Stormy Weather, by Martha Thomases – Brilliant Disguise | @MDWorld

January 25, 2014 Martha Thomases 4 Comments

 

This might come as a shock to you, but it’s winter.  And, in winter, in certain parts of the country, it gets cold.  When it gets cold, instead of raining, we get snow.  A major difference between snow and rain is that snow will pile up on the ground, whereas rain will be absorbed into the earth, or form puddles, which may grow wider but have never, to my recollection, become taller.

Perhaps you already knew this.  If you are older than, say, four years old, and don’t live in the southern part of the country, you’ve had ample experience.  However, from the news reports over the last several weeks, one would think that winter is a new phenomenon.

Like everything else, our response to winter is more and more dependent on our political perspective.  For example, after the storm New Yorkers had this Tuesday, the various news media, owned and edited by folks who never really liked Bill deBlasio and his campaign to tax them, were shocked — SHOCKED — to find out that not only were the roads not plowed instantly, but that among those most affected were those who lived on the Upper East Side of Manhattan.  There are lots of reasons for this (human error, unexpected traffic disruptions,), but that didn’t stop the paranoid conspiracy theories.  When their neighbor, Mike Bloomberg, was in charge, that part of Manhattan was always clean as a whistle.

Oddly, a bit over fifteen years ago, when Giuliani was mayor, there was a storm that deposited so much snow that I remember seeing folks cross-country skiing down Broadway.  a major thoroughfare for business and tourism.  I don’t recall similar demands for an explanation from him.

My street is only two blocks long, and it hardly ever gets plowed.  It’s part of the “charm” of living in the Village.

More damaging to humankind than the discomfort of New Yorkers (although I find it hard to believe there is anything more important) is the opportunity grabbed by the anti-science wing of the conservative movement to deny climate change.  The problem is that, in the early stages of discussing this problem, it was called, “Global Warming,” which, while technically accurate (the trend is definitely trending hotter), does not describe what’s really going on.  Now, every time it gets cold out, they use this as “proof” that there is no problem, even though, as I think Jon Stewart said, this is like saying that there is no sun when it gets dark.

Instead, what happens when the temperature of the earth rises is that we see more extreme weather patterns.  Storms are more intense.  There are more droughts and floods.

Normally, I don’t really care whatever stupid thing someone thinks.  If anything, I am amused.  People who are ignorant about science are, not surprisingly, ignorant about how science works.  They think that if new information disproves something previously accepted as fact (for example, that some of the skeletal remains assumed to be ancestors of humans are in fact from different specimens, not a single primate), that means the science was wrong.  In fact, it means the science was right!  Constantly challenging assumptions and submitting your findings for review by your peers is how advances in science get made.  Blindly holding on to a favorite assumption just because you like it is the opposite of science.  It does, however, pretty much describe how our society views religion.

In the case of climate change, the science is pretty much settled.  There may be scientists who disagree, but they don’t publish, so their views are irrelevant to any serious conversation.  Unlike politics, there is not equal time in science to debate facts.  Either something can be demonstrated with evidence, or it can’t.

Alas, there is at least one political party that doesn’t believe in science.  The extreme conservatives who rule the Republican party (often doing the bidding of the very industrialists whose waste products accelerate climate change) are in charge of Congress, and their ignorance is not only profound, but dangerous.

It’s amazing to me that these same people will rail against leaving a federal debt for their grandchildren but don’t care about leaving them a planet.

Media Goddess Martha Thomases finds that a snow-packed neighborhood is the perfect excuse for staying in her pajamas all day.