This is a video from my YouTube channel, Jack’s World.
This video is a CreepyPasta story I wrote and narrated myself about efforts to control the weather and why it’s a bad idea. Enjoy!
Tag Archives: weather
On Heat Waves And Climate Change
It’s the middle of summer. That means that, relative to where you live in the northern hemisphere, it’s going to get hot. In some places, it’s going to get very hot. I’ve been to Las Vegas in the middle of June. There are certain kinds of hot that are much less bearable than others.
But enduring heat in the summer is nothing new. Most people who live in any temperate climate zone probably understands that. However, with every intense heat wave, and the death that comes with it, there are usually some larger discussions about climate change. Most of those discussions tend to get lost in the politics of climate deniers and anti-science grifters, but it’s still a discussion worth having.
I may not be old enough to remember what summers were in the early 20th century, but I’ve been living on this planet long enough to know that the climate in my area has been changing. I’ve actually lived around the same area for all my life, except for a few years when I went to college. And in that time, I’ve certainly noticed a general warming trend.
When I was a kid, the hottest year for a long time was in 1997. I know that’s not the hottest year on record, but it certainly felt like the hottest year to that point in my life. I couldn’t give you the hard data, but I remember a lengthy stretch during that summer in which every day seemed to be 100 degrees. I also remember vividly how the water at the pool and beach felt as warm as bath water, at times. There was none of that initial chill you got when you jumped in. I enjoyed that to some extent, but I didn’t enjoy the extra sunburn that often came with it.
During that same summer, there was very little rain. I can only remember a few days in which we had a couple of thunderstorms. But aside from that, most days were brutally hot under a blazing sun. Just going outside for a brief period was too much. Even as a kid who wanted to go outside to play baseball, it was just too much.
For years after the summer of 1997, I don’t recall experiencing anything that hot. Sure, there were a few heat waves here and there. I even remember having to deal with one in a college dorm without air conditioning. Believe me, I would not wish that on anyone. But eventually, summers got to a point where they all seem to feel equally hot in the same way 1997 felt.
After around 2010, which was years after I’d graduated college, summers with the kind of heat I once thought was so abnormal just felt normal. I came to expect weeks on end of temperatures that exceed 100 degrees. I came to expect long dry spells, followed by round after round of heavy thunderstorms. When I eventually got my own place, I actually spent nearly $7,000 getting a new HVAC unit to deal with these summers.
And therein lies the issue with hot summers, climate change, and how we navigate it. For a lot of people, it happens so gradually that we just come to see it as normal. Never mind the fact that the devastating effects of climate change are documented, measurable, and indisputable. Never mind the fact that the number of people actually dying of heat-related illness is increasing. It’s not that more people are denying climate change. We’re just accepting it.
But is that tenable?
Is that sustainable?
Is that even a just and moral thing to do on a planet we share with over seven billion people?
I would argue that this is something we’re just choosing not to think about, regardless of whether or not we accept the science of climate change. Right now, the path of least resistance is to just adapt as best we can and accept the death, suffering, and environmental destruction that comes with it. It’s basically the Rick Sanchez approach of “The answer is don’t think about it!”
The biggest problem with that approach is that, beyond all the suffering and death, it assumes we’ll always be able to adapt. It assumes that there’s not a point in which the planet becomes so hot that certain places become unlivable, which would displace millions of people and create a refugee crisis the likes of which we’ve never seen before. It also assumes that we’re able to pay the cost, in terms of money and lives, of entire coastlines being changed due to rising sea levels.
Those are all some very lofty assumptions, which I would argue we should not make blindly.
Now, I don’t claim to know the proper course of action here. Climate change is such a big, complex phenomena that no one group of people and no one nation can do something to address it fully. We live on a shared planet. So, anything that involved addressing its issues has to be a shared effort. Whether or not we’re capable of doing so remains to be seen.
But if the climate changes to a point where failing to do so just costs too much, then we might not have a choice.
Filed under Current Events, Environment
Climate Change Is Real And I’m Old Enough To Feel Its Impact
Science is a long, laborious, and often tedious process. That’s to be expected. It is, by far, the most effective tool that humanity has in terms of gaining greater knowledge and understanding the world around us.
It’s not always intuitive. There are times when science has revealed just how wrong we were. It’s not that we were all stupid beforehand. We just didn’t have all the data. We could only assume as much as our current understanding allowed.
That’s fine.
That doesn’t make anyone a bad or ignorant person for having held those assumptions.
Science, by its nature, is a self-correcting process. It doesn’t assume anything. It’s always taking in new information, running more tests, and expanding on previous hypotheses. Most of the time, it affirms what we already suspected. Sometimes, though, it completely defies everything we thought we knew.
For that reason, some people just love pointing out all the times science was supposedly wrong to cling to dogmatic assumptions like creationism and Flat-Eartherism. These people really are idiots and they’re often asshole grifters who don’t deserve the slightest bit of sympathy.
