In America, Memorial Day weekend is the unofficial start of Summer; the official beginning of the season doesn’t arrive for another month. But the very notion of an official beginning to Summer is pretty ridiculous in a nation that stretches the breadth of an entire continent and runs from Maine to Florida. How on earth could Arizona and Vermont, for example, ever think of sharing a seasonal calendar? June 21st doesn’t mark some magical beginning of Summer; it’s merely the longest day of the year in the northern hemisphere.
Summer really begins at different times in different places. Something to do with latitude, I reckon. But it just so happens that in Baltimore, the birth of Summer really does coincide, roughly speaking, with Memorial Day weekend. Spring gets going here in very early March and runs for about three months. So the holiday weekend often really is the official and unofficial beginning of about four months of Summer.
This Memorial Day weekend, Summer got off to a rip-roaring start here on the East Coast. In Baltimore we got into the upper 90s. Indeed, as I type these words, I am sitting in my upstairs office, quietly sweating. It is the kind of weather that makes you want to go find and punch the people who, on a particularly cold winter’s day, are apt to snicker and say: “So much for global warming.”
Drop the “for” and they’d actually be onto something. One little word can be the difference between sounding like a reasonable person or like someone who cavalierly sacrifices science on the alter of political dogma. As David St. Hubbins once noted, “it’s a fine line between stupid and, uh, clever.”
In any event, I guess we’re not calling it “globa
l warming” anymore. We’ve moved on to “climate change.” Why? In part because climate change is a much better description of what actually happens as the average global temperature rises. Yet I can’t help but think that part of the reason for updating the nomenclature comes from scientists and policy analysts simply getting fed up with dumb jokes during Winter.
Even the United States Environmental Protection Agency is pushing the name change over at its climate change website. That’s right. The EPA has an entire website devoted to climate change.
The site provides a lot of interesting and straightforward information. However, it’s also fun to read between the lines.
For example, when perusing the Frequently Asked Questions section, one can almost imagine the authors doing their best to advance the page’s primary purpose without being too obvious about it: debunking the myths perpetuated by climate change deniers. One wonders how hard they had to resist the urge to name one of the more prominent category headings Popular Topics instead of, say, Debunking Bullshit.
And what, pray tell, is the most popular topic/prevalent bullshit being discussed/combated these days at the EPA climate change website?
Drum roll please . . .
Can changes in climate be attributed to natural factors?
This particular red herring has been the lead jab of many deniers for at least a year now. It is an example of how the propaganda of denial has adapted to the overwhelming scientific evidence that, yes, the planet really is getting hotter. Remember when “critics” used to deny that altogether? Well they’ve had to shift gears of late because global warming is now simply irrefutable. It is established fact. But that they have shifted gears, instead of simply “coming around,” is some evidence that we are in fact dealing with a propaganda machine.
Now that propagandists and their legion can no longer flog the dead horse of denying global warming, they are seeking to undermine the probable causes and minimize the potential effects. They dismiss much of the science and all of the concern by confidently asserting that the Earth’s climate changes all the time, and that what we are currently witnessing is just another one of those periodic shifts.
So the EPA has created a website debunking myths like this. It explains things like how small climate changes over centuries or even millennia are normal, but we what we are experiencing is a big change over a relatively brief period of time. Meanwhile, larger chang
es can come about for many reasons, such as shifts in the Earth’s orbit or variation in the Sun’s energy, but that’s not what’s going on here.
Rather, the current rise in temperature is most likely the direct result of human activity. Are scientists 100% sure of that? No. But they do calculate the likelihood at over 90%.
So get ready to sweat. Summer’s begun, and it’s not going away anytime soon.