Seeing the Change

FOR THE FIRST TIME in my life the temperature reached eighty degrees in November where I live, for several days in a row, for good measure. As if the Earth is telling us that eighty degree temperatures in mid-America in mid November are no longer an anomoly, but are becoming and will become the norm. The eighty degree, summer like days were pleasant; everyone seemd pleased, and remarked about the beauty of the weather. I smiled and agreed. I used to say it out loud but now I just silently think it: if you like climate change so damned much, you are about to get a whole lot more of it. Although summer in November did seem a bit strange, I really wasn't surprised by it - hell, at this point I don't think I'd be surprised it it got to ninety in Novemver...It is however, beginning to freak me out a bit the number of times, keeping track of the weather on a day to day basis, am convinced that I am witnesing another manifestation of human made climate change. Flowers bursting out of the ground in late February, then earlier and earlier in February each year, for instance. Or the fact that for about the past ten years, where I live, many if not most days in October have been eighty degrees or above. October, in my neck of the woods, (the lower American midwest) is becoming a summer month, and indeed has apparently already become one. Every summer seems to feature more droughts, more severe droughts, longer droughts, less rain, and more days with temeratures above one hundred degrees Fahrenheit than the prvious year. When I was a child, fifty years ago, snowfall was common where I live; now, it rarely snows. Some yers, it doesn't snow at all. Most of the deciduous trees here don't start changing leaf color until after Halloween now; twenty five years ago the fall colors tended to peak in late October or early November. Conservatives no longer bother to claim that the climate is not changing. Their fantasy has evolved; now, they claim that the changes are natural, and that the climate changes constantly, beond the power of humans to affect it. Because humanity has been so litle and so late in dealing with the climate change we cause, it will, very soon, over the next few years, become much much worse. It is time to gear up for daily one hundred degree summers, and perpetual drought, with the inevitable sweeping wildfires. With ever more kinetic energy, aka heat, in the atmosphere, there is bound to be more and more violent weather as the years pass and we approach mid century. Already climate change is ruining the economy, destroyng crops, driving people out of their homes as refugees, and destroying billions of dollars worth of property each year.. All this will only get worse, because of our inaction in dealing with it soon enough, thanks in part to the idiots who have always and continue to pretend that climate change is not real, and that hhumans can no nothing about the naturally changing climate, or Jesus is going to return soon, and rapture the saved into heaven, so, why worry about climate change? In the carton aliens were sitting in a bar, drinking and laughing. On of them, referring to humans, says, "They know how to turn sunlight into energy, but they kill ecah other over oil, and they wonder why we don't contact them"! More alien laughter. And, truth be told, you can see their point.