Let It Snow…
My recent mockery of the extreme winter weather we have experienced in the Nashville area this year got me thinking about origami, Gruyere cheese production in Switzerland, and global warming. Now before you Bush zealots get your panties in a wad, let me assure you that I have heard your Fuhrer’s proclamation that made global warming illegal, scientifically impossible, religiously immoral, and socially unacceptable. Fine. If you are so shallow as to need the likes of him defining your lives and what you are allowed to believe, then you probably get what you deserve — screwed along with the rest of us who do not fall all over ourselves to get a glimpse of the hem of his garment. Some of us prefer to continue thinking for ourselves and acting for the common good.
When I returned to Tennessee in 1986 after about 20 years in captivity up North, the weather was about what I remembered from growing up in West Tennessee. Distinct seasons. Hot and dry in the summer. Cold and snowy winters, with white blankets 2 to 6 inches deep coming a couple of times per winter. There was the occasional flurry that barely coated the ground, and the occasional blizzard that would bury us under 12 inches or more. Each year since the great ice storm of 1994, the winters have gotten milder, the snow less, and the Yankee immigrant population on the rise as they flee the frozen tundras of the North for the delightful spring-like winters of Tennessee.
I cannot remember a snow more than a flurry over the last several years. Certainly no accumulations to cause safety concerns. Schools are still cancelled if there is even a hint of the “S” word being used. That seems to be a habit the school officials cannot break. As I understand it, they allocate a certain number of days as snow days, and plan the beginning and end of the school year around that. If some magic number of snow days have not been used up by certain calendar dates, they decide to have a snow day because… because it’s Friday, perhaps, or the Principal wants a day off to play golf, or whatever. We’ve had a couple of quite cold days this year, but most of our winter has seen shirt-sleeve temperatures. Short-term or long-term trend? Ask me again in 100 years.
Some sociologist or social psychologist could spend a lifetime (some probably already have) studying the odd social behavior of Southern humans when reacting to a whisper of the dreaded “S” word. If schools have not already taken the day off, they dismiss in the middle of the day. Local telephone circuits and cellular systems become overloaded with the onslaught of thousands of calls to parents to come retrieve their spawn, and many of those parents calling the other parent or a neighbor or relative to pickup the little darlings. Businesses close early so their employees can make an early claim to their own personal place in the traffic snarl that has gripped the city in deadly gridlock since 11:00 AM when rumors of the “S” word first leaked out. Lines at grocery stores and convenience stores swell and morph into panicking, angry mobs, raiding for every gallon of milk, loaf of bread, bottle of water, and 6-pack of beer available.
My years of commuting from the suburbs to work in downtown Pittsburgh taught me a valuable survival lesson. Walk, don’t run, to the nearest pub, have a few pops, and wait it out. This avoids the rush, adds pleasure to the end of the work day, and usually gets one home at about the same time as if hitting the gridlock with everyone else several hours earlier.
One other observation and I’ll quit — promise. People in Tennessee know jack-shit about driving in snow. If it was not so scary and dangerous, their behavior would be downright comical. Some develop catatonic rigidity for hours at a time if faced with the prospects of driving in a flurry. They usually stay home, or are pried from their death grip on the steering wheel in the mall parking lot the next day. Some actually believe that if they speed up they won’t get trapped with wheels spinning in a snow bank. These unfortunate souls almost always end up getting trapped with wheels spinning in a snow bank. Still others believe that if they crawl along at 5 mph that they will avoid getting trapped with wheels spinning in a snow bank. These unfortunate souls almost always end up getting trapped with wheels spinning in a snow bank. The speeders and crawlers alike are also usually involved in fender benders, most often being the cause and not the victim. The biggest challenge I face when driving home later is dodging all of the abandoned vehicles left at odd angles and positions where they became trapped with wheels spinning in a snow bank.
Global warming or not, human cause or not, I for one am thankful that snow is less and winter is milder around here. My old bones can’t take it like earlier years. Maybe by the time all the coastal areas are under water, people will have learned to steer a boat more safely than they drive a car. But I doubt it…
11 Comments so far
[...] nobody asked⦠wrote an interesting post today on Let It Snowâ¦Here’s a quick excerpt My recent mockery of the extreme winter weather we have experienced in the Nashville area this year got me thinking about origami, Gruyere cheese production in Switzerland, and global warming. Now before you Bush zealots get your panties in a wad, let me assure you that I have heard your Fuhrer’s proclamation that made global warming illegal, scientifically impossible, religiously immoral, and socially unacceptable. Fine. If you are so shallow as to need the likes of him defining your lives and [...]
First 23 years of my life…Ohio.
Next 34… Florida.
I think I’m going to like Tennessee… just the right amount of everything
Being a transplanted Yankee down from Michigan (in Owensboro KY I was able to spell OS/2 at the time) I have experienced bi-polar winter psychosis - Ya’ll got some, barely enough, just about right, too danged cold and boy howdy am I thankful raising up three small children that they never learned the truth about cabin fever. Excuse me now that we have this ‘heat wave’ I have to go scrape the next 1/4 inch of ice off the car.
It is unfortunate that so many people have bought in to the anthropogenic global warming mistake when they could have investigated the issue themselves using credible sources readily available on the web. Some people are concerned about the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. The assessment that there is over 50 times as much carbon in the ocean as exists in the atmosphere, http://www.whoi.edu/oceanus/viewArticle.do?id=17726 , does not appear to be very widely known. Apparently no one did any real research before or they would have discovered that 440 mya the planet plunged into the Andean-Saharan ice age, http://www.scotese.com/climate.htm , when atmospheric carbon dioxide was over ten times the present level, http://earthguide.ucsd.edu/virtualmuseum/climatechange2/07_1.shtml (http://www.geocraft.com/WVFossils/Reference_Docs/Geocarb_III-Berner.pdf if the original paper is preferred). With a little further real research they would have discovered that, in the current ice age, temperature trends have changed direction at many different temperature levels. See temperature anomalies from http://cdiac.ornl.gov/ftp/trends/temp/vostok/vostok.1999.temp.dat supplemented with recent data from http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/oa/climate/research/anomalies/anomalies.html or ftp://ftp.ncdc.noaa.gov/pub/data/anomalies/annual.land_and_ocean.90S.90N.df_1901-2000mean.dat . This could not occur if there was significant positive feedback. If they had also looked at the carbon dioxide level from http://cdiac.ornl.gov/trends/co2/vostok.html they would have discovered that the change in atmospheric carbon dioxide level typically lagged average earth temperature change by hundreds of years. If they had looked at the temperature data and Law Dome carbon dioxide data http://cdiac.ornl.gov/ftp/trends/co2/lawdome.combined.dat and the recent data from Mauna Loa ftp://ftp.cmdl.noaa.gov/ccg/co2/in-situ/mlo/ or other sources from http://cdiac.ornl.gov/trends/co2/ they might have also noticed that there is no correlation, except possibly for the 22 years from 1976 to 1998 when carbon dioxide level and average global temperature both increased. None of the historical global climate data shows any significant influence of carbon dioxide level on temperature.
Peer review biased by group-think is de facto censorship. The result here is a plethora of papers advocating that human activity is causing global warming and a paucity of ‘peer reviewed’ published papers that objectively investigate the extent to which human-produced carbon dioxide is contributing to global warming. Since this is the case, it’s probably going to have to get a lot colder before very much changes in most of the media. It will get colder eventually and a lot of people are going to look pretty foolish. It might even get warmer first like it has four other times in the last 11000 years but that’s not likely since we are past due for the coming glacial age. During the coming glaciation, half of the population will starve because rice does not grow on ice.
The 22 year long temperature rise that got a lot of people convinced that human activity was causing global warming stopped in 1998. Now we see that the average global temperature from Jan 2007 through Jan 2008 dropped more than the rise from 1901 to 2001. What next?
Which would be easier (more important or possible) to modify: climate change (global warming) or inexperienced (stupid) drivers?
Bonnie… having been an instructor with a local Safety Council for 9 years (before my current job)… I’d have to vote for the climate change. *sigh*
As usual, a wise and humorous take on life’s little speed bumps. You should see them out here in California, though, when it rains for the first time in months; just like those unfortunate souls in Tennessee, many drivers exhibit the same behavior and oftne turn the freeway into a big game of bumper cars.
To be fair, though, as a former New Yorker who initially mocked them (”These guys don’t what driving is until they’ve tacked into a Nor’easter”), I learned early on that the roads actually do turn into a skating rink of sorts when rain lands on a six-month buildup of motor oil.
By the way, Winston, old friend, I found your post listed on my BuzzTracker alert this morning. Congratulations, and keep up the great work. I hope to be rejoining you in the blogosphere in the near, near future.
[...] Winston, we aren’t going to have any snow anyway so I think we are safe, but this is the quote of the day, my dear: People in Tennessee know jack-sh*t about driving in snow. If it was not so scary and [...]
Great post Winston. I’m not sure I’m cut out for this frigid midwestern weather anymore either. I certainly don’t embrace the beauty of a snow storm anywhere near like I use to….I’m too busy worrying about the clean-up and danger of it. But, I don’t see me moving to a warmer and less hazardous climate anytime too soon either. I guess I’m destined to leave this earth laying in a snowbank with a shovel in my hand.
I’d rather have tons and tons of snow, and all the inconveniences that come with it, than even the slightest bit of freezing rain.