Hell (Metorologically Speaking) Is Not Eternal. My area of the world (Newark, NJ, USA) has had horrible weather for many months. The winter was severe. Spring was subnormally cold, by 10 and more degrees Fahrenheit. Then all of a sudden we seemed to jump from June to August, and set new records, 101 or 102 degrees Fahrenheit a couple of days ago. No rain for 14 days or more, save one day when we had a rain so lite it did not reach the ground on my property but merely wetted the leaves of the oaks and evergreen that tower above.
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We're back to normal now, tho — maybe a little below normal, as a matter of fact.
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People inclined to blame an oppressive heat wave on "global warming" are misled. Only days ago I saw reference in a news story to the actual, recorded increase in global temperatures that scientists have observed: about 1 degree Fahrenheit in a CENTURY!
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So when our local weather is 10, 15, even 20 degrees below normal, as it was here in Newark in May and June, or 10 or 20 degrees hotter than normal in July and August, that is not "global warming" but an aberration specific to a time and place that has no greater significance. There have always been "heat waves" and "cold spells". It is in the nature of the human creature to think that now is more important than then, and what we are experiencing now indicates how things will be in the future. That does not compute.

Now is now. Then was then. The future is the future. None of these indicates much of anything about any of the others, meteorologically speaking. When you are dealing with so trivial a difference in global temperature as one degree Fahrenheit, which is too small for most people to distinguish (one degree Celsius is almost 2 degrees Fahrenheit, and thus easier to perceive), conclusions are unreliable if drawn from data that may vary depending upon the accuracy of a given thermometer or even the eyesight of the person taking the reading! — or his/her inclination to round UP or round DOWN.
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It is also in the nature of the human creature to think that now is more important than then, and distress now warrants special attention. It does not, scientifically, not when we're talking about long-term trends and the public policy adjustments we do or do not need to make.
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"Heat Wave" is the name of a great old Martha and the Vandellas Motown hit from 1963. It is not a forecast of catastrophic global warming.
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Gas-Guzzling Rich. It is insufficiently appreciated that the rich are driving up the price of gasoline that the poor and middle class have to pay. When the rich buy gas-guzzling huge SUV's, they use up far more than their fair share of gasoline, and cause gasoline producers to raise the price at the pump to accommodate increased demand. Do only the rich pay that higher price? No. Everybody has to pay the higher price that the gas-guzzling rich produce.
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How do we adjust this to arrive at something like fair pricing?
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Altho it would seem appropriate to hit all owners of gas-guzzling vehicles with the same high price, and exempt all vehicles that do not swill gasoline like a drunk chugs booze, the fact is that some poor people do need larger vehicles to transport large families. High gas prices victimize them as much as they do poor owners of economy cars.
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Still, there's got to be a way to adjust the price at the pump for vehicles according to their mileage, with exemptions downward for poor people who have to have a larger vehicle because of a larger number of people who need to be transported, not as a luxury, to go where they don't necessarily need to go, but as a necessity.
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How might this work?
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Everything is computerized now, at least in major enterprises. It would be very simple for a computerized price-adjusting mechanism to be attached to all gas pumps in major-brand gas stations all across the country. The model name of every vehicle sold in the U.S. could be preprogrammed into a price-adjusting database at every pump such that if you drive in with a little Saturn or Geo (my own old car brand) you get one price (lower) but if you drive in with a huge Cadillac Escalade, you get a much higher price. Any owner of a gas-guzzling SUV who is actually poor but needs the room for his or her large family would have an exemption card, with bar code, to present to the gas-station employee to qualify for a lower pump price.
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The Motor Vehicles agency for each state could issue exemptions upon presentation of appropriate documentation by applicants for vehicle registrations.
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Thus could we penalize the owners of Hummers and other preposterously gas-guzzling vehicles but reward the owners of fuel-efficient vehicles, and make some economic sense of the irrational disparities in wealth that the free market has produced. Let's do it!
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(The current U.S. military death toll in Iraq, according to the website "Iraq Coalition Casualties", is 1,854.)
- posted by L. Craig Schoonmaker @ 7:11 AM