Tuesday, May 8, 2012

the old man is most certainly snoring

Going on week two of rain.  Yes it's finally Spring, but wasn't this supposed to be April weather?  I'm confused!  Why isn't May a little bit sunnier and nicer??

I'm an avid believer in climate change, but it saddens me to see things happening to quickly.  A lot of people are incredibly uneducated on how this whole thing works, and I only say that due to the fact that last year when we had twelve foot Nor'Easters (only somewhat exaggerating) everyone had things on facebook that read:- Yeah right "global warming"
- Come on Al Gore, I thought you had something there!
- More like "global cooling"

and so on, and so forth. What people fail to realize it that climate change to any capacity, that which we have been so forewarned means just that: climate change.  It means that seasons that we knew as kids were a little different than those our parents knew, and the ones our kids will understand are probably going to be even more drastically different.

This year we didn't get a lot of snow in Massachusetts, or most of New England for that matter.  Last year there was so much snow that people in Brooklyn and Queens died in their apartment buildings when ambulances couldn't reach them for emergencies.  I was sad about the non-snow in our area, but grateful we weren't drowning in it I suppose.  There is a downfall about the early Spring we had though, and I'll tell you why that's especially dangerous for the environment.

The warm weather we had in March made the trees bloom much earlier than they should have.  Might not seem like a big deal, but then we had a frost or two.  Ok, so the trees can bounce back, right?  Well that could be the case, but then we have to consider that it was so warm that bugs were already out.  I saw mosquitoes in March!! Which also means that there must have been worms.  Worms and other bugs that birds usually eat.  When those insects are in their prime on a regular ideal sort of Spring, the baby birds are also supposed to be hatching.  When bugs come out too early, there's not enough of them to go around for the birds.  Therefore, the bird population suffers that year and the bug population is well, simply put, gross.
(Not to mention, this year they're projecting HUGE BUGS in the New England area because not enough of them died over the winter when it didn't get quite cold enough to kill some of the population off.)

Notice how it's only in places like Vermont, Michigan, and other states that are known for crazy amounts of snow that seemed to get any this winter?  But while ski season usually extends to almost April in Stowe, VT I ended up wearing shorts in the middle of March the entire time I vacationed with Will.  We were hiking through melting snow and sweating.  Nothing up there had proper time to slowly thaw out so we were going through waterfalls on the rock stairways and slush on the side trails.  Not to say that it wasn't a very beautiful experience, but certainly something I didn't expect or plan for ahead of time.

Now they're telling us that within the next 30 years some of the T lines could be underwater.  Lots of downtown Boston and lower Manhattan will be underwater if the glaciers keep melting at the rate that they have been.  We can't really do much to save the polar bears if they simply don't have a place to live.  Or penguins, or seals, or other ice-cap-dwelling creatures for that matter.  It's pretty sad to think about.  Sometimes I think about how evolution gave us all of these amazing animals, and then they will never get the chance to evolve into something else because we killed them all off.  Imagine what sort of animals would develop in the next thousand years if animals had the time to adjust to weather changes?  I mean let's be honest, we might not even be able to adjust in time, let alone them.

I can't really conclude this post, because there is no conclusion.  We are all told in too many ways about how we shouldn't produce so much waste, and pollution is bad, the environment suffers every time we drive a car or throw out a candy wrapper.  The fact of the matter is, most people just don't care.  Or they're duped into thinking they're doing something better by going to Starbucks instead of Dunkin Donuts when actually, the recycle bin at Starbucks just goes into the trash and they only have those to make us feel better.  (nope, not kidding).

Maybe all we can do is care more?  Or maybe it's too late.  Maybe some of the idiots who didn't think global warming would ever come to fruition will watch their cape house slide into the ocean one day.  We have to give the polar bears some sort of vindication, right?

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