Pigeon Point Lighthouse |
I live in a California Coastal community called Moss Beach.
I don’t live here by accident I actually chose this location because of the
climate. It’s a cool Mediterranean climate with summer temperatures about 65
degrees and winter about 55 degrees. Fog
occurs all year round but mostly in summer July and August. This climate is
important to me and I’m in tune with it both physically and intellectually.
We are now in the 4th year of
extreme drought (I've seen lesser ones in the past). About 3 years ago I
started to notice subtle local climate changes, such as less fog, less rain, higher
temperatures and more humidity. This has progressively worsened. These
conditions have continued and worsened right up to the present moment. Last week there were multiple days with some
Bay Area locations hitting 90+ degrees, and hitting the 80’s Coastside. This is
after-all winter time! With that being said, the climate changes have been
obvious and frightening to me. However I’m in a small minority Coastside because
most local residents I talk to are not aware of what’s bothering me? Rather
they wake up in the morning to a warm cloudless fog-less day and exclaim “Oh
what a beautiful day!” What is a beautiful day around here now? Well how about dirty
air, and numerous spare the air days, a fire season now lasting all year and
perpetual gridlock traffic filled with fools who love “beautiful days”! It may be
a beautiful day for them, not for me!
OK I accept that I’m more sensitive to climate than some
others and that’s OK. What bothers me is the group of people living here or elsewhere
totally oblivious to the changes around them but highly vocal among the denier
crowd. I've come to the conclusion Climate Deniers are asleep, not awake and not
aware. Apparently they spend a lot of time on the internet looking for denial material but absolutely have no idea what's happening in their own habitat! It's irritating to see the more vocal ones spreading misinformation and they have no clue as to what's happening right out their own front door! I've talked in the past of how climate change is a subset of Global
Destruction and if you concentrate on the destruction going on due to mankind’s
greed you don’t need to be a rocket scientist to see the destruction first
hand. You’re on a fragile spaceship with groups of moron’s hell bent on
inflicting as much damage as possible to get the last of what resources are
left. Mistreat your own space vehicle and you damn right the climate will
change and all life will disappear! Who is polluting our oceans with plastic,
who is chopping entire mountain peaks off, who is dumping petroleum products in
every river stream ocean and lake, is it
that hard, come on spit it out MANKIND, who else, why is this such a mystery to
climate deniers.
Even if all the climate deniers worldwide were to suddenly
awaken, it’s likely too late, the damage we have done cannot be reversed, and
we have probably already passed a tipping point on the exponential curve. I
would like to have a more positive attitude but to this day I see no real
effort to slowdown the greed driven destruction. So we have a problem, but as of yet, we are
just talking about it, we have not even established a starting point!
I also struggle with climate change deniers. It seems that people want to first identify whether the subject is one that has already been decided by their political leanings, and then "educate" themselves according to the beliefs of others they consider smarter than they are. To me, it just seems obvious that our planet is changing, alarmingly quicker than many thought possible. Thanks for the post.
ReplyDeleteYes I totally agree, it's very frustrating dealing with people not able to think for themselves! How is the level of Lake Shasta now, I was there about 2 months ago and it looked very low? BTW love your bird pictures, especially the Acorn woodpecker! I'll set up a link to your blog soon.
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