Biblical Floods

Gorgeous weather yet again. We are a little behind in rainfall this month. I’ve noticed a little parching of the bedding plants, but not enough to get alarmed about. I’m just thankful that our specific area has been spared the excesses of weather that have been visited on most of the rest of the country. Whether it’s droughts or floods, it all seems to be at that level of “500-year events” that are supposed to only occur, like, well, every 500 years. What the heck is happening?

We have been so much more fortunate this year than folks to the West or South of us. I can’t imagine the amount of rain that they’ve had in Dallas this year. Calling all of the animals together two by two would be considered a good idea if you lived in the Dallas environs.

Biblical floods are not something we worry too much about here in the foothills of the Appalachians. After all, we are on high ground here, for the most part. There have been problems to the North of us, like in the valleys of West Virginia, for example. Runoff from the West Virginia hills has flooded whole towns in some parts of the area.

It is our “convenient truth” to be in an area that has had relatively normal weather. While fires continue to rage out West, the mid-west is being devastated by tornadoes, high winds and now a drought that has allowed people to literally walk on the Mississippi river bed. Florida and other areas have been devastated by a super hurricane causing billions of dollars of damage and displacement for hundreds of thousands. The polar caps continue to melt, and the snow is pink because an algae is growing in it. Sea levels continue to rise and threaten coastal populations all around the world.

If you are a believer of the mystical, strange, and weird, it’s like Nostradamus was reincarnated in the body of Al Gore. How else do you explain all of Gore’s predictions from “An Inconvenient Truth“ coming true unless he is somehow supernatural and connected to Vishnu? Who could have had enough information nearly twenty years ago to be able to predict the weather catastrophes that are occurring not every 500 years, but every year? Not Nostradamus, but Al Gore and a ton of scientists that studied the climate and determined the path that big oil had put us on was not sustainable very much longer, that’s who.

Twenty years later we see that the facts and the science behind the predictions of “An Inconvenient Truth“. were correct. The fact that was misjudged was the reaction to the truths. Who could have predicted that big oil wouldn’t slow their process in killing the planet one iota? Who could have predicted that the big oil companies wouldn’t diversify and choose to get in on the ground floor of clean renewable energy? Who could have predicted that big oil not only didn’t have a sense of social conscious, but of their own survival? A dead planet requires no gasoline.

Who could have predicted that our elected officials would look the other way until prompted to look into the matter by the insurance companies? Who could have predicted that we who will suffer the most would continue to buy gas guzzling cars and send climate deniers back to represent us in Washington? Who could have predicted that when the scientific evidence that is all around us proves that change needs to come and come in a hurry, there would still be people more aligned to their cult party affiliations than making a change?

I like to think that even the most diehard climate denier will have to own up to the fact that things are just not right anymore.

Hopefully, it will be sooner than later.