As much as I hate to waste gas, electricity, food, time and money, I hate to waste words.
Being frugal – a polite-company word for “cheap” – is a name tag I wear with pride, and have done so since I attended Moses’ 412th birthday party.
No, I don’t save tiny pieces of string, bottle caps, dryer lint, or even old newspapers, anymore. Rather, I use the technique my ancestors did during the Great Depression (called that not because it was really terrific, but something no one should forget.)
I still perform surgery on old, tattered t-shirts and once-useful towels and washrags in an effort to recycle them into new useful applicators for paste wax and cleaning the wheels on my truck.
In a display of total honesty, I once saved bottle caps to manufacture a fish scaling device by combining a slat-like stick with some bottle caps that worked fairly well. But I discovered that a commercial version worked better and cost 99¢.
And let’s not forget about corks from wine bottles. My sainted wife collected them for about a decade – until corks ceased being made from “cork,” but were switched to a tan plastic material. You see, I began re-configuring old wooden boards into trivets for hot pots and pans. Cork works well since it doesn’t burn; plastic, on the other hand, melts. No bueno.
Rubber bands, if you feel the need to horde them, save much better in the freezer than a kitchen cabinet drawer. FYI. But I digress.
While on a recent well-deserved vacation in God’s Waiting Room, aka.: Florida, I read a “newspaper” article from the Tampa Bay Times Sunday Edition which they entitled, News Extra. Evidently this was supposed to be more than their usual birdcage lining because of the color pictures thereon featuring a Public Works employee in knee-deep water maneuvering warning signs about high water.
The headline of this hard-hitting, attention-grabbing story read, “It’s been wet, dreary. Here’s why.”
Now I was really curious. I had to know.
Not enough rain in sub-African deserts? Too much snow in the mountains? More hurricanes last year? An inordinate amount of tornadoes across middle America? Two of the hottest summer temperatures on record? Sink holes in Florida? Earthquakes off the Japanese coast and in the mountains of Iran? Colder than normal waters near the Bahamas?
In order to be economical with words, I’ll simply cut to the chase. You probably guessed the reasons for all these issues: climate change.
For at least the past fifty-years I recall hearing from renowned scientists and other money-grubbers that they have the definitive answer to all the worlds’ woes – it’s the weather, stupid.
A very in-depth News Extra was
consuming way too much in the way of ink, time, paper, and
electricity for the computer to write this story. Although feeling
dirty from such waste, I continued to read.
This hurricane could only have been
caused by climate change
Although anyone with an annually-published almanac available from tractor supply stores, pharmacies, and big box stores, could tell you exactly why the weather has been anything except consistent for hundreds of years.
The weather is subject to global climate patterns. Climate patterns are forces of nature that control winds, clouds, and, subsequently, rain, and snow – both or which are critical to growing things along with our mere existence.
Without precipitation there would be no one to complain about “the weather,” use our planet’s natural resources, or pollute. Sure, Bill Gates and his ilk would be tickled pink, but uneducated schmucks like myself would be one of the disposable deplorables.
In any case, surprisingly, this News Extra proceeded to explain what most people my age already knew because of decent educations. Unfortunately, today’s kids are much too busy learning about systemic racism, transgenderism, DEI, social justice, abortion rights, and how not to repay their debts, to learn about weather basics. Alas.
Firstly, there’s El Niño, one of the two global contributors to our ever-changing weather patterns. According to the Times, “When the globe falls into an El Niño period, the northern United States is likely to be drier and warmer while the Southeast tends to be cooler and wetter.”
Further, the article states, “El Niño also increases the threat of severe weather in Florida.”
“La Niña, in the other hand typically fuels hurricanes while El Niño stymies them,” adds The Times.
Whoa! “What’s this all about?” you ask. I’m glad you brought this up.
During unusually heavy snowstorms, waves of torrential rains, or equally rare periods of drought and excessive heat, weather folks on television and the radio regularly cough up inane statements about the weather at that time being attributed to “global warming” or “global cooling” or simply “climate change.” Of course more money – special taxes – in the form of carbon credits will solve all that.
Nothing new to see or hear here. Shallow reporting based upon poor or lax research yields results that border on sensationalism totally avoiding the truth and logical reasons behind that massive “hundred-year-storm,” or devastating xerotes.
Sending the world’s populace into absolute panic because reporters and writers need substance for a story should be criminal. Equally so is ignoring the facts to energize a cause of global socialism bankruptcy in the name of the fragile climate. We have no control over the weather, so stop lying about it by using lots of words to simply say, ”There’s really no story here.”
