Oh this Texas weather! It’s December already, and the beginning of the work week was over 80 degrees while the end was close to freezing. Now on Saturday I had to turn on the AC as I decorated the Christmas tree! A quick look at the Farmer’s Almanac indicates another mild winter in Texas. Oh we’re accustomed to freak weather, like the snow dusting in Houston and Austin. Houston, for those who have yet to experience the city, is tropical: humid and mild year round. There are Houstonians who do not own winter coats.
All this freaky weather, especially hot spells in December, bring to mind the cries of climate change and how it is most likely manmade. I won’t say hogwash, yet I don’t jump on the band wagon to save the environment either. I’m aware that each recent year has been hotter than the one before and each subsequent year the hottest on record. I know scientists continue to monitor the earth from space and send back images revealing continued ice loss among massive land and water regions at the top of the world once frozen solid and home to polar bears and other life now struggling for survival and undergoing an evolution of sorts or extinction.
I also think back to the coldest winter in Texas I’ve ever experienced: December 1983. It was so cold that the temperature stayed close to 0, and the pipes froze in the trailer where I lived for a spell during college. My car would not start during that lingering bitter cold wave; I feared the engine block was cracked. The folks I spent Christmas with that year joked about standing in front of the open refrigerator to feel a warm breeze. It was that cold. But then the other Texas winter I’ll never forget was the following year: December 1984, when I baked a turkey wearing shorts and sandals because the weather was so warm. I learned way back then that weather is unpredictable and changes drastically year to year.
Wait a cotton-pickin’ minute
Remember that old joke: If you don’t like the weather in Texas, just wait a minute? Well, a similar joke has been said among the Irish about their entire country: You can experience all four seasons in one day. That got me thinking about all this climate change uproar. I’m a big fan of Al Gore, saw his Oscar-winning movie An Inconvenient Truth, wondered why he and Tipper divorced after decades of marriage and romance shortly after his renewed fame from said movie. So concerned for the sudden drastic and consistent changes in the environment, I even started praying daily for God to help us save our planet: guide scientists and mechanical engineers to create better fuel and/or automobiles or transportation modes, help us to ensure a global food supply, and help us with escalating fires like the constant ones still spreading for years throughout California.
Experiencing the lingering and increasing heat from year to year coupled with something we Texans thought we’d never ever have—earthquakes!—might make many start pondering end-time prophecies and near-futuristic permanently doomed climate scenarios such as in movies like Blade Runner. Over the past couple decades, summers have become harder for me to enjoy. The sun feels like it is literally searing my skin when I am outdoors for just a few minutes in July and August. I’ve wondered why, given the obvious hotter summers, our schools are not closed in July and August and maybe half of September instead of June and July especially in Texas.
I’ve traveled to Delaware, New York and Boston in the summers only to experience just a bit of reprieve from the oppressive heat in my home state. Is anyone else having trouble breathing in the Texas heat like me? I wonder if I’m just getting old(er) and growing discontent, if my skin is getting more sensitive, have I become totally spoiled by summer AC. [In Texas, AC—whether in cars, homes, hotels or business buildings—is a necessity practically every day of the year.] Then I think about my grandparents and all the old-timers generations prior who lived full lives without AC. HOWWWWW? These are folks who used little or no deodorant, bathed weekly, had no indoor toilets, wore more clothes than we do, and walked everywhere in their small towns.
Climate, fry-ment
The difference between people now and a hundred years ago must be the earth was a bit cooler, the heat tolerable, right? Our planet obviously is undergoing vast temperature and climate changes, and we should care about it. However, I don’t know how suddenly these changes have been going on. Al Gore swears by it as his plantations have become unproductive over the span of a decade due to climate change such as lack of rainfall and super storms. He tells a Southern joke about when we see a turtle on a post, we can bet it didn’t get there by itself. ?
The climate debate is not only about the science [the Trump administration summarily removed all references to ‘climate change’ in at least one government website] but if we modern humans are totally to blame. That is a bitter pill to swallow. In my lifetime, I’ve seen pollution and smog levels go down dramatically, cleaner air and water, bans on aerosol cans and many other restrictions on a list of chemicals including Freon. To non scientists like me and most people, the skies are blue, rain falls, sun shines, seasons change, food is plentiful, God is great, and life and humanity go on. All is seemingly right in the world. And we don’t want to hear otherwise.