Then, there are the climate change deniers. They’re not just skeptics, which I can understand to some extent. They’re outright deniers in that they work under the assumption that the whole study of climate change is a hoax or some environmentalist conspiracy.
Now, not everyone in that camp is a stupid asshole grifter who probably leans conservative and has connections to oil companies. Those people are certainly there and they deserve plenty of scorn. At the same time, I’m willing to give the benefit of the doubt to some who just can’t see the forest from the trees.
To the latter, I’d like to share my own personal testimony that I hope will improve your understanding of the topic. Whether you believe it or not, climate change is a serious issue that could have serious consequences for billions of people all over the world. We can and should do something about it while we still have time.
I say that as someone who has been hearing about these environmental for most of his life. When I was a kid, I grew up watching cartoons that often threw in a few pro-environment messages. There were even shows that presented global warming as a serious issue and I’m not just talking about “Captain Planet.”
As a kid, I didn’t understand much of the science. Even most of the adults I talked to didn’t understand it. Some showed concern, but most weren’t inclined to give it much credence. Some even thought it was all just environmentalist propaganda.
It didn’t help that many of them lived in parts of the country where the weather didn’t change considerably from season to season. Many lived in the southern United States where they rarely got snow or cold temperatures of any kind. If the Earth was getting warmer, they weren’t going to notice.
The same could be said for the family I had living in the north. Some lived in areas that got a lot of snow. Talk to them about global warming and they’d be more likely to welcome it, often joking about how they wouldn’t mind shoveling less snow every winter.
Again, both these perspectives miss the forest from the trees. Climate, by definition, doesn’t focus on weather from day to day or even year to year. It tracks temperatures and conditions over a long span of time. For people who don’t pay attention or live in areas with relatively bland weather, it can be hard to sense.
For where I live, however, that’s not the case. I live in the Mid-Atlantic area of the United States. It’s an area that sees a wide range of conditions between winter and summer. I’ve lived through summers where it has been over 100 degrees for weeks on end. I’ve also lived through winters that have had multiple blizzards. I’ve experienced both extremes.
As a result, I take notice when those extreme change considerably. It doesn’t happen all at once. Sometimes, it’s subtle to the point where you don’t realize it until years later. Now, given my age and how long I’ve been living in this area, I can safely say that I have felt the affects of climate change.
It has only become obvious to me over the past few years. In that time, I’ve really taken note of how mild every winter has been lately. It used to be things got pretty brisk in mid-October. In the weeks before Halloween, I had to stop wearing shorts and keep a sweatshirt handy. For the past couple years, it only seems to get chilly for a couple of days. Then, it’s up over 70 degrees again.
The winter months have been even more noticeable. When I was a kid, it rarely snowed in December, outside a few rare occasions. However, it was still usually cold, so much so that I had to wear a heavy coat for most days. These days, it has rarely gotten overly cold. I can go almost the entire month of December without having to wear more than a sweatshirt.
It’s still January and February that have been the most noticeable. For so many years, right up until 2015, I could usually count on at least two significant snowstorms. They were rarely full-blown blizzards, but it was still common to see some snow on the ground for the majority of the month.
That has changed considerably in recent years. In my area, there hasn’t been a significant snowstorm in over five years. The most we’ve gotten is, at most, four inches in a single storm. It usually turns to rain and melts within a day.
It’s a hell of a contrast to the winters I remember. Add that to summers that feel hotter and more humid for longer stretches of time and there’s no getting around it.
Climate change is real.
I’ve felt it. I’ve witnessed it. I’m seeing it happen within my lifetime.
I understand that climate involves weather patterns over a long period of time, often exceeding that of a typical human lifetime. However, even if it is anecdotal, I’ve still felt it. That’s deeply concerning to me. Even if it means I don’t have to shovel snow quite as often, it’s still cause for concern.
If the climate is changing that much in this span of time, then I think that’s going to be a bigger problem as time goes on. Moreover, it’s a problem we shouldn’t ignore or underscore. Regardless of your politics, you’re going to be affected by the weather, whether you like it or not.
Much of our civilization depends on weather patterns that are stable and consistent. Climate change will disrupt that stability. We might be able to adapt to some extent, but not if it happens all at once. In that instance, it could lead to a lot of upheaval and suffering. At that point, it’ll be too late.
Now, I’m not qualified to know what the best solutions are. I know they do exist and we need to invest in them because if we don’t, it could end up costing us much more in the future and not just in terms of money.
Regardless of how you feel about modern science, at least consider this personal testimony. Climate change is real. It’s happening. It could potentially lead to some serious problems down the line. Now is not the time to whine about the shortcomings of science. We all live on this planet together. Let’s do what we can to keep it comfortable.
Filed under Current Events, Environment, history, politics, real stories
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