Good Bye and Good Riddance-Winter

I don’t know about you, but I for one am ready to oust winter from my vocabulary. Now, I appreciate that winters here in sunny Virginia don’t last as long, nor are felt as deeply as they are in the northeast, where I grew up, but I still would rather have some nice down to Virginia Spring weather.

How about you?

My wife, who actually drove to work Monday because Richmond was working on a two-hour delay, arrived in time to find she had the day off. No question the weather and roads were in dire straits. Taking the day off was probably the right thing to do.

Yet, it would have been worth it to me to have a nice warm day, even one in the mid-50s would have been good. I suppose we can blame it on the PA (Pennsylvania) Rodent -- no not the Philly Fanatic -- who ran from his shadow last month and promised six more weeks of this winter wonderland. Yeah, right. Well, it has now been more than his six months. Perhaps we should just dump Phil in the Schuylkill River and get it over with.

Still, the global warming we are experiencing here in the Tri City area has had its share of frustrations. Local schools are trying to figure out how to make up time lost, and some have gone to the extent of adding an extra week at the end of the year. What do you think the school system will accomplish in that week? My bet is nothing, and I never even took an SOL test.

In fact, I’m thinking that a lot of students won’t even be in the classroom for that last week. Take for instance the 2014 Senior Class. Historically around here, the week after school lets out the seniors, and some juniors and precocious sophomores with liberal parents, head for the beaches. Beach Week isn’t going to change. The houses and places are rented a year in advance. I don’t see anyone calling and telling their respective short-term landlords that, well, heck you can keep my deposit ‘cause we just aren’t going to make it there next week.

Yeah, right.

The foul weather also brings on other problems. For instance, the VA State Police reported nearly 300 accidents in the greater Richmond area Tuesday morning, and they were working 28 different crashes at the same time. On the way into work, I noticed a wreck on Temple at the access point for South-bound I- 95. And, while I realize that that in itself is not unusual, the follow up accident where 460 N enters I 95 north was a bit more unusual.

The state police had cars all over with their blue lights whirling and heavy equipment, dump trucks and such, blocking off the entrance to I-95 and forcing everyone to take the Washington-Wythe Street exits.

For the second day in a row, I was forced to scrape ice off my windshield and assorted other windows, just so I could see and try to steer clear of other vehicles. Sorry, but that’s not what I signed up from when I moved to this area 27 years ago.

So, I guess, for me, it’s time to make that trip to Punxsutawney, PA and see what I can do about that raggedy rodent. It’s time to put the blame right where it belongs. That rascal better start getting the weather right or I will replace him with a weather rock. At least that is infallible—if it’s wet, it’s raining; if it’s under a pile of white stuff, it’s snowing, and if it’s dry, it’s not raining. What more do you really need to know anyway?

Pardon my rant, but it’s time to put up the ice scraper and get back to good old Virginia weather.

Hell hath no Fury like Global Warming

There are times when science and the scientific world come up with some of the craziest, most inane theories that have ever throttled mankind or my imagination. Bad enough that goober, Galileo, had to go and ruin the geocentric cosmology that really upset the Catholic church and others who, in their earthocentric thought processes, felt the aged astronomer was way off base. I mean, surely those who scribed the earliest charts knew what they were talking about when they wrote “Here be monsters” in the outlying waters that were technically unexplored seas, right?

Maybe it just has something to do with the vagaries of spring? Whatever it is, it seems that global warming has assumed yet another tack in getting itself before the public. Sure, sure we all know that global warming is here to stay, just look out your window. There are piles of global warming all over the place; it makes driving in the state of Virginia a dangerous task. Big fluffy white stacks of global warming. My wife, in particular, has been awash with glee over these global warming days off she has had this winter.

And then haven’t you been, too?

So, Mother Jones—the magazine, not your mother or my mother—has reported on one of the most outlandish studies ever conducted. Apparently, Mother Jones uncovered a study that says global warming might be the “cause of more rapes of women.”

Well, I do declare!

So, this economist, Matthew Ranson, cites a historical connection between warmer temperatures and increased crime. Ranson said, "Looking at the past, we see a strong relationship between temperature and crime. We think that (relationship) is likely to continue in the future."

Well, duh!

Not very many criminals conduct their profession when the weather is very cold and snowy. They, like most non-criminals, are inclined to stay out of the weather. In fact, Channel 12 News reported that Richmond’s criminals would be closed Monday and Tuesday of this week due to the recent global warming event. And, notably, the number of murders, rapes, robberies, and assorted other crimes dropped dramatically over those two days: murder fell 87 percent, rapes were down 99 percent, and there were no reported robberies or burglaries. WTG Richmond and outlying areas!

Well, those statistics may not be accurate because it is far more likely that the people who collect the statistics were safe at home snuggled up in a blanket and sipping hot totties in front of a fire. Therefore, it would be safe to assume that those figures are on par with those employed by Mother Jones.

The main problem with the Mother Jones’ statistics is that first they encompass 89 years; and second, they employ a crime statistic that equates warm weather with increased crime. They even cite in the story that people come out in warm weather, and that there is more interaction between people that could be relevant to increased crime.

The problem, from my perspective, is that they make an enormous abductive leap to assume that 1. There is in fact this phenomenon known as global warming; 2. That somehow that means we will have a lot more warmer days sometime in the near future; 3. That warmer weather overall will mean more human interaction, which means the opportunity for such crimes as rape will increase and therefore, by extrapolation, we can expect to have a significant increase in rapes of women.

Strangely enough, and perhaps in the interest of equal time, Mother Jones includes this comment from another authority, Andrew Holland, a senior fellow for energy and climate at the American Security Project. Holland, obviously a reasonable thinker, is skeptical of Ranson’s conclusions. He says the study seems "tailor-made for a headline" but that "on further analysis, I don't know what it tells us. Just like any war has many reasons for starting, any crime has many factors that go into it. You can't convince me that any one rape was solely because of the temperature."

“Trying to determine the cause of a crime,” he says, “may be an interesting mathematical exercise, but it is neither useful nor helpful.”

So that leaves us with what is Mother Jones really trying to do with such a bizarre head line? The only real answer to that is getting the Global Warming message out to the world. When all else fails, cite global warming.

I mean, the whole global warming idea could serve as a great excuse for anything, right? Why didn’t you do your homework? Global warming. Why didn’t you take the dog for a walk? Global warming. Where are my Valentine’s Day flowers and gift, global warming? Well, forgetting important holidays like that may in fact add to global warming. You know, “hell hath no fury” and all that.