“This is the moment we need to save November, to save the planet.”
Ironies abound. The first time I learned of the teenage climate activist Alexandria Villasenõr, age 15, was on Twitter, when I happened to be following the better-known teen activist Greta Thunberg.
Villasenõr, demonstrating against climate change at the time, was huddled with a hand-made sign on a bench outside a New York museum during one of the worst blizzards in the city’s history. Horrified museum workers begged her to come inside; she refused, and they sent her hot coffee instead while she tweeted a series of real-time updates, tapping her smartphone in a whirlwind of driving snow. I sent a tweet of encouragement, assuming it would vanish into the ether, and she replied immediately. The power of social media. I’ve followed her, through thick and thin, ever since.
Fast-forward 18 months.
Villasenõr, now in California where her family lives, where she was born, grew up and went to school, has been active again on Twitter these past few days, because she’s now in the middle of another weather-driven firestorm.
Only this firestorm is literally that — a storm made of fire.
The on-going heatwave across California and up the coast all the way to the Pacific Northwest and Western Canada, has sparked some of the most violent fires in a region already known for its volatile summer fires.
The climate crisis, as we all know, doesn’t exist — it’s a Chinese hoax, perpetuated by libtards, bunny huggers and radical lefties hidebound determined to sully the environmental record of the US Trump administration — the eternal sunshine of spotless minds! The Trump administration — paragons of virtue, educated, well informed and true believers in empirical evidence and the power science — never enact policy without first thinking of the public interest.
Right.
The facts are these: This past weekend, the US National Weather Service’s automated weather station at aptly named Furnace Creek — in equally aptly named Death Valley, just inside California’s border with Nevada — registered a record breaking high temperature of 54.4Cº.
That might not sound like much but it is the hottest reliably recorded temperature since temperatures first started being recorded by equipment specifically calibrated to take precise measurements — as opposed to, you know, taking a wild guess.
The record high — which equates to 129.9ºF, roughly speaking, in New World money — was registered at 3.41pm, confirming my theory (anecdotal, but scientifically unproven) that late afternoon is the hottest time of day, not high noon, regardless of how high in the sky the sun might be at any given time.
The official world record, according to the World Meteorological Organization, remains 56.7ºC
(134ºF), also taken at Death Valley, on 10 July 1913.
Private meteorological services, though, have challenged the validity of the 1913 figure. Weather monitoring instruments at the time were not what they are today. 1913, after all, was only a year after the Titanic sank in the North Atlantic, and just one year before the outbreak of the First World War. Twitter was not a thing, and neither were GPS tracking devices and smartphones.
More importantly for 2020, the latest temperature record coincides with a scorching heat wave that has burned its way across the entire west coast of North America, especially Southern California — no stranger of late to summer drought and violent, weather-driven firestorms in the peak summer months of August and September. (Little-known fact: September is traditionally the driest, hottest month of the year in the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Area, ahead of June, July and August. Now you know.)
The ongoing heatwave has sparked numerous fires, one of which news sources local to the area dubbed a “firenado.”
Firenados are rarely recorded. They occur when the hot air from a fire on the ground rises in a tall, tornado-like column and rotates in winds higher off the ground, creating what appears to the outside eye to be a tornado made of fire.
Even in a region already baking from successive summers of fire and record-breaking heat, firenados are uncool.
Villasenõr again, on Twitter, mere hours ago.
“Crossing ‘eavesdropping on my parents while they discuss where they can drive me if the smoke outside gets worse”’ off my 2020 Bingo card.”
If this keeps up, one will no longer be able to see the forest or the trees — quite literally, because there will be no forest or trees to see.
What does this all mean? It seems crazy to have to say this in the year 2020, but one thing it means is that the climate crisis is not a hoax, Chinese or otherwise, and the libtards, bunny huggers and Trump doubters may be onto something after all.
It also means that when Villasenõr, Thunberg and other teenagers around the globe say something needs to be done, and done now, we need to listen. Never mind their future. The future health of the entire planet is at stake.
“In 2018,” Villasenõr posted in a pinned tweet on Aug. 11 of this year, “scientists said we have 12 years to reduce emissions and address catastrophic climate change. Since then we’ve only gone backwards. We can’t wait 4 more yrs to change the course we’re on, we have to do it now.”
And how.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/aug/19/another-two-years-lost-to-climate-inaction-says-greta-thunberg
