most Certainly
Are humans responsible for some of the changes we see?
Most Certainly
Is there anything we can do to dial climate change back? I don’t know, but personally I don’t believe humans will cooperate sufficiently to find out.
BO, you are exactly right! Why are we worrying about the earth (possibly) being a few degrees warmer in a thousand years, when there are so many bigger issues? Why worry about climate change when our very existence is imminently threatened by other factors?
And why are there so many of these articles on LTN lately? I just want to puke every time I see one of these come up. Why doesn’t anyone ever talk about the important issues in the world?
And these climate change articles are the absolute number one place for, as Hmmm called them “celebrity blogtroll makeups and breakups.” I wonder how many good hours bloggers have spent flaming on climate change stories on LTN.
“Seems to me like propaganda and the old idea that if you tell a lie enough times people will start accepting it as truth.” Probably.
“If you tell a lie long enough, loud enough, and often enough, the people will believe it.” Adolf Hitler. Also, recent studies have shown that people are more likely to believe a big lie than a little one.