WEATHER
Some people do weather.
My mother is nearly 92 and she does weather. I live in
Melbourne, she lives up north near Brisbane in an Aged Care Center. We
communicate at least once a week over the phone and invariably when I ask how
she’s doing, she replies with a comprehensive weather report. In fact, she’s
always done that.
I moved to
Melbourne in 1970 from Sydney. She and my father were living on the Central
Coast of New South Wales about 50 miles north of Sydney at the time and
whenever I called them, mum would always give me a rundown on how hot, cold,
warm, mild, wet, dry, stormy or fine the weather had been up there over the
past few days.
I’m not much
into weather myself and I must admit, to my shame, there have been occasions
when I lost patience with her and pointed out that I wasn’t phoning her for a weather
update. To no avail, because the next time I called she’d again start off the
conversation with a weather report!
It’s not as
if my mum is dotty – her mind is as sharp as a razor, even if her body is
failing. It’s just that she’s into weather.
Which brings
me to the subject I want to talk about – weather.
Melbourne is
enjoying one of the most pleasant summers I can recall (touch wood!), with
daytime temperatures ranging from the low 70s to the mid-90s, with the hot days
broken up by regular cool changes and the odd shower. On the other hand, other
parts of Australia have experienced the hottest temperatures on record, raging
bushfires, fierce cyclonic storms, bucketing rain and catastrophic floods.
And, of
course, the northern hemisphere winter has been one of the coldest and wettest,
with record low temperatures, snowfalls, storms and blizzards.
Now you’d
have to be blind Freddy not to see something’s going on. Obviously there is a
cause behind these extremes. Despite the mounting evidence put up by scientists
confirming global warming, melting ice caps etc., as well as mankind’s
contribution to polluting the planet and its atmosphere, the climate skeptics
refuse to acknowledge that this could be a contributing factor to our ‘weather
problem’. Hello, is anybody home?
One of their
arguments is that the scientific data isn’t reliable or conclusive enough to
justify taking assertive action and cutting back on fossil fuel emissions and
introducing other environmentally-friendly alternatives. Why? Because it will
be costly.
Even if the
global warming advocates are wrong, as the climate skeptics claim, what have we
got to lose by substituting dirty energy with clean energy? In the short term,
no doubt there will be economic pain as the old ways give way to the new.
But surely
this is a small price to pay to clean up the mess we’ve made, regardless of its
impact on the climate?
However, what
if the climate change advocates are right and mankind’s collective greed,
ignorance and shortsightedness are impacting our weather, causing catastrophes,
death and untold economic damage and hardship? Have the skeptics put a cost on
that?
What are the
climate skeptics going to tell their children and grandchildren if they’re
wrong? “Duh, wasn’t our fault. The scientists are to blame. They couldn’t
provide conclusive, categorical and absolute evidence that they were right and
we were wrong!”
No one seems
to have bothered to ask the climate skeptics about what scientific evidence
they can provide to support their arguments. Curious.
These people,
in my opinion, have been given too much press and credibility. Their arguments
are vacuous, simple-minded and self-serving.
Maybe it’s
time we all (including me) decided to ‘do weather’. Not just talk about it -
but take a stand in supporting the measures to reduce carbon emissions,
regardless of their impact on costs. If, over time, the number of natural disasters
are reduced as a consequence, or the scale of their destruction is diminished,
at the very least, it would be a great return on our investment. Oh yes, maybe
it would mean our children and their children would have a better world in
which to live.
Let’s clean
up our act as well as our planet.
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