Two years ago, on this date, we began a series of posts in order to point out how people can think of weather in terms of what only they feel, see, and hear, gladly disregarding the world around them.In other words, our local weather is a major factor in our concept of global warming and global climate change, to the point that in many cases people tend to think that "if it hasn't happened to me, then it really hasn't happened".
As an example, for deniers in the Washington, D.C. area, the snow of a few years ago was called "Snowmageddon or Snowpocalypse", as a slap at global warming scientists who are concerned about what they expect climate change to do to civilization.
In true denier fashion, when the catastrophes of 2011 came around, those same people, who had chortled about global warming because it had snowed, closed their eyes and ears to the reality happening all around them.
Nor did they say much about Snowmaggedon this month when millions went without power, some for a week or more, after wet, heavy snow broke records, trees, cars, buildings, and their giddy smugness, while double-digit numbers of people died.
One major exception to the denier dementia was a scientist who was substantially paid by a conservative denier organization (Koch brothers) to show that the globe was not warming.
His scientific conclusions were that global warming is happening no matter what is happening in any one locale, and he recanted his global warming skepticism, to the chagrin of the die hard deniers, who have a psychological problem of some sort.
Following is the text from the post two years ago:
How many times we have heard the political pundits repeat the statement that "all politics is local"?
A well known saying that has been attributed to Speaker of the House Tip O'Neill.
Some have likewise observed that "all weather is local" in the same sense it was intended by Tip.
The posts "Parochial Climate & Parochial Mentality" and "Coldest July or Warmest July?" point out the fact that people tend to base global climate concepts on the phenomenon of their local weather, the same way they fashion their political views.
Something close to home strikes them as being the way things are everywhere, which gets them in deep trouble on the world scene.
The parochial global climate view of things makes it difficult for governments to fashion a global policy because of a million beliefs that "all weather is local".
For that reason theory is emerging which states that governments will be forced to deal with the climate induced environmental catastrophes headed our way with a policy of triage.
The Rolling Stones and John Lennon straighten up Senator Inhofe after he neoConFuses Jumping Jack Flash with cow farts. Carbon Dioxide and other green house gas is Jumping Jack Flash (which sounds like the experience of serious climate change a la a bad weather outbreak):
And I howled at my ma in the driving rain
...
I was raised by a toothless, bearded hag,
I was schooled with a strap right across my back
...
I was drowned, I was washed up and left for dead
I fell down to my feet and I saw they bled
I frowned at the crumbs of a crust of bread
I was crowned with a spike right thru my head ...
Jumping Jack Flash is a gas, gas, gas ...
The previous post in this series is here.
Optimistic scientists indicate we have a very narrow window of time in which to seriously diminish oil consumption or face an irreversible runaway climate catastrophe: Link
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