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| Global warming move over. |
| Posted: Tuesday, January 16, 2007 |
Hip-hip hooray for Heidi Cullen.
This Weather Channel climatologist has recently been ruffling a few feathers by poo-pooing fellow weather forecasters who refuse to accept the notion of man-made global warming.
Heidi's coming out is a perfect chance for the industry to redeem itself for years of not really knowing what was going to happen with regard to weather, but pretending to know. And getting paid for it.
There is something that bugs me about TV news anchors, and specifically the weather anchors. To me, they don't look like they spend much time outdoors. For example, I assume that most if not all local TV weather anchors wake up, get ready for work, go from inside their home directly into their garage, get inside their car, remotely open the garage door to the outside where they experience the weather from inside their automobile, warm and dry, sipping cappuccinos during their commute to work. Then once they arrive at the station, they park in a covered structure and zip inside.
I would love to think they would spend all day at the station going up onto the roof for a good look around at their surroundings, feeling the wind, watching the clouds, and report from knowledgeable intuition.
Back to global warming. Before I knew better, I naively entertained the notion of global warming as positive. I figured summers would be hotter and longer, which appealed to this lover of the Sun. I hoped that we would experience more exciting weather during the fall and winter months. I had grown a teensy bit bored with the still, damp days of our local winters, and longed for wind, snow dumps and maybe even a rip-roaring thunderstorm. Maybe, I thought, this global warming thing will be fun for a while. Since I am naturally one of those Nellie Forbush cockeyed-optimist types, I have a tough time letting that veneer down for the truth, inconvenient or otherwise. It's much easier (albeit foolish) to console myself with the reasoning that if the damage is man-made, then certainly humans, with all of our collective wisdom and will to live, can un-make it.
But global warming isn't solely responsible for our current onslaught of drought, floods, winds and freezes. No, friends. Something much more ominous is responsible for Californians' ability pick orange Popsicles right from the tree, and that is magnetic shift. In case you haven't heard, the Earth is currently experiencing a magnetic shift between the poles. Whether we are experiencing a short shift or well on our way to a full reversal, the direction of Earth's magnetic field is changing, something that no matter how many Segways we start using, is completely out of our hands.
Larry Newitt works for the Geological Survey of Canada, and it his job to keep track of the north magnetic pole. "We usually go out and check its location once every few years. We'll have to make more trips now that it is moving so quickly." Newitt said this in 2003.
It's the magnetic shift that has triggered the extreme and unpredictable weather patterns. As if TV weather anchors weren't baffled enough (I mean that in a good way), this unstable period will prove most challenging for TV meteorologists. What will be needed is a volunteer army of neighborhood weatherwatchers stationed in various neighborhoods throughout cities. These civilian weatherwatchers will use their intellect as well as their intuition to report the surrounding weather conditions. Media outlets can collect data from an abundance of sources, making for a fairly accurate report.
But let's get back to cataclysmic changes beyond our control. Our Earth is reacting to both cyclical change as well as the stresses that humans have imposed upon it. I can relate. I have an 8-year old, and you can only take so much until you snap.
Who knows? Maybe my family and I will survive all the upheaval and one day find ourselves in Tahiti, enjoying the hot breezy beach during the day, and the Northern Lights at night.
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