Climate Change Update:
Eating breakfast and preparing to start work, while the meteorologist on Bay News 9 informs me from my television that the heat index is currently 100 degrees. It is 8:10 a.m.
She goes on to say it (the heat index) will be 110 this afternoon and people should stay inside in air-conditioning if possible.
Last night, I watched in horror as a river in Alaska raged, and a whole house collapsed off a bluff next to it, into the river. My horror was not mainly due to the house falling into the river, it was due to the river itself: it wasn't supposed to be surging and raging, bursting its seams with water. That wasn't supposed to be rushing water at all. It was melting glaciers. That water was supposed to be frozen glaciers, but instead the glaciers are melting exponentially faster than previous scientific models and warnings of climate change predicted. I've been shouting about climate change (then referred to as just "the greenhouse effect") since I was a kid in the 1970's. Very, very few people believed the science and the few people who were sounding the alarm back then. This is one of those few times when I get zero satisfaction from being able to say "I told you so."
I don't want to see what should be solid, frozen, climate-controlling glaciers rushing past as a raging river, taking houses off of bluffs on its way past. I don't want to know that a monster hurricane or several will almost surely strike Florida this summer, as the ocean surrounding us is like a cauldron of boiling water. I don't want to be advised by the meteorologist on television to stay inside the house, and bring water if you even have to drive to work, as you may overheat in the car.
What have we done? With the images of that river in Alaska last night, I now get the feeling: it's too late to turn back. One of my favorite television shows of all time was/is LOST. There was a set of mysterious numbers (4 8 15 16 23 42; yes, I still remember the numbers!) that figured centrally into the story and themes of LOST. There was a character who was tormented by the numbers in his mind, and was in a mental institution. Another character, Hurley (you may recognize the name, as I named my dog after him), went to the institution (where he had once also been a patient, and had met Lenny and heard him repeating those numbers over and over again) in an episode, to try to get answers about the numbers from Lenny, the tormented character. As Hurley talked to Lenny, he told Lenny he'd come to believe that the numbers are cursed. He told Lenny that he played them in the Lotto and strange things kept happening ever since.
Lenny got a look of horror on his face and became extremely agitated. "You used those numbers?! You shouldn't have done that. You've opened the box! It doesn't stop."
That's how I felt, watching what should be solid glaciers raging down a river as melted water: we've opened the box. We shouldn't have done that. It doesn't stop.
