I got my power back. No, I don't mean personal energy which allows me to think I can do anything. I mean my electricity. As many of y'all know, the Washington, DC metro area was hit with a "storm" that was not a hurricane, but did hurricane-like things like rip up four-story-tall trees and fling them onto streets and people's houses. I felt like calling for Auntie Em and clicking my heels three times or something. I was astonished I got electricity back so quickly at my home as I live in an area in which the electricity has gone off so frequently that nearly half of my neighbors have a generator because they just got sick of their electricity going off when a stiff wind blew by.
I'm thinking of getting a generator myself. Pepco, our local electricity provider, is sucking less now, but it still sucks. However, the electric company is not why I want to get a generator. It's because global warming is happening just like the scientists said it would.
"According to scientists, climate change means not only that we will see higher temperatures but that there will be more extreme weather events like the one we just experienced. Welcome to the rest of our lives…..
Scientists’ predictions about how quickly temperatures would rise — and how rapidly assorted phenomena, such as melting polar ice and rising sea levels, would proceed — have turned out, thus far, to be conservative.
There comes a point where anomalies can start looking like a trend. What much of the country has seen the past few days is no ordinary heat wave. Temperatures reached 105 in Raleigh, 106 in Atlanta and 108 in Columbia, S.C., and Macon, Ga., 109 in Nashville — all-time highs.
Meanwhile, the most destructive wildfires in Colorado history were destroying hundreds of homes — a legacy of drought that left forests as dry as tinder. Changes in rainfall and snowfall patterns in the West cannot, of course, be blamed on climate change with any certainty. But they are consistent with scientists’ predictions.
It becomes harder to ignore those predictions when a toppled tree is blocking your driveway and the power is out."
Eugene Robinson puts it so well in the above quote. I see the writing on the wall. I've spoken to neighbors, friends, relatives…everyone I talk to is getting ready to deal with a future that has a lot more weather disturbances. Climate change is occurring whether you believe in it or not. You can't have lived on the planet for the last 20 years and not felt the difference between your kid-hood and now. When there was a big snow, not only did we have power in my home, it was a once-in-a-lifetime type event. People said they had never seen anything like it before. We now have once -in-a-lifetime weather events 3 to 4 times a year; in all four seasons.
I don't feel the end of the world is coming but….I'm getting a generator.
The problem with generators is that they are run by gasoline, like a lawn mower, and that contributes to global warming. They are also noisy as hell and contribute to noise pollution.
ReplyDeleteTrying to get the one you run on natural gas. My neighbor says it's less bad for the environment and not as loud. But I gotta have some power. The lights go out over here when someone farts too hard. ;)
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