Weather Or Not

 How about this weather, huh?

As I have mentioned here previously, when a conversation turns to the weather, I figure we have reached the nadir of interpersonal communication. This is why I have a pretty strict policy when I am teaching PE outside on the playground and the temperature is somewhere above what could be considered "room temperature," then I ask the kids in front of me to take one minute to complain about the heat. Then anything else that is discussed must be about the game we are playing or the proposed tariffs on imported goods from the Republicans. Nothing they say is going to change the fact that they are not as comfortable as they would like to be. 

For the record, the past week was unseasonably warm in Oakland, and the children who ran and played at times under protest all survived. 

The same cannot be said of those in the path of Hurricane Helene. More than two hundred people died in that weather event, and there are still a great many missing. Like the heat here in the Bay Area, the storm that passed through the southeastern United States is a sign that points directly to Climate Change. Climate, as many of us know form our studies, is different from weather. Global temperatures have done little but increase since 1850. That doesn't mean that it won't ever snow again in Buffalo, New York. It means that all meteorological events will be subject to those extremes. 

Noted meteorologist and doorstop Marjorie Taylor Greene has taken this theory one step further, as is her fashion. Late last week, Marge tweeted, “Yes they can control the weather. It’s ridiculous for anyone to lie and say it can’t be done.” This comes form the same mind that gave us "Jewish Space Lasers" in 2021. Back then, she was accusing The Rothschild family of starting a deadly series of wildfires in California. Following this line of reasoning, why wouldn't you expect that Democrats were behind creating one of the deadliest hurricanes to make landfall in the United States? She even backed up her claims with a map that showed how the storm's path seemed to follow a path that affected primarily Republican voters. 

Perhaps it's more of a matter that the average Hurricane Alley resident is stubborn and insistent that this new breed of storm won't touch them, and that their inclination to ignore science in the form of weather reports is what is keeping them in the way of catastrophe? But maybe Marge could riddle me this: Why haven't the evil Democratic Weather Wizards simply cooked up a typhoon that could take out Mar-A-Lago? Or would that be too discrete? 

I'm going to step outside and enjoy the sun while I still can. No more talk of weather until I say.