Snowbama

I figure I might as well join the crowd and blame the president for the lousy weather blanketing the East Coast. The minority in Congress seems hell-bent on blaming him for everything else!

I’ve long been opposed the attitude that weather is “bad” or “good.” I generally find weather, in general, interesting. However, there’s certainly such a thing as too much of a good thing, and a lot of people have been experiencing that lately!

Which brings me to the topic of the ignoramuses on FOX News and elsewhere who’ve been using the record snow falls in the East to mock Al Gore and the whole concept of global climate change. (They might as well lump in the horrific mud slides in California, too, while they’re at it—an example of what happens when cycles of extreme heat and dryness are followed by wildfires and soil erosion—then lots of rain.)

Glenn Beck, Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh—these geniuses pretend to believe that “global warming” can’t be real if it’s snowing outside. (And it’s hard to say which is worse—being ignorant enough to believe what they’re saying or lying about something so critically important.)

Since at least the late 1970s, when I first started reading about climate change, scientists have said that an overall increase in global temperatures would ramp up the natural cycles of the atmosphere and start causing extreme weather events across the planet, as well as extremely rapid melting of polar ice. That’s all been happening—at alarming rates and faster than most estimates predicted.

Just ask residents of Bangladesh, New Orleans, Florida, and now Washington D.C. about extreme weather. Records are now being broken every year in terms of temperatures, precipitation, and the number and severity of storms. What used to be “100-year” storms and “500-year” storms are becoming annual events.

From a global perspective, the first decade of the 21st Century, which just ended, was the warmest on record. Pretty much every year that goes by is either the warmest year on record or close to it. When even George Bush admitted to the need to start getting serious about reducing emissions of greenhouse gases, I thought we’d finally start making progress as a nation toward being responsible global citizens and concerning ourselves about the well-being of our children and grandchildren.

Apparently, I was wrong. In the minority, Republicans have clearly decided to ensure that NO progress occurs on ANY issue whatever, be it saving the planet, helping the millions of Americans who can’t afford health insurance, or reforming the financial industries which—just a few short months ago—nearly thrust the entire world into another Great Depression with their irresponsible lending and investment practices.

Evidently the Party of No has NO time to help save the plant—not when there are elections to consider and money to be made from special interests.

And there are ALWAYS elections to consider